Wish I had money lying around… 🙁
Still, on a less expensive topic, my local Gamestop has started stocking Halo figures of Halo 2 Chief and Halo 5 Chief.

This is an old thread, so I’m not sure if anyone will see this, but I got the Light Rifle version of this figure today and, I have to say, I am thoroughly disappointed with the results. The articulation sucks. I think it’s mainly because of the figure’s undersuit. There is a rubbery undersuit that wraps the entire figure, which hides the joints and generally looks super nice. However, it inhibits articulation big time. The rubber suit is just sitting on a fairly thin “skeleton” figure with some pretty sketchy articulation, meaning the mounted pieces of armor are just kind of floating. This sounds like it would be great for allowing more articulation, but it’s not. They bungled it. The elbows won’t even bend far enough to get the Chief to hold a weapon with two hands. The forearm armor hits the shoulder armor, completely inhibiting the motion. The elbows can’t even go 90 degrees. You have to bend the shoulders over far to get both hands on the weapon and good luck with that. The shoulders themselves have a wide range of motion, but the joints are extremely loose and they seem to have been designed this way. There aren’t any clicks indicating the firmness of the articulation as you roll the shoulders and, very quickly, you realize that the rubber undersuit’s desire to not have folds and bends interferes with the articulation. You raise the figure’s arm above shoulder level and the joint instantly starts to slowly slide back down. When trying to get the Chief to hold a weapon, this means he’ll tentatively grasp it for about ten seconds before either arm decides it wants to settle and his hand slides off.

Which brings me to the fingers. The full finger articulation looks really nice but is utterly useless when trying to get this figure to wield a weapon. The joints are simply too loose and his hand is shaped weird. For one thing, the palm is completely immobile – only the fingers move. This means that weapons will not go firmly against the Chief’s hands, but instead are propped among his loose jointed fingers. The thumb articulation is useless, thanks to the immobile palm, as you can’t even stretch the thumb to oppose the other fingers in gripping the weapon. There is no firmness and no tension in the grip. You can tentatively get a weapon in there, but trying to then pose the figure will almost immediately result in the dropping of the weapon.

Legs aren’t much better than the arms. The hips have almost NO articulation whatsoever. You can almost make the Chief do the splits, but the rubber suit again gets in the way of him spreading his legs too far apart. However, if you want to pose him with one leg in front of the other in a forward-stepping stance, good luck; his hips are even more loose than his shoulders. The hips stay in a straight standing position pretty well and that’s about it. The knees and ankles are actually surprisingly sturdy. Both have a full range of motion and lock into position when posed. But, with the hip joints completely working against them, the knees and ankles have to be relied upon to keep the figure sturdy. It works surprisingly well for a moderate range of poses but ONLY because the figure is surprisingly bottom-heavy. The top is really light. Even then, any poses beyond some pretty basic standing poses are impossible with this figure’s leg articulation.

The magnets are also a lie. The shoulders and the top of the helmet are mounted with magnets which are extremely strong and hold those pieces in place very well. The magnets hidden in the weapons and in the back armor pieces are extremely weak in comparison. The weight of the weapon isn’t supported by the magnet mounts. It’s impossible to get any weapon to stay mounted for even a few seconds. It’s a cool idea – they need much stronger magnets.

Overall, for the price, I am dreadfully disappointed. I was expecting a top of the line Master Chief that looks great, really pops under any light, is super pose-worthy, and has a huge array of cool weapons without any pegholes or unsightly pegs. What I got instead was an overpriced Master Chief with a solid-but-unspectacular paint job (NECA did better on its Chief), no hip articulation or shoulder articulation, the inability to wield its weapons, and the inability to hold anything beyond a straight standing pose without any weapons attached to the figure. Frankly, I think it’s false advertising – the figure literally can’t even hold any of the poses shown in these PR photos. You can attain the briefly, but the loose joints quickly overcome the pose and the thing comes crashing down. When you can’t even strike the manufacturer photo session poses, you know a figure is dreadful. I would gladly have paid $100 for the quality I got, simply because the figure DOES *look* cool. Paying anything over that is highway robbery. Dreadful figure.