She kept me waiting and now she's here. Cindy Aurum arrived at my place in a form of a Play Arts Kai action figure. Cindy is the mechanic of Hammerhead and granddaughter of Cid Aurm from Final Fantasy XV. She's named Cidney in the Japanese version technically making her the first female Cid in Final Fantasy.
"Still, in every rumor, there's a grain of truth.
After all, when it comes to cars, Crown City folk know their business."
~ Cindy Aurum ~
PACKAGING
Front and back of the box. It's hard to see the 30th anniversary sticker because of the ambient light.
The box is coffin-type and the front cover is magnetic as usual. The design is consistent with the first four FFXV PAK figures, which I very like. You can see a big product shot of the Cindy PAK in-front. Wow, the box have a 30th anniversary sticker and a fancy holographic sticker on it. At the back, more product shots of Cindy can be seen and, huh? No previews of any upcoming female figures from FFXV.
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| Front cover opened |
Open the front cover to view the figure, its accessories from the viewing window of the box. You can read some info about Cindy and the game on your left hand side.
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| She's out and ready to fix your ride. |
Packaging includes: Cindy figure, toolbox, monkey wrench, box wrench, gripping right hand, pair of fists, display stand
THE FIGURE
Roberto Ferrari designed her. Seeing PAK figures from Final Fantasy that's not designed by Nomura is refreshing, like FFXII PAKs.
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| Viewing Cindy on four sides. |
Cindy became controversial when she's first revealed because of her hot looks. Her PAK figure is probably the hottest action figure in my PAK collection, de-throning Nomura's Variant Catwoman. She looks very good on all angles.
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| What a purdy girl. |
Her face is really accurate to the in-game model, but her facial expression is neutral. Where's her cheery smile? The sculpt, details and paint application on her hair, cap, face, eyes and lips are really great. She looks really good on camera, especially when you zoom-in close to her face.
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| Cindy's cap with a nicely printed Hammerhead logo. |
Her cap have the Hammerhead logo and it looks clean but the whole cap looks dirty thanks to its application of black paint wash.
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| That's very revealing for a work jacket... and I like it! |
She's wears a very short and revealing yellow work jacket and a pink bra underneath. The jacket is textured, have good paintjob and all the tiny details like the zippers, linings and other metallic parts are accurately painted. The body part of the jacket is a separate piece. Her abs looks really good and the skin have nice paint app and shadings.
The body part of the jacket is a separate piece so I took a look underneath... and yes, this Cindy figure have a full sculpt of her boobs. There's also a huge gap for articulation that the jacket hides.
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| Nicely printed logo. |
The back of the jacket have a large Hammerhead logo. Just like the cap's logo, this one looks also clean.
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| "Hey, my eyes are up here." |
She got her googles as a necklace. It's just a normal-looking rugged goggles. I wish she can wear this on her head. This is a separate piece and it's very soft and flexible.
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| Both arms looks good. |
The arm parts of the jacket looks normal with side pockets for little uniqueness. The texture and paint app is consistent with the rest of the jacket. The black gloves have white linings.
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| Cindy's very short jeans and belt. |
She's wearing a very short jeans shorts. The shorts are really textured and nicely painted. Her underwear is also pink.
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| Cindy's rear view. |
The detailed belt have pockets and pink linings. The pockets have pink laces and a dry cloth and some canister-looking thing. The black paint wash that looks sloppy.
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That's a missed opportunity there, SQEX.
I could have stored the monkey wrench in that small sheath. |
It's disappointing that the pockets isn't hollow so that you can store Cindy's tools in them.
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| The textures make it look leathery. |
I don't know what that is but her legs have some kind of pair of black leathery-looking thigh-level stockings that have a strap for each leg. The skin paint app for both legs looks good.
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| The white boots |
Her heeled boots are white with pink colored straps and outsole lining. It looks like a pair of cowboy boots.
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| Back of the boots |
The back of the boots features a "fire-like" design present on most cowboy boots and this part have it's own texture and it looks leather-like.
some of the shadings and black paint washes applied around the figure's clothing makes Cindy's getup look dirty. Her face and body is clean though.
ACCESSORIES
Cindy got few accessories. She only have her toolbox, monkey wrench and box wrench. For hands: she got a right gripping hand and a pair of fists.
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| Pretty standard amount of stuff. |
The tools may be the right accessories for her, but it's useless unless you find a 1:6 or 1:7 scale vehicle for her to utilize her tools to make it more effective and fun-looking. I intend to find those large scale toy vehicles. If I will add accessories for Cindy, I'll let her have a clipboard and an extra hand with pen to accompany it.
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| The toolbox with stickers. |
This is a functional toolbox, you can open it and check out its compartments. The tray compartments are kinda hard to pull out. It's highly detailed and decorated with well printed stickers. The stickers have names that are familiar if you've played a lot of Final Fantasy games. You can see Pyrefly (FFX), Junon (FFVII), Quine (FFIX?) and "Lugisgu". These names sounds like a car part/equipment brands.
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| Toolbox opened. So many tools! |
Other tools sculpted in the toolbox are well painted too, it's like you can get this tiny tools out from the toolbox but you can't.
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| Storing some tools in the empty compartments. |
The first two compartments of the toolbox are empty, so that you can put the monkey wrench and the socket wrench inside. You can also put some smaller toy accessories there too.
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| That's a lot of sculpted "prop" tools! |
The third compartment have more sculpted tools inside.
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| Monkey wrench |
The monkey wrench is painted metallic silver making it look like a real thing. The adjuster looks like it can move but nope.
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| Socket wrench |
The box wrench looks like a real metal box wrench thanks to its paint app and detail. To make Cindy hold this properly without falling off, you need too put the ends of the wrench on the gripping hand instead of the handle.
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| The extra hands. |
The extra hands are consistent to the default hands when it comes to details and paintwork. This figure needs more extra hands, like another gripping hand for holding the toolbox.
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| Display stand |
The display stand is pretty much useless. PAK Cindy can stand on her own and she's not a fighter that can do lots of stunts and flashy moves, she's just a good mechanic.
ARTICULATIONS
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| "Howdy y'all!" |
This is a PAK action figure so it's obvious that this is going to be very articulated. There's something different with this figure's articulation which I'll talk about in this section. So let's see how the articulation works for this Cindy PAK figure.
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| Looking far away. |
The head can nicely move around but there are some limitations when Cindy's looking up because of her hair and the jacket's collar even though it's soft. You can also see some gap when looking at the sides of the head. No neck articulation.
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| Hello there! |
The chest can turn and lean just fine. No gaps visible because the jacket covers them. The chest even though its made of softer plastic is kinda hard. Sorry pervs, you kinda can't squeeze Cindy's boobs. The jacket is very soft though and makes the arm go across just fine.
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| Posing for the camera. |
The waist works fine as well. Don't force this part too or it may look awkward because of the exposed gaps and bottom waist scuplt that's meant to be hidden in the floating crotch piece.
[left] Wearing her cap.
[right] Thinking deeply.
This is the different part: The shoulders got a normal hinge joint and a long ball-peg. The arms move really well but posing them will reveal the ugly gaps on the shoulders.
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| Sorry for the joint's poor view and wow that's a large gap. |
I'm guessing that they made the joints this way so that people (especially pervs) can't remove the body part of the jacket. If they used ball-hinges here, the jacket can be removed easily.
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| The gripping hand can be used as a thumbs up hand gesture. |
The bicep swivel will get the pink linings misaligned and the right bicep swivel looks loose and might detach. Elbows have nice movement. The wrist ball-hinges doesn't look bad, they're kinda tucked in the jacket's cuffs but it limits the hand movement a bit
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| Holding the monkey wrench, the tough chick way. |
The legs can raise up pretty good forward and to the side and they can move to the back a bit. Cindy can do kicks and splits. It's easy for her to sit down too.
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| You can say in this pic that Cindy is going to fend off some hooligans or some varmints. |
The thigh swivel is located below the strap of the leather leggings and it's placing is great. This gives the legs more movement range.
[left] Holding the toolbox. (using the gripping hand and it's a very loose grip)
[right] Cindy's tired.
Instead of double-hinges, the knees are ball-hinged. I think that's a good choice, these looks good if the character have slim and long legs and Cindy have those. The downside is that it got a pretty limited movement range than the double-hinged knees.
[left] pulling out her box wrench.
[right] Getting the monkey wrench from the toolbox.
The ankle ball-hinges moves really good making the feet move realistically meaning no extreme feet pointing up and down. Yes, both feet can pivot. No toe hinges.
SCALING
Let's see how the scale/height of this Cindy PAK figure compare with other PAK figures.
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I checked FFXV again to confirm their height with each other.
Cindy's scaling with Noctis is accurate. |
Cindy is the smallest compared to
Noctis (FFXV),
Gabranth (FFXII) and
Fran (FFXII). I think the scaling between them is good.
QUALITY ISSUES
Other than the sloppy paint wash on the belt and the cap. There are some tiny paint drops and sticks around the figure. But here's a big problem on one of Cindy's accessories.
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| Dang it! |
The toolbox's hinge is kinda fragile. I tried to open the lid a bit wider and one hinge snapped off the from the tab on the lid when I almost reached approx. 100 degrees. It gave me a scare because it's a loud snap but thankfully the hinge is still working and just requires a careful application of superglue to re-attach it.
CONCLUSION
It's nice to add another colorful PAK figure in the collection. Cindy is great as a PAK figure but she barely passes on the accessories section. Sure she looks good and purdy just standing around but she requires something to work on with her tools, like a vehicle. That will make her look much better and presentable in the collection. For the price, it think it must be a bit cheaper. Get this girl quick, she's going to be a best seller especially if you plan to complete your FFXV PAK collection.
Cheers and Happy Collecting!
Great article. Thank You
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