This Figuarts of MetalGarurumon is the special Original Designer's Edition released in July 2015.
Big thanks to Dev for the scans and photos of the figure. Scanning and editing was done by her with minor touchup by me.
The front of the box has some fantastic MetalGarurumon artwork by Kenji Watanabe. MetalGarurumon is leaping and attacking, and it feels like he's drawn more slender than he often is.
The Adventure logo is on the front, along with the normal Figuarts logos and details.
It contains the Bandai Collector's Shop logo as a Premium Bandai exclusive in Japan. This figure is from US stock, which is why it has an English warning sticker added.
The sides of the box feature photos of the figure, focusing around his head.
The top has the new artwork, but desaturated to the point it's a bit hard to tell if there is any color in it. The figure name is in English, along with the normal Figuarts text.
The bottom is various legal information. Again, since it's US stock it has a sticker applied by Bluefin with English information.
The back of the box shows off the artwork again, along with Kenji Watanabe's signature.
On the left we get the Figuarts text, along with a basic character introduction for MetalGarurumon. On the right additional parts that are included with the figure are shown off.
Also included is an instruction sheet.
Dev kindly took a number of photos of the figure for everyone to enjoy.
First up, the figure in it's plastic shell that it's in inside the box.
Then we have good shots of the figure from various angles. We get a nice angled front shot, along with side profile shots of each side.
Last is MetalGarurumon fighting WarGreymon.
Clean art of the Kenji Watanabe cover image. MetalGarurumon was drawn at a significantly different angle then he ended up being shown on the cover. Perhaps the plan was to originally ship it in a vertical box instead of horizontal?
There is no 'normal' Figuarts of MetalGarurumon due to a handful of unique circumstances.
D-Arts ended up winding down at the end of 2013 and the beginning of 2014, to be folded into Figuarts. The first D-Arts was WarGreymon, and the Original Designer's Edition of WarGreymon was one of the last D-Arts released.
Despite the jump in time (roughly a year after pre-orders for the Original Designer's Edition of WarGreymon began), there ended up being this Original Designer's Edition of MetalGarurumon. In the image above you can see a side by side comparison, the original D-Arts on the left, the Figuarts on the right.
It's the same mold as the D-Arts, just with a different color-scheme and new packaging art.
It's just kind of odd and unique that with only roughly a 2 year difference, the figure ended up in 2 different toylines, with the only other Original Designer's Edition being in a different toyline.
The Digimon figures that began with D-Arts, and ended with Figuarts, were all relatively nice action figures for Digimon, with a lot of great characters represented. MetalGarurumon was a nice mold, and the Original Designer's Edition Figuarts release really looks fantastic.
There hasn't been a DIgimon Figuarts in a bit over 3 years at this point. The collector's figures for Digimon are largely split into 2 lines at the moment. GEM, a 'statue' type line, which has Omegamon, BlackWarGreymon, and ULForceV-dramon oming soon, and Digivolving Spirits, a transforming action figure line inspired by the transforming Digimon figures that began with the Adventure toyline, which has HolyAngemon coming out this month.
Thanks to Devkyu for the images of her figure.
Huh, I never had any idea about the history of this figure and the history od D-Arts.
Idk if the name was specifically cause of Digimon, but D-Arts always sounded like exclusive Digimon toy line, so I was suprised to see it on other franchises as well.