QMx Battlestar Galactica Top Gun Stein

[JiminSTLouis]

Preordering will start in Q4, 2011

https://store.qmxonline.com/Battlestar-Galactica-Top-Gun-Stein_p_145.html#

 

[Mechamaniac]

Got my stein in today from QMX. Definitely worth the money. Odd though, there was NO internal packaging, instructions, etc ... nada.

I just got a big box with the stein wrapped in bubble wrap and nestled in some peanuts. Weird.

 

[kursosawa]

No instructions? How the frak are we supposed to figure out how to use the thing properly?

 

[Mechamaniac]

No instructions? How the frak are we supposed to figure out how to use the thing properly?

Yeah, I know, I didn't mean usage instructions, but you figure they'd at least throw a piece of paper in there telling you whether or not it was dishwasher safe etc. It does say on the stein page of their website that they recommend hand washing.

Again, common sense, but most people are mouth breathers so you can never be too careful.

 

[kursosawa]

Good point. Im also surprised with the lack of a care label with the info of the use of hot vs cold drinks etc. Shoot those $10 thermose cups that you find at shops everywhere come with care labels. Hard to believe a $60 collectible doesn't come with a darn thing.

 

[FuseNova]

Glad to see these are shipping. I ordered a number of items from QMX during their Black Friday sale and this was holding up shipment.

Will anyone actually drink from their stein? I'll put mine in the shrine and slowly fill it up with dust.

 

[Mechamaniac]

Will anyone actually drink from their stein? I'll put mine in the shrine and slowly fill it up with dust.

It's food safe, I already used mine

 

[kursosawa]

If i ever do get around to getting mine, I'll most certainly be drinking from it.

 

[Mara Jade's Father]

Got my stein in today from QMX. Definitely worth the money. Odd though, there was NO internal packaging...

An due to that fact, my stein arrived via Redfordfilms in several pieces. This was suppose to be a Christmas gift but since Qmx saved a few cents on foam inserts, I got screwed.

 

[Delmustator]

Guys (and Gals)... I've been a stein collector for years. I have 100+ including every Budweiser Holiday Stein from 1980 to present in my collection.

Most steins come with little or no care instructions. I have only seen a few that specifically said NOT to put liquids in the stein. Basically they are pieces of art to be placed on a shelf and viewed, but not used.

The rule of thumb is this. If the graphics were cured/baked onto the stein properly, then it should be dishwasher safe WITHOUT HEAT DRYING. It says that the graphics were hand painted on this one so I would use the dishwasher sparingly (if not at all). I prefer to hand wash my steins, especially the steins with pewter lids.

To reduce soap residue, you should re-rinse and wipe your stein dry immediately after washing it. Residue can affect the formation (and sometimes flavor) of the head of your favorite beer in the stein. Depending on your water source, hard water will leave a whitish powdery substance on the stein. It's especially noticeable on clear glass steins. If you allow your stein to air dry, the powdery film can fuse with the stein and become permanent. Thus diminishing the colors of your stein.

Also, being that this stein has the small aircraft on the lid, you have to drink from it with care or you could break that off the lid. Those beer parties sure are fun but sometimes it's not only the drinker that gets wasted. Usually if I like a stein a lot, I'll purchase a second (non-lidded) one specifically for drinking and keep one NIB.

The Budweiser 25th Anniversary Holiday Stein is my favorite drinking stein!

 

[Mechamaniac]

An due to that fact, my stein arrived via Redfordfilms in several pieces. This was suppose to be a Christmas gift but since Qmx saved a few cents on foam inserts, I got screwed.

MJF, can you post a pic of your packaging and stein condition? Another friend of mine got his today and it actually came in it's own box, but in his case, there was a manufacturing defect. He'll be posting his shortly.

Three different people, three different outcomes. Clearly a rush job by QMX....

Del...thanks for the tips!

 

[babroseker]

Mine arrived today, and unlike Mechamaniac's did have logo'd packaging for the stein itself inside the shipping box. The box does have care instructions printed on it.

However, when I looked at the stein itself the printing (or "hand painting") is damaged.

I called QMX, but it seems that there is no option to speak to an actual human for customer service. You have to leave a message for a call back.

I have to say between that and the shoddy QA, I'm disappointed at best.

 

[mehcd]

I came here from a Google search as I just received mine today and found it a tad... lacking.

It came in a large, cheap cardboard box filled roughly 1/3 with packing peanuts. Inside was another cardboard box with SyFy and Battlestar branding. The care instructions, etc, were on the smaller box. However, the smaller box itself had a huge dent and a hole in the bottom. Inside was the stein itself, which is only "OK."

Mine has a few problems, all related to the lid. The miniature F/A-18 is cheap, and portions of it are warped and bent. Fortunately, I was able to adjust the bent portions by hand. Still, if you bump it into something, it'll definitely fall apart. Also, the swing arm portion of the lid is pretty shoddy as well. There was metal flakes falling all over the place, and I'm sure if I actually tried to use the thing the lid would just snap off at the rotating/swing part. I'm not sure what the technical term is. :lol

Anyway, it looks like a fine display piece, but I think this thing is just going to sit on the shelf with my Anovos pins and my QMx dogtags. If I had known it was going to be so shoddy I would not have purchased it.

I wonder if they were damaged in transit? That would explain why some people received them without the actual box, and why my box had a huge hole in it.

 

[Funky]

And yet another prop company with poor delivery dates, promises they can't keep, poor QA and lousy customer service.
I can't believe I'm going to say this but I miss Master Replicas.

 

[B-Movie Zombie]

I received mine last Friday. I can't find anything wrong with it. It does look great with the rest of my BSG collection. :thumbsup Also, someone needs to make a pyramid ball!

 

[p51]

I guess I’m lucky, mine showed up 2 days before Christmas with no issues. I got mine off Amazon and got it long before others who’d pre-ordered months ago and I paid a lot less than they did, too. Mine was $60 total with shipping. I never considered pre-ordering as I refuse to order “vaporware.” Once a product exists, then the wallet gets open. It’s not my job to subsidize startup costs. I have no idea why the whole pre-order thing is so common with sci-fi stuff. Less so, I don’t get why everyone else accepts it and thinks anyone who questions it is like some kind of heretic or something. I don't pre-order stuff, period. I’ve never seen any benefit to doing that.
When I got mine, I immediately compared it to the photos of the real ones in the auction catalog. I noticed just a few small issues:
1: The blue and gold stripes are incorrect widths and in two different spots.
2: The support for the pivot for the lid on the handle seems to be slightly different as well.
3: The Galactica insignia is rotated to one side slightly.
Still, for the money, it's a fine replica and I consider it money well spent as these are very minor issues in my opinion. For what I paid for it, I couldn’t possibly have made a better one. The fact that it’s‘food safe’ was the key selling point as I wouldn’t trust a fan product as something to safely drink from.
Did anyone else look at the inside of the lid? I looked at mine and saw a tiny little Colonial Phoenix emblem on the very top of the inside of the lid. Pretty nice, and a detail they certainly didn’t need to add (especially that I can’t imagine the screen-used ones had this). I also noticed that the F-18 is facing the exact same direction on mine that it does on both the production made ones shown in the catalog. Another nice touch!

 

[Chronos]

Mine arrived with the lid-Viper broke off. Glad I had some super glue!

Other than that snag, I'm pretty happy with the stein. Anyone else notice a small colonial seal on the underside of the lid? Nice little addition.

 

[Mechamaniac]

Did anyone else's come without a box? As I mentioned before, mine came wrapped in bubble wrap in a box full of peanuts. Like I got it off someone on eBay.

I'm curious if others arrived packaged similarly.

 

[docholl]

Mine arrived today. It was inside it's own Qmx branded box, which showed damage to the exterior. Fortunately, the stein was OK. This box was just placed inside the shipping box with a totally insufficeint amount of styro peanuts to keep it from bouncing around. A real cheap-ass move on Qmx' part. As for the stein, it's nice. Glad of that as I was not looking forward to raising my blood pressure yet again this holiday season.

 

[bodhicitta7]

I just concluded a conversation via e-mail with one of the QMx guys about the accuracy of their stein versus the original prop. I have one of the original steins (not screen-used, but the Navy Enduring Freedom stein, converted to a BSG Top Gun stein with screen-accurate graphics). In comparing the two, the size, construction, and detail are all significantly different between the QMx version and the original German constructed stein.

The QMx pre-sale advertising described their stein as an "Exact 1:1 scale replica of the screen used prop". When I questioned their "exact replica" claim, a QMx customer service guy sent me an image of the screen-used prop from the Propworx auction to prove that their replica was indeed a screen accurate match. I sent him back his image after adding add'l pix of some of the differences I had found (see image below). I didn't point out the fact that the handle is considerably taller and wider on the QMx stein, that the jet fighter on the lid is larger and in a different position, or any of the other differences I noticed as the guy didn't really seem to care much about my concern for the preciseness of their replication and was sticking to his guns regarding the 1:1 claim (there was something about it qualifying as a 1:1 because it wasn't miniaturized?).

In all fairness to QMx, they're probably still on the defensive after the "Kat" fiasco, so I wasn't really expecting much in the way of a concession or admission of failure. Final word from them was "if you're not happy, return it for a refund". I'll probably keep it as it was pretty inexpensive given what it is, and the two steins look really good next to each other on the shelf (except for the difference in height).

BTW, mine came in the branded box inside a larger shipping box with no damage, although I can confirm that the outer box was only partially filled with styro peanuts like other posters describe. Guess I got lucky there.


@B-Movie Zombie - I have one of the screen used pyramid balls and would be happy to shoot some scale pictures and take measurements of it if someone is serious about replicating one.