I don’t know anything about Horizon Forbidden West, but when I started seeing previews of this figure, I had to have one. In general, I like to grab at least one figure from a company that’s starting up a new six inch scale super-articulated line or check it out when a company really ups their game in terms of articulation and sculpting. It looked to me like Aloy represented a step up for Spin Master and since she was the start of a new super-articulated action figure line based on Playstation games called The Shapes Collection I ordered one from Amazon. Let’s take a look at Aloy!
The packaging is fairly elaborate with an outer sleeve that features some character art and 3D renders of the figure. It’s got the vibe of Playstation branded packaging like you see on their games and whatnot.
Inside the slip cover there’s a lot more game art and it hinges open to show off the figure and accessories inside. It’s got a premium feel and the presentation feels a lot like a SDCC exclusive. It makes me wonder if this wasn’t planned as a SDCC premiere item for the line as the rest of the figures we’ve seen are not quite as deluxe.
The figure comes with a good amount of stuff including a bow, a loose arrow, a quiver, a spear, four sets of hands (grip, bow holding, fists, grips, and open), and six face-plates.
The hands give you the options you need for tons of poses and allow her to use her accessories well. They pop out pretty easily and stay on there well. The grip hands are a softer plastic, so it is a little fiddly to get the accessories in hands sometimes, but they hold them well. I especially love the bow holding specific hands as they work well with the bow to make arrow firing poses so much less annoying to set up than it usually is with archer figures with real string in the bow. The bow is incredibly detailed with a mostly white base and lots of little decorations like feathers.
The bow has a white elastic string and the bow firing hands are designed to hold the string and the nock part of the arrow. There’s also a little groove on the bow near where the figure holds it around the center where you can lock the arrow in. It’s honestly the most satisfying action figure bow experience I can remember.
The quiver plugs into a hole in the skirt and swivels from that point. The nice thing is that it stays in there really securely and didn’t fall off once while I was posing it. The loose arrow is obviously larger than the arrows sculpted into the quiver, so I can understand why it wouldn’t work, but I wish I could store the loose arrow in the quiver.
The spear is similarly detailed to the bow with feather decorations and lots of little details. It looks like there’s some sort of electric wiring in the handle and there is an impressive amount of clean paint hits on the whole thing.
The bow and the spear both have tiny holes in them that can plug into a peg on the figure’s back. The bow has a hole that goes straight through and the hole in the spear doesn’t quite go through it, so I’m thinking maybe they originally designed them to stack onto the same peg, but it’s not quite long enough on my figure. You can use the peg one at a time for the weapon storage, but I was also able to get them both on there by sandwiching the bow between the spear and the back and under the articulated hair.
Finally, the faceplates are a super fun option with a wide variety of expressions and deco. My favorite are probably the three that don’t have any extra face paint, just her freckles, because they work in providing a bit of variety for the type of little stories I like to do with photography. The smirking face is great for bow firing because she’s actually giving a little side-eye. I kinda wish the neutral, shocked, and smiling faces were without face paint so they would work in the same scene, but the different face paints are neat. The faces swap onto some pegs in the head and stay on securely. I do wish they were just slightly little more sunk in under the hairline for a cleaner look that made the plates a little less obvious around the hair line. I did notice a couple times I had knocked one askew while posing and it showed a pretty obvious gap at the jawline, so that can be a bit fiddly.
The sculpting on this figure is quite lovely. I checked out some character model shots online and I feel like they did a great job translating this insanely detailed costume into a figure with lots of varied textures and extremely sharp detail.
The articulation is pretty impressive. There’s a lot of the usual POA that you expect from lines like G.I. Joe Classified and Marvel Legends, but they also add some interesting things and refine the usual articulation with smart engineering choices. The character design has a few potential pitfalls with a fur shoulder cover, massive head of hair, large skirt and furry boots that could all negatively impact articulation, but they address it in smart ways.
For the skirt, it’s segmented to allow the legs to stretch out through the gaps. There are also things hanging from the belt like rope, the quiver, and a pouch with cloth that all swivel to move out of the way or orient correctly for the pose. Underneath the furry boots, there’s a ball joint and a cavity that allows for boot swivel and some tilt and there’s enough carved out of that shaggy boot that the ankles can hinge forward. The fur shoulder cover is a soft plastic piece that is secured to the back, but open in the front so the arms can more around it freely.
Finally, the massive head of hair that hangs over the shoulders is split into five ball-jointed pieces that can move around and allows for way more head range of motion than a character with all that hair would usually have. It can be a little fiddly and one of the hair strands did pop out a few times, but it was also kind of fun to figure out and try and get the hair pieces to work together in different poses. I was shocked at how well the figure could look up and as far as I could tell she just has ball joints in the neck. Aloy has:
- Swivel/hinge shoulders, wrists, elbows, hips, and ankles.
- Ball and socket head, lower neck, mid-torso, hair, and underneath the boot
- Hinged toes, lower torso crunch, and butterfly pecs
- Double-hinged knees
- Swivel thighs, biceps, and belt pieces
The only thing that doesn’t work for me is that she doesn’t have double elbows, but the arms are really small, so I can understand that might be an aesthetic call.
Paint is also really good with exceptionally nice faceprints and tons of tiny paint separations for all the costume and accessory details. There’s some washes and drybrushing on the furry parts of the costume and some variety of color in the hair that brings out all that excellent sculpt detail.
At around 5 and 3/4 inches tall, Aloy seems to be more of a true six inch scale like Black Series than the 6 and half of Legends and G.I. Joe classified. I see she fights some crazy techno monsters in the game, but I don’t think I have anything like that so she’ll be more of a Dinosaur fighter on my shelf. I could see her working with Black Series or maybe some D&D figures like the Hasbro movie figures.
Overall I’m extremely impressed with this figure and am looking forward to what’s next in this line from Spin Master. Aloy is pricier than the other figures they announced ($49.99) and does look to have more accessories than the regular line will have. That price tag almost takes it up to import level costs and while the articulation functions better than a lot of U.S. lines, the figure definitely feels more like a domestic figure in terms of plastic feel than an import. I almost don’t want to like it as much as I do because that cost feels a bit high to me. I don’t know, all those faceplates and paint hits would make this a costlier figure to produce. I don’t like it. I don’t agree with it, but I accept it.
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