I don’t play Apex Legends, but if a company is putting out six-inch scale, super-articulated action figures, you know I’m going to pick up at least a few. Today we’re going to look at the robotic Pathfinder!
The Apex Legends line packaging definitely has a Black Series vibe to it with a similar dimension and window size. I do like how strong the spine illustration is and think that will be helpful to quick scan pegs from the side. A funny thing about it is the insert has a bit of a dirt spray to it that made me think that I had either spilled something on the figure or had dirt on my lens.
Pathfinder comes with two futuristic looking rifles, one that has a bit longer sniper-looking feel, and a shorter, almost shotgun feel.
Both guns have sharp sculpting and lots of detail with some very nice metallic detail paints. They are cast in a fairly soft plastic, so I found that they would bend depending on how the figure holds them. Also, the shotgun weapon’s grip is a little small for the figure, so you bend it a bit to get the hand in there.
The shorter weapon actually fits solidly on peg on the back of the figure. The other weapon will sit on there, but it doesn’t stay on tightly.
Sculpting on the figure itself is also very well done. The details are super sharp and while I’m not an Apex expert, it does look to match the game model well. There’s also a lot of different pieces like the yellow wires and black tubes that add a lot of texture.
The articulation is pretty good, but not without issues. Pathfinder has:
- Ball and socket in the head, neck, waist, and hips
- Hinged ankles, elbows, and toes
- Double hinged knees
- Swivel/hinged shoulders, mid-torso, and wrists (up/down hinge)
- Swivel shoulders and biceps
The dual ball joints do allow for nice tilt and swivel but not much up and down movement and the waist articulation moves very well too. The bicep swivel is blocked somewhat by the shape of the arms, so two-handed gun holding poses are somewhat limited. A swivel at the bicep hinge would help a lot. The hips don’t spread very wide, but since there’s no swivel in the ankles for stabilization anyway, I don’t miss it.
Probably the biggest issue with articulation for me is the ankles are pretty weak and the toe articulation is not very tight and the feet are also very small, so this is a difficult figure to balance. I basically needed to use some support to hold him up in any pose more complicated than standing straight up and even finding that balance point took a while.
The paint is decent, with most of the body cast in the blue plastic, but I love the gold and almost glowing effect on the robot eye. There are a lot of nice paint hits for detail, though there could always be more and a wash would have been nice for bringing out the great sculpted details. I also like the lenticular sticker on the chest screen that shows two different graphics that I’m assuming are part of game-specific emotes.
Overall, this is a good figure, but the central flaw of not being able to stand well makes it a lot less desirable than it could be. As somebody who isn’t an Apex Legends player, I think he would be great for a background Star Wars guy (with some modifications) or perhaps work as an army building robot oponents for Marvel or G.I. Joe characters. The fact that it is tough to balance does reduce that utility for me.
