Covenant Grunt (Halo)

If there’s one enemy in the Halo universe that I have a fondness for blowing up, it’s the Covenant Grunt. Sure, sneaking up on an Elite and whacking him with a rifle butt is not without its charm, but for pure entertainment value nothing beats a

plasma grenade stuck to a Covenant Grunt, retreating with his arms raised, screaming in that high-pitched whine, “Grenade!” And I count down in my head, “3…2…1” BOOM! Pure satisfaction.

Joyride Studios has done the source material an extreme justice here, not only making an accurate Grunt but also a very playable action figure.

The Grunt comes in two flavors – the standard issue orange (series 4) and the more “elite” red (series 5). Besides the paint job, there’s no difference between the two (at least as far as I can tell).

There are articulation is used to good effect here and though you might think the massive “tail” would upset the balance of the figure. In some positions this is true, but for the most part, the Grunt is an extremely balanced figure and the Grunt can be kept “fresh” for display and can be posed in a variety of diorama situations.
The sculpt is great. I applaud the amount of detail that is present, particularly with the head, the bony protrusions at the elbows, and the textured skin. The Grunt also seems to be in pretty good scale to the other Halo and Halo 2 figures. At first blush, he seems way bigger than he should be but after doing a little more research (i.e. playing a few more hours of Halo 2) I have to say he looks pretty close to – if not bang on – the scale of the other figures. Joyride has also done a fantastic job of making sure the weapons of the Halo figures are interchangeable and it remains consistent here. The Needler can easily be swapped out for a Plasma pistol and so on. It’s a feature, which leads perfectly to a look at the playability…

The Covenant Grunt has a high degree of playability, by itself and with the Halo figures. Although Joyride has yet to model a plasma grenade, the creative collector can rig something up. The only real risks present to the Grunt is that the accessories can be lost (easily remedied if you own a few other Halo figures) and the spindly elbows look like they might snap under really rough play (however, I didn’t encounter this problem during the play test).

Joyride is doing good stuff with Halo license and the Covenant Grunt is just another great example of this.

- Omni
(February 24, 2005)