WWE Elite 82 Finn Balor figure review
Finn Balor was criminally underutilized on the “main roster” so I was thrilled when he made his return to NXT and promptly became a featured player. Balor’s NXT comeback hasn’t disappointed as he’s been in some great matches including this current feud/rivalry with Kyle O’Reilly and Pete Dunne.
For whatever reason I hadn’t gotten a straight up Finn Balor figure. I grabbed the first Demon Elite, but was resigned to needing to cobble together an ideal Balor that could double for a Prince Devitt. Mattel decided it’d been long enough and released a modern NXT Balor and since I’ve enjoyed his run so much I definitely needed to get this one. Let’s see if Mattel didn’t miss with this shot at The Prince.
Packaging: Series 82 features a slight change from the 2020 packaging with a more prominent white backdrop instead of red.
There’s two images — one a portrait shot of Balor lifting up his jacket and the other an in-action shot.
The bio is solid with a good breakdown of his major accomplishments and a bio that foreshadows Balor’s pending reign on the NXT landscape.
Likeness: A lot of the Balor figures have featured him smiling and grinning in keeping with the goofy character he’d become on RAW. One of the major selling points with this figure was the more intense, focused head sculpt.
Balor continually switches up his look in NXT going from a close cut hairstyle, clean shaven to a thick beard. Mattel could probably crank out more Balor figures from his various looks.
This one is a tremendous sculpt with the slightly sunken eyes, nose and the thick beard. It’s probably not as often as Mattel would like, but this is a case where the figure matches up incredibly well with the packaging art.
Balor is a basic tights guy so his attire isn’t that special, but Mattel made sure that this figure has the ripped torso fitting Balor’s physique.
His default hands are the appropriate gun shot hands, which is perfect for a Devitt figure as well.
Scale: Balor is 5’11” putting him just a bit shorter than rivals O’Reilly and Adam Cole at 6′ and the same height as Bobby Fish and taller than the 5’10” Johnny Gargano. He’s a bit taller than he should be, but not by an egregious amount.
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Paint: Balor doesn’t have an especially tricky attire with just the logo on the back of his tights, a long black sleeved left arm and blue accents on the boots.
Naturally all of that is clean, but the real beauty with the paintjob is the precision work on the facial hair and hairline, which has evolved to the point now that it has the uneven nature of actual facial hair. Mattel has really stepped up its work in this category as the attires have long been on point.
Articulation: Hopefully by the time the next Balor figure gets released he can get the double-jointed elbows that are going to become part of the Elite line going forward.
For now the figure has relatively solid articulation and the smaller kneepads allow for a more convincing coup de grâce as his knees can raise higher.
Balor is definitely going to benefit from having an NXT style Ultimate Edition figure though.
Finn Balor has:
- neck
- bicep
- ball-jointed shoulders
- elbows
- wrists
- wrist hinge
- torso
- waist
- hips
- thighs
- knees (double-jointed)
- ankles
Accessories: With some of the other figures it doesn’t seem like adding the leather jacket would be too much of an added cost, but I’m going to assume the Lawler cloak and Rob Gronkowski’s outfit ate into the budget.
The Prince does come with a cloth T-shirt featuring his new NXT comeback logo. Mattel gave Balor some useful additional hands from the coup de grace spread hands and open clutching hands.
These aren’t enclosed enough to hold an object however. You can really appreciate the new left hand tattoo in a way that’s basically impossible during a normal NXT broadcast.
While I have one, in lieu of the jacket giving Finn the NXT title would have been another useful accessory.
Worth it? I got him for $20 and he seems like the main draw in this wave along with Keith Lee as they rarely stay at the retail price. The leather jacket would have made this an easy full $20 worthy figure as the T-shirts and two additional sets of hands seems a bit sparse.
Rating: 9.5 out of 10
This is a very strong modern era Finn figure that’s only slightly held down by the lack of one more big accessory.
Where to get it? I got Balor from Amazon as I haven’t seen Elite 82 in stores yet.