Spinmaster The Shapes Collection Horizon Forbidden West Varl
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00:00I just need to bury it for a while Aloy, but only for a while. Here's your
00:04looking new Spin Master PlayStation The Shades Collection Horizon Forbidden West
00:07VARL.
00:20Discover the strength of the Nora tribe with the official VARL six-inch figure
00:23from The Shades Collection. Pick up this loyal warrior crafted with over 138
00:27distinctive finishes and textures by Daniel Salas-Bennett and painted by
00:31Dun Jin Chow. This meticulously detailed figure features VARL's warrior braids
00:35and weathered gear with over 32 points of articulation for dynamic posing.
00:38Accessories include two times handsets for various grips and a formidable axe
00:43ready for challenge. Showcase this VARL figure on your shelf in your collection
00:46today. He may be the son of a warchief but when it comes to figures VARL is at
00:50the front of the line. Just before of course we get a closer look at the new
00:53Shapes Collection Horizon Forbidden West VARL, I'd like to thank if I can the folks
00:57over at Spin Master who were kind enough to provide this sample. According to many
01:00online sites VARL is actually slated to drop in October 2024. Anybody that's
01:05currently looking at their calendar will know right now that we're actually well
01:08into October so the figure listing should be showing up anytime now. The
01:12figure though of VARL is gonna stand at almost six inches in height. He's really
01:16only just a few hairs short of that and that works out to be a figure that's
01:19about 15 centimeters tall. I suppose in hindsight we probably should have looked
01:23at Horizon Forbidden West Aloy first but the review of that figure will be coming
01:27up shortly. In the meantime though let's bring in the things we've already had a
01:30look at from the Shapes Collection. First of all here's what the figure looks like
01:32along with the God of Wars Kratos and also as well following up that review we
01:36also looked at his son Atreus. VARL isn't though as big as Kratos but he certainly
01:41is a little bit bigger than Atreus here. Not a whole lot to cover when it comes
01:44to VARL's accessories. The figure only comes included with a pair of swappable
01:47hands and his trusty axe. The thing about his hands though is that you'll see on
01:50one side he the figure does have a gripping hand and then on the other side
01:53the figure does have a closed fist. If you wanted to have the mirror flip to
01:57one another then the figure does also come in clue with a gripping hand that's
02:00gonna go on this side right and he's also coming through with a closed fist
02:03that's gonna go on this side. I would probably rather have, especially
02:07considering that he has the means to hold his axe, probably have the figure
02:10holding the axe with both of these hands. So for that let's actually just pick up
02:14VARL here. We'll wiggle the hand and remove it from the post. Be careful,
02:18careful, careful. The one thing I will say though about the post, and I've changed
02:23these only a couple of times, is that the posts become a little stubborn the first
02:26time you do it. Just primarily because the posts are so long. I feel like they
02:30probably could have easily used shorter posts but I'm sure there must have been
02:33a method to the madness. We're just gonna plug that back in place. There we go. And
02:37now VARL has, instead of one punching fist, now he has two gripping hands. So of
02:41course to hold his axe. Speaking of his axe, that is the only other included
02:44accessory that has the figure with it. The figure does come included
02:48with his axe. The axe is made of fairly soft plastic. You probably already
02:52noticed right now that there's a hole right through the handle. This actually
02:55can attach on the back of his fur pelt. I'll show you guys how that works in a
02:58second. The blade does look pretty mean, like it could inflict some serious
03:02damage. I think for what it is, it's nicely painted here. Of course you got
03:05the blade done here in a lighter silver. You got the roping there in a more
03:08lighter brown. Some brown making down basically that the appearance all the
03:11way down to the end of the handle. And of course you got little bands of darker
03:14brown added in there as well. You can take the axe and you can obviously fit
03:18this into his hands. And he does have a bend in his elbow and because the bend
03:22of the elbow is the way that it is, you could technically... let me just get his
03:25fingers pried a little bit away from themselves... you can get him really to
03:28hold the axe in both his hands. Might even in fact be even a little bit easier
03:32if I get him to hold it on this side first. Honestly the only thing that's
03:36really getting in the way of things is his thumb. This thumb of his will always
03:40be getting in the way. And you might even find yourself a couple of times having
03:43to go back and correct the thumb. With the thumb hopefully out of the way. Get
03:47out of the way thumb. Maybe what we'll do is slide it down this way. That way I don't
03:50even have to worry about the thumb at all. So plug it in on one side and
03:54then basically just attach the hand to the other side. There we go.
03:57Now you've got Varl holding the axe with both of his hands. You
04:01could probably do a little bit more of an interesting pose than what I've got
04:03going on right now. Let's just correct his head. There we go. What you can also
04:07do too, as I already mentioned, is if you want to remove the axe altogether, there's
04:11a hole right here and on the back of his pelt there's a peg right here. It's
04:16actually kind of hard to make out the peg. In fact my finger is covering over
04:20top of it. But the peg you basically just take the axe and attach it on like that.
04:25And he holds it fairly well. It seems also be the case that you could
04:29probably remove his cape and remove the fur pelt. We're going to talk a little
04:32bit more about that in a moment. Let's just take for right now at least the axe.
04:34We'll put it off to the side. From the head sculpt standpoint, I
04:38think it looks a lot like Varl from the game. Of course he does have the marking
04:42there of the blue on the side of his face. Nicely painted in beard and the way
04:45they've also painted his hair is nicely done there as well. I don't think I would
04:49have any necessarily changes I would make to the character. I think it looks a
04:52fair bit like him as well. Now like I said he is wearing a pelt. The pelt for
04:56all intensive purposes looks like it can be removable. He does also have this
05:00stand-alone cape that only sticks on one side of his body. If you look at
05:04underneath the pelt, there is a peg that's essentially taking the cape and
05:08attaching it to his torso. If you don't like the cape, you can remove it
05:11altogether just in case of just removing it. I'm not really sure why I would
05:15remove it because I mean now I have to find a place to put this cape. But at
05:18least if you wanted to, you could take this off and it's made of a fairly soft
05:21material. For all intensive purposes, it also seems like you'd be able to remove
05:25his torso, his pelt altogether as well. It looks like it's probably been glued
05:29here, but I feel like you might be able to fit this over top of his head. Maybe
05:34even in fact pop the head off first. Slide this all the way off. I mean really
05:38all once you take this off, this is essentially what you'd be looking at
05:41underneath. Some would say that's not as exciting. I mean with all the amount of
05:45time and care that they spent to paint many of the layers of paint, I feel like
05:50I would rather honestly leave the pelt on. But I'm only kind of removing it
05:53partially to show you that it is removable on the figure if you want. Just
05:57knowing the headache of what it would be to get this back over top of his body,
06:00I'm actually gonna just leave the pelt where I left it, right where it belongs.
06:04I'm just gonna fit that back over top of his body. And while we're at it, you know
06:07what? I'll leave the cape off just because it's gonna be a little bit
06:10easier looking at the figure's articulation. Like looking at his head
06:13sculpt, really happy with that. Looking at the way they paint the pelt, I like the
06:16way it looks. They've done that as well. Some nice additional whites been added
06:19there as well. I like that they've added a little brushing. There's a lot of
06:23layers of paint. If anything could be said really for the shapes collection
06:25that we're getting from Spin Master, time has really been afforded with a lot
06:29of paint applications. I don't think you would really be looking at characters
06:31like this and thinking to yourself, wow, they really skimped on paints. There's
06:35everything. Quarters, territories that normally need not need be covered. They
06:39have definitely gone in there and painted everything. Now unfortunately,
06:42here's some of the disappointing things. The figure does have, first of all, a
06:45sheathed sword. The sword is not removable. The sword is permanently molded to the
06:49sheath. It's only there more for decorations. He does also have arrows on
06:53a quiver on the other side of his body. Again, you can't remove them.
06:56Technically though, Varl doesn't come included with a bow, so there's really no
07:00real need then to obviously start to remove arrows. But those are basically
07:03there for decoration more than anything else. These are attached by only thin
07:07strands of plastic. You can see how they only attach to the top of his belt. This
07:10gets afforded at least two strips of plastic. This only gets actually
07:13one, so you want to be careful of those. A nice color though of the red. We got the
07:17green there for the legs. Got some additional white added there for the
07:20fronts of his boots. Very nicely painted figure all around. Even if you're not as
07:24much familiar with Horizon from Forbidden West, you have to certainly say
07:28though there's a lot of time and patience that went into painting this
07:30guy carefully. Now for the figure's articulation, we're gonna go back to the
07:34head sculpt here of Varl, which again I'm really really impressed with. Head's gonna
07:38be on a ball joint. Now because he has these pelts on either side, the shoulders
07:42don't get really in the way of things at all when it comes to rotating his head.
07:45In fact, easily you can move his head down and up, back and forth. In addition
07:49to just the ball joint we're looking at alone for his head, Varl also has a
07:53secondary ball joint. It's right there. You can't see because my finger's in the
07:57way. Sorry, get my finger out of the way. It's a ball joint actually at the base of the
08:00neck, so you can also move it there as well. The upper torso is also going to be
08:04on a ball joint. Whether you decide to keep the pelts in place or you want to
08:07remove them, it doesn't seem to affect either way rotating his torso. The only
08:11thing I did do though obviously is I left the cape off. I don't think it
08:14necessarily would have impeded the articulation. In fact, if you want to put
08:17it back onto his body, just plug that onto the peg. There we go. Super easy too.
08:22One of my worries was that this was gonna be a very thin plastic and
08:26that kind of soft plastic, you know, of course when you push down on it, it would
08:28just bend it down. No, it actually seems that they've used a hard enough plastic.
08:32So if you want to remove the cape, putting the cape on is just as easy as
08:35taking it off. With the cape there in place, yeah, you can see it doesn't do
08:39anything at all to get in the way of his torso articulation. As for his arms, they
08:43also do rotate all the way around. Ever so often though, you might find himself
08:46clipping the side of his quiver or also the sheath of his sword. Again, you can
08:50also take his arms, you can bring them out at 90 degrees. The figure does have
08:56not necessarily a swivel here in his bicep. I feel like that could have been
08:59an ideal place to accommodate some additional articulation. Actually, there is.
09:02There is some articulation. I keep kind of getting confused with this section of
09:05his arm. So there's a swivel in his bicep, there's then a hinge in his elbow, and
09:09then right here where there's the wrappings of his forearms, that also
09:13rotates as well. So there is one, there's two, and then there's an elbow hinge in
09:17between. And of course the hands do rotate all the way around. As for his
09:21legs, just getting things out of the way of the quiver, you can split the legs
09:24easily enough. Even though he's got the skirting there on the sides, the skirting
09:28is actually made of softer plastic. So when it comes to splitting his legs, you
09:31shouldn't have too much of an issue. Although maybe with this side you might
09:34have a little more of an issue, just because kind of things kind of get in
09:37the way of things like his sheath, like the little skirt that he has on the
09:40side, might get a little bit more in the way of things. You can also bring his
09:43legs forward, you can bring his legs back. There is a swivel three cores of the way
09:47up Varro's leg. There's also as well a single hinge in his knee. Technically it
09:52is really a double hinge. The hardest thing about this though, is even though
09:54there's a hinge and a hinge here, even if you have him in a running pose like
09:58this, you would definitely need to use yourself a display stand, because the
10:01figure unfortunately will not balance well on his own. Like though the way
10:04they've actually hidden the joints. I mean you more so see the joint right
10:09here for the top of the hinge of his knee. You actually don't really usually
10:12see the one that's down below here, because it's being covered over by this
10:14knee guard. There's no swivel here. While I made the mistake of saying there was no
10:19swivel at the top of the bicep, there is actually no swivel down below here for
10:22the boots, but again they're nicely molded and painted. He has ankle pivot
10:26back and forth. He has ankle rocker also there as well, and the figure does also
10:30have pegs in the bottoms of his feet. The only thing I would say, and this is one
10:33thing I did mention when we looked at both Kratos and Atreus, is I do wish
10:36the figure line could have come included with display stands. I think it certainly
10:39would have a nice touch, considering really when you look at the accessory
10:42count for Varl, his accessory count is rather low, with only really again two
10:46swappable hands, and of course his trusty axe over off to the side here. I think
10:50really they could have afforded the amount of budget to go into making
10:53display stands for these characters. Just think of you, if you will, like a
10:56rectangular or even a circular display. I think probably circular display stands
11:00probably make the most sense, and then just have of course the shapes
11:02collection across the top. It didn't necessarily have to be specific to the
11:06game, so it didn't have to say Horizon Forbidden West. I think if anything, it
11:10probably could have just said the shapes collection, and have each one of the
11:12characters all being respected, all kind of being within that same toy line, by
11:16having all the same unique display stands that are only exclusive to
11:20them. Again, bringing back in the other characters that we had a look at, God of
11:24Wars Kratos, and of course we also had a look at his son Atreus. We are also
11:28going to be continuing on, maybe not in the upcoming review, but another
11:32character that does make appearance in the Horizon Forbidden West is Aloy.
11:36Aloy, we're gonna be looking at her as well in an upcoming review. Again, I
11:40really like the look of this line as a whole. You can really see there's a lot
11:43of time and care that went into painting of these. Well over a hundred paint
11:48applications. You can probably see a lot more of it, I think, being exhibited here
11:52on VARL. Of course, with the accommodations of the green, the beige,
11:55the browns are all really nice layered effects that they've added on top of it,
11:58replicating the costume that he has in the game. So it seems that October 2024
12:03is the magic month for many of these shapes dropping online. It's not to say
12:07though that you couldn't find these in stores, but if you're one that
12:09specifically likes to order your stuff from, say, Entertainment Earth.
12:12Entertainment Earth, for example, does have pre-order listings right now of
12:16Horizon Forbidden West VARL. The figure is going to be going for $29.99, which
12:20seems to be the same asking price as all the other shapes collection, no matter
12:23the shape or size. Kratos was $29 and also his son Atreus. Now we'll say from
12:28an accessory standpoint, VARL maybe comes up a little bit short, as he only
12:32comes included with a pair of swappable hands, and of course he comes included
12:35with his axe. The axe does have at least some storage space on the back of his
12:38fur pelt, so if you don't want it necessarily in his hands, not sure really
12:42why you wouldn't, you can at least attach it somewhere else. As shown in this
12:45review, you could remove the cape if you want to. You can also remove his shoulder
12:49pads altogether if you want to, but I think it adds to the charm of the
12:52character. And really, once you remove them, what are you really going to be
12:55doing with them anyways? Putting them away in a bag with the extra fist that
12:58you're not using? That's nonsense. Get a chance for this figure to really shine
13:02with all the layers of paint applications that Spin Master has
13:05afforded the shapes collection so far. As already mentioned, we will be looking at
13:09Aloy, also from Horizon Forbidden West, that will be coming up in an upcoming
13:12review. But in the meantime though, I'd like to thank the folks over at Spin
13:16Master that provided this sample of the brand new PlayStation The Shapes
13:19Collection Horizon Forbidden West VARL, Nora Valiant Armor. What do you guys
13:25think of this figure? Let me know down below in the comment section. Have you
13:27guys also ever played Horizon Forbidden West? Let me know down below in the
13:30comment section. If you guys also enjoyed this video, do it a solo. Throw
13:34it a like. You guys want to stick around for more so? I hope so. And certainly make
13:37sure you hit that subscribe, turn on that bell, but the most important thing is
13:40that you're coming back to this channel. Whatever we aren't looking at when it
13:43comes to the Shapes Collection, we will be more than making up for it with other
13:46videos that are always coming here on a regular basis. So making sure that you're
13:50coming back, checking back regularly to see what the guy behind the camera is
13:53always doing. As always, thanks for watching. See you guys next time.