McFarlane was lucky enough to have the license to produce Halo action figures for several years. In that time they made several Master Chief figures. McFarlane is known for highly detailed sculpts and Master Chief got the full treatment of that.
Chief was made with various armor sets from the lore of Halo. The quality of the sculpt really shows too. McFarlane did an AMAZING job!
In chronological order from lore.
Here is the armor from Halo the mini series Forward Unto Dawn. The piece you see to the bottom right was part of a Build-A-Emblem series. Once you had all the pieces you could assemble them to make the Bungie version of the UNSC emblem.
The same figure was used for a 3-pack of Blue team from Halo Legends.
Heh, I always though it was funny that they gave Kelly heels… Anyway, this set is fantaztic and a look at early blue team.
Halo 2 Chief:
McFarlane made an armored version of Chief from each game. This Chief is from Halo 2, more speicifclaly it was made for Halo 2 Anniversary.
Halo 3 Chief:
This Master Chief was part of a two-pack that also included Douglas from Red team. It was VERY rare to get a flamethrower. This was one of those exceptoins. Chief just looks like a badd ass here, am I right?
There was also a single pack version:
And yet another:
Yep, Chief got at least 3 packaged versions of himself from McFarlane and people ate it up! This Chief included an undeployed bubble shiled generator and the classic two-tubed rocket launcher.
Before we move on to the 343 era of Master Chief, I need to make specific note of the Evolution of Master Chief 3-pack.
This set is the first and it I recall ONLY one to have a McFarlane Halo CE Master Chief. Click on the image. YOu’ll see that the CE version is modeled after the low-polygon count of Chief from the game. If you don’t own ANY McFarlane Master Chief figures, THIS is the set to have!!
Halo 4 Master Chief:
Chief got a HUGE armor update in Halo 4 and McFarlane was right there to provide we fans with that version of the armor. At this point, McFarlane had slightly changed the scale of their figures to be a little larger. So if you line up the McF Chief figures this one is noticeably bigger than the older ones.He even got a Cryo tube! CHILLY!
There was even a figure made from the E3 trailer for Halo 5. Note the cracked visor. Under the cloak was the same Halo 4 figure. The only difference was again that cracked visor. Even though the cloaked version ended up being a bust lore-wise, it’s still cool to have this very unique figure. Oh and the cloak is molded plastic. Yes, it’s removeable.
And finally Halo 5’s Chief:
There isn’t much difference between this and the Halo 4 Chief figures, with the exception that the chest armor no longer has the blast shots on it.
SO while McFarlane no longer has the license for Halo action figures, they did leave quite a legacy of well sculpted, highly articulate figures. I have to admit, I LOVED collecting these. Being able to have a pseudo real-life version of Chief in my hands is just plain COOL. Well, from a geek’s perspective, of which I count myself one of.
-Sal