I got the Broken Tusk/Machiko/Hornhead wave in the mail yesterday, they're pretty cool.
I think I like Broken Tusk the best out of the three. I find it funny how they repurposed a lot of the parts they used for the Kenner Stalker Predator remake - unless that was the plan from the beginning?
Good move on NECA for making the spear come apart in the middle - they should do that for all of their spears moving forward, because I've got a lot of bent/broken spears kicking around that likely could have been avoided if they came apart in the middle.
He has a non-standard right gauntlet but I can't place if it's unique to him or if it's a reused part from another figure.
I think I like Hornhead second-best - his armor design is really sleek and unique, it looks "futuristic" but in a different way from the P2 Lost/Borg Predator. It's not tech-y, it's more streamlined and the silver color makes it look really good.
The unmasked head also looks really good, he's unique-looking and he's painted well.
THAT SAID, for the life of me I cannot get him to wear his mask properly. It's made of a pretty soft plastic and it seems to be a bit too narrow for his face, and you'd think that it'd hook around his horns and stay securely but it just... doesn't. It only stays on his face if I really force it on there and then don't touch him, because the slightest jostle will make it fall off.
It doesn't help that my Hornhead keeps tipping backward and I'm not sure why. Visually he doesn't seem like he should be that back-heavy, but he tips over anyway. He doesn't really have useful ankle articulation because of his unique armor, which doesn't help things.
Machiko is a mixed bag for me. Like, the very notion of having a Machiko figure is cool, and on the surface her sculpting and painting is really good and she looks great, but her joints on mine are really tight and I'm really afraid that I'm going to break something because the joints are so skinny. She's got double-joined knees for some reason, but the knees only bend to 90 degrees because she's got these sculpted-on kneepad-straps that keep her knees from bending any further. Like, the second knee joint is there, you just can't use it. On mine, the shoulder cannon was pointing backwards right out of the packaging, and it's so small that I was really concerned that I would warp it or snap it off when turning it around to face forward. Likewise, she's got teeny tiny wristblades that can extend and retract, but they're so small and thin that I'm afraid I'm going to break them if I mess with them.
She has an alternate right hand for cradling the rifle, and I'm concerned that swapping the hands is going to break something since they're so small. Likewise, I'm going to have to pry open the fingers on her left hand in order to hold the rifle, and that feels dicey as well. On that note, I didn't realize that she was left-handed in the comic but the packaging artwork on the back shows that yep, she's a lefty.
My biggest complaint is that she just... can't wear her mask. If you fit it under her hair and flush against her chin, it makes it look like she's perpetually looking down and you can tell it's not lining up with her eyes, and precariously fitting it on the "front" of her face just kinda looks goofy. NECA really should have done a masked/unmasked head for this one.
Although I'm not sure what extra stuff they could toss in such a pack, I wouldn't be surprised if we got an "ultimate" two-pack set for Machiko/Broken Tusk that had masked/unmasked heads and the like.
