Hotaru reviews: HK-MP5 from Medicom Toy's Grenz Schutz Gruppe-9

Well, I've sorted out Hotaru's hair. I used the tip of a hot glue gun to curl the hair in the right direction so it behaves. I've also learned that whatever synthetic her hair is made of, it can be straightened by applying said hot glue gun to the strands. I was afraid it would burn and leave a cloud of smoke, but it has a higher ignition temperature than the gun can provide.

Now that I handled the hair, time to put her back into work. Hotaru today got an early present: a Heckler and Koch Machinenpistole-5, otherwise known as an MP5. This model comes from Medicom Toy's GSG-9 counter terrorist unit figure. I bought the gun loose, without the baggage of another body to decapitate.

The gun is decently sculpted, and features a retractable buttstock, tactical flashlight, adjustable sling, and three magazines.
Two magazines can be clipped together with a special bracket. Here's where the disappointments come. The bracket holds the magazines securely only near the ends, so there's a bit of slip. Despite being the same part, each magazine differs in how the top bullet was molded: one had a nigh distinguishable bullet/borderline tab while the other two had visible bullet shaped protrusions. The bullets themselves were painted with what looks like a roller: golden paint covered most of the top. The side of one or two magazines had residual red chunks of paint flecks.
Here, Hotaru is illustrating the selective fire option. Strangely, Medicom put a nice detailed decal of the selective fire system's "Safe", "semi-auto" and "full auto" modes, but neglected to put the indicator for what mode the switch is set to.

However, here's the unexpected party piece. The detachable scope is actually translucent the entire way through. Great opportunites to use in photoshoots, with a proper backlight. The joy of the scope gets killed by the fact that the scope covers are poorly designed/molded. There's little other than friction holding them in place. The mold maker decided that tiny pins were too much effort to add, thereby making the scope covers impossible to stay on when open. The front piece came off twice while shooting these pics, and it was in the closed position when it did.

Wow, her hair makes her head look big. Unintentionally going for the Rukia from Bleach look right now. Anyways, the MP5 overall is a nice model to have. The build quality definitely shows how cheaply made the actual parent figure was (about $20-30). If you for some reason come across the Medicom Toy verison depicted here, be prepared to keep the scope somewhere safe where the parts can't be lost. The buttstock is removable, but be warned, the rails for the stock warp easily. It may not fit as well when you put it back together. If you paid what I paid ($2.25), it's not a bad model. However, it's not worth buying the figure for $30.

Accuracy: 8/10
Build Quality: 5/10
Paint Job: N/A
Moving parts: Stock only, no cocking lever. Magazines and scope detachable.
Overall: 7/10