Review of Cyborg - Justice League
Sixth Scale Action Figure

Introduction

It's taken a long, long time, but I finally have a complete set of Justice League members in sixth scale from Hot Toys. Oh, we got plenty of versions of Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. We even got a couple of Aquaman, and the Flash didn't get left out. But Cyborg was teased years ago, and actually first up for pre-order almost two years ago. My Special Edition version finally shipped from Sideshow this last week, and the team is complete!

As I said, the version I'm checking out tonight was the exclusive that included one additional accessory - I'll discuss it when I get to that section. This figure cost $315 originally, and you can still order it over at the Sideshow site. The regular edition also costs $315.

Packaging - ***1/2
The box is the usual, made from sturdy cardboard and using multiple trays and lots of plastic wrap to protect the figure and accessories. It's all collector friendly, and there's no reason to keep this guy locked in his box. In fact, keeping figures in their packages is bad for them - get them out and on the shelf.

Sculpting - ***1/2
Regular readers know there's really three keys to my Sculpting assessments - accuracy, realism, and expression.

Hot Toys sculpts always do great when it comes to realism. Here, the skin and hair texture are excellent, and the plastic armor and mechanics have the sharp edges and fine detail of real metal. There's nothing here that looks toy-like, or unrealistic.

When it comes to the emotive aspect of the portrait, they went with a rather stoic, serious expression, but didn't get too dynamic. He's looking slightly upward, and while this expression works with a good number of poses, it does border on the mannequin. It's not bad, but it could use a little more life.

Finally, there's the one area where they do have some trouble at times - likeness or accuracy. Is this Ray Fisher as he looked in the film? Sometimes it's hard to separate the likeness from the realism. The portrait can be so realistic that it overrides any minor likeness issues. But they can still be there.

For example, I'm not seeing Fisher here...exactly. It's close, and certainly close enough for current standards, but there are a few spots that need work. The nose in particular seems off to me, especially from certain angles.

Still, it's a solid outing, and he'll look great next to the rest of the League. He stands just over 12 1/2" tall, giving him a little extra in the display.

Paint - ****
Hot Toys does their usual bang up job on the paint operations. The skin tone is a little dark, but it's nicely speckled at the micro level to create the sort of natural variation that makes the final result so realistic. The one human eye looks terrific, with the glassy, wet appearance and an even setting. I don't love the hairline, but it's not terrible, and the work on the hair is quite nice.

The other big paint area is the mechanics of the body of course, and here we get some speckling and variation similar to the movie. The gloss silver adds to the realistic appearance of the 'metal' body parts, and some shading allows the details to pop. Even the translucent areas, such as the interior chest, work well with the light up effects.

Articulation - ****
The best surprise here is the terrific design of the articulation. We should have assumed that would be true - Hot Toys has done an amazing job with their various Iron Man releases - but I was still quite shocked at the effort that went into the engineering.

Of course he has the ball jointed neck, and with no long hair or collar pieces to get in the way, you can get plenty of tilt and lean. That means you can add some nice personality to most poses.

The shoulders - butterfly style - work great with the double pin elbows and wrists to create natural arm poses, and the two additional arms he comes with can be attached to his back. At that attachment you get ball joints, and there's two more 'elbows' as well as a wrist moving up the arm. You can really get some cool poses with this extra set of limbs.

Also helping out his regular arms - the chest and shoulder plating moves. The chest pieces only move a little, but the shoulder pads are designed to get out of the way for almost any arm pose.

The torso doesn't crunch, but you do get a smidge of turn and tilt. It's at least enough to break up the too straight lines in the upper body.

The ball hips, cut thighs, pin kness, ball ankles, and half pin foot joints work terrific, allowing for natural looking short to deep stances. The more I played around with this guy, the more impressed I was with the level of articulation and how useful it is.

Accessories - ****
This guy is loaded up in a major way, but the exclusive does include one extra accessory the regular release does not have.

That's the extra head, with the complete mask over the face. These heads swap easily, and both have the light up right eye. An extra head always goes a long way with my Accessory scores, and this one looks great.

He comes wearing a pair of sculpted pose hands, and there's an extra set of fists, as well as a set with some funky additional fingers. I had a little more trouble swapping hands this time, but if you soften the hands up a bit first, it worked fine. It's worth noting that you can swap these hands onto the arms on the back of the figure as well.

The forearms can be removed and replaced with blasters. Both of these light up brightly. There's a rocket launcher that can be swapped onto one of these plasma blasters as well.

He comes with a shield that can snap on the wrists pegs instead of a hand. I managed to break a wrist peg trying to figure this thing out - they include a couple extras just in case - but once I did, it worked great.

There are six additional rocket thruster effects, three for each side. Follow the instructions for swapping these in for flying poses.

To obtain those flying poses, there's a large display stand and one of the metal bendable support rods.

Light Feature - ***
You know I've complained plenty about the light features on Hot Toys figures. While some of them really add to the figure, too often they are almost impossible to work with, and not something you'll use on the shelf.

Here we get a whole bunch. On the regular head, both the eye and the forehead light up brightly. The torso glows read, and both of the plasma cannons have a bright blue LED. Finally, that extra head you got with the exclusive has a glowing red eye.

Batteries are included, and I had no problem inserting them in the five different compartments. But like too many Hot Toys light features, you have to remove pieces of the armor to get to the switches, making it extremely unlikely that you'll show off the lights to any visitors.

Outfit - N/A
This is one of those cases where a sixth scale figure has no cloth costume, making this category not particularly applicable.

Fun Factor - ****
Thanks to the terrific design of the articulation, you'll be able to pose and repose this guy over time plenty of different ways. While getting to each of the individual light switches is a huge pain, when you do turn them on they look terrific.

Value - *1/2
Here's where it gets a bit ugly. This guy was $315, and when you add in tax and shipping, he was over $350. Damn, that's a lot. Yea, it's a great figure, but there's no die cast, and he's rivaling their highest cost figures right now. I can appreciate the level of detail in the mechanical body, but it's still going to be a hard sell for most folks.

Usually the regular edition is a few bucks cheaper than the exclusive, but that's not the case here, making the score in this category for the standard release even worse.

Things to Watch Out For -
Not much. As I said, I broke one of the wrist pegs messing with the shield. You have to push it on straight until the peg locks in place. Once I figured that out, swapping wasn't hard.

Overall - ***1/2
Much like both cuts of the movie, I went in with pretty low expectations, hoping they'd manage to finish up the JL without giving us another statue masquerading as an action figure. Yea, I'm looking at you Aquaman.

It was a very welcome surprise to see how much time and effort went into this release, and the work on the articulation is particularly nice. He also comes with plenty of extras, and while turning on the lights is time consuming, they do look terrific once illuminated.

It's really only the price that holds this guy back. He looks great on the shelf with the rest of the gang, and is one of the very rare occasions when Hot Toys actually finished up a group properly. Since the version without the extra head is the same price, it makes absolutely no sense to not go with the exclusive edition.

Score Recap (out of ****):
Packaging - ***1/2
Sculpting - ***1/2
Paint - ****
Articulation - ****
Accessories - ****
Light Feature - ***
Fun Factor - ****
Value - *1/2
Overall - ***1/2

Where to Buy 
This special edition version with the masked head is still available through Sideshow for $315. Online options include these site sponsors:

- or you can search ebay for a deal.

Related Links -
With the release of Cyborg, we have a full Hot Toys Justice League, including Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman, and Flash.

You should also hit the Search Reviews page, in case any other applicable reviews were done after this one was published.

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