McFarlane’s Arbiter —Ripa ‘Moramee

Believe it or not, McFarlane managed to incorporate both functional and durable articulation into the Arbiter.  The design of the legs make articulation as we know it a bit tricky, but I’ll go into detail below.

The Arbiter’s head sits on a ball-joint at the end of a long neck.  The head is fairly limited in movement, but can go side to side, up & down and spin all the way around.  The neck attaches to the torso with another ball-joint, offering similar motion as the head except the ability to spin around.  Combined, these two joints offer plenty of head movement, although it never really looks like you moved anything unless you know how it was sitting before.  The torso offers the standard joint under the chest which has come to be expected of all modern figures.

The shoulders are massive pinned ball-joints that offer full range of motion, even the right arm under the armored shoulder plate.  This is a good place to state that all of the armor is flexible and attached in an intelligent way as to not hinder range of motion on most joints.  The elbows are standard hinges, but unlike my last review on the Marine, the Arbiter has arm swivels above the hinge and can reach across his body.  The wrists are on hinged ball-joints and offer superb motion, I just hope they do not loosen up over time.  No figures that we collect in 1:18 sizes have articulated fingers, but the alien design here really needs it because I already destroyed 1 sword trying to remove it and getting other weapons in the Arbiter’s claws are a pain in the ass.

The legs.  This is were the Arbiter’s alien design really starts to affect things and I’m not quite sure how to score something that is executed well, but still lacks because of the body shape.  The Arbiter’s hips are massive hinged ball-joints with impressive motion and stability and he does have a swivel joint mid thigh.  The huge armored plates are mounted to the lower thigh and can rotate completely around the swivel joint without being impeded by the upper thigh.  This is fairly impressive and offers a nice look while posing.  The knee is a hinged joint, but because his legs are like a dogs hind legs, it doesn’t really move much.  The next joint is a simple hinge at his toes with even less movement.  These two joints do their respective jobs, but the arbiter is one tough sucker to get balanced and it doesn’t leave many pose options when your only concern is trying to keep him upright.  The well executed upper legs feels a bit wasted unless you are holding him while pretending to run around like a child would.

Paint applications on most McFarlane figures I own (granted, I only own figures from the last 2 series) is usually a strong point.  Well, as you have seen in the pictures leading to this section, the Arbiter’s paint does not disappoint.  The armor is painted in a dull silver with gold filling the crevices of the carved designs.  The result is stunning.  Under the armor is a scaly grey skin with a black wash applied, enhancing the reptilian look of the Arbiter.  His face has some brown brushed on the wrinkles to add texture and a bright orange eye staring out from under the helmet.  The mouth is painted a fleshy pink with special attention paid to the dirty white teeth.  I do wish they would have washed the armor for depth and maybe painted a darker color in the back of his throat for the same reason.  All paint is neatly applied.

 

Accessories is the low point of the Arbiter.  Nothing exciting, just two energy swords for him to dual wield.  The swords do have some wicked hand armor attachments that look to be an extension of the armor until you try to remove the swords from his hands.  The blades of the swords are painted and made out of soft rubber that comes deformed out of the package.  I know that this has to do with US safety laws, but it would have been really nice to have hard, clear plastic blades that came to a sharp point.  I have already broken one sword in two places.  The first is the actual blade broke off from the hand guard and the superglue line can clearly be seen in the picture.  The second is where the handle meets armored hand guard, the soft plastic tearing while trying to pry the sword from the Arbiter’s deathgrip.