Tag Archives: skeleton warriors

FIGURA OBSCURA The Mouse King- SpartanNerd Review

by

0

Check out the video version of this review here.

NOTE: There is a secret item in this box that I review here. I placed that part of the review at the very bottom after the rating to prevent anyone from getting this spoiled.

This is my third item from this Four Horsemen Studios line after Figura Obscura Father Christmas, and Figura Obscura Sun Wu Kong the Monkey King. The FH just keep cranking out the hits. I thought for sure we would get a Ghost of Christmas Present, which would probably be an Ogre sized Santa. BUT…two years ago when the Father Christmas just came out, I’m pretty sure I heard Eric Treadaway saying something about the Mouse King. Looks like that came true!

I got an e-mail, of course, that featured some Christmas ornaments and presents on Black Friday. I mentioned it to the Spartan Wife. I spoke with the kids about it. I wondered what it would be, and would I get it. I passed on the Ghost of Christmas Past last year. She’s a pretty figure, and very Christmas. But there just isn’t much use for her in my collection in any alternate way besides some kind of bride. She is an unnaturally pale female under that dress, so I don’t have any further use for her parts. (Turns out the FH re-used the body for a figure of Nymph/Churl that hasn’t been released yet. This mixes parts of Ghost of Christmas Past with parts of Belualyth.)

But when I saw the Mouse King, I knew I had to get it. And it was a small window. In fact, the “All In” Package, that I got for an additional $15 that contains a coffee cup, a Christmas card, and a Fig-pin did sell out by 10:30. So I made the best call.

It’s true I have seen the Nutcracker ballet as well as experienced this as concert music several times. But I am not a Nutcracker Super fan. I like it OK, but Ballet isn’t my jam. I usually use the Sugar Plum Fairies theme when I play NES Tetris. And truly, besides some Trans Siberian Orchestra, that is my fandom for this work. Romantic Era Russian Nationalist classical music isn’t really my preference. (I say Beethoven was the greatest, you know 30-50 years earlier and German). But this figure…the presentation of the Mouse King as a seven-headed villain. This was too good to pass up.

I unboxed this on film, so please watch the video to see the rundown of this terrific box. But here are some more details.

PACKAGING

The packaging works very similar to what we got with Father Christmas and The Monkey King. There is an enclosing “book” capping over the box. This makes for collector friendly packaging and adds worth the the figure for displaying.

The front outside image on the capper gives us a good comic image of the figure, with gold foil details. As you wrap around the box you can see a whole Christmas setting where the battle between the Mouse King and the Nutcracker would take place.

The capper has a backdrop on the other side, giving us a scene inside a grandfather clock. Apparently the Mouse King’s lair. He has a little throne made from a compact mirror and some makeup items. There are books, some kind of snake or cat skull, giving us some context of some of the king’s past victories maybe, and an oil lamp.

Removing the capper from the box reveals the inside box.

On the inside box you have a picture of the Nutcracker and some lady I don’t remember. I’m pretty sure she isn’t the girl having the dream, as that is a child. So I don’t know who this is. One thing about the Four Horsemen showing us this picture…it is taking away some of the mystery of how they might design a Nutcracker to pit against the Mouse King in the future. On the other hand, Nutcrackers are easy to come by, especially in this size and scale, while Mouse Kings are usually missing in action. (Other fantasy villains for Christmas, right? Krampus. The Grinch. Jack Skellington.)

The back has information about the Mouse King. I haven’t read it, I confess. (There is also a booklet inside that I only glanced at. It appears to be a re-telling of the Nutcracker story.

One more thing…

Behind the figure we have yet another backdrop piece which is a clock face, featuring two swans. I don’t know the significance of these two swans, but it made me think of the Swan theatre or something like that Wagner was famous for putting on performances for King Ludwig (Is my history right about this? And if so, does it have anything to do with the Nutcracker?). I already imagine I will use this to remake some Earl Norem photos from the Golden Book “Time Trouble.”

Normally I talk about how you can see the figure inside. Nope. Not this time. They put opaque plastic over the figure so you can’t see him in the blister. Maybe the FH studios thought this one might just be too creepy to see on a store shelf?

FIGURE REVIEW.

What do we get in the package? It is a double blister, and this feels like more stuff than either Father Christmas or Monkey King. Like, more plastic and paint straight up. It weighs more.

  • The Mouse King Figure
  • Alternate neck
  • Alternate frilled collar
  • Pair of alternate clawing hands
  • a scepter
  • a sword
  • a reversible cape
  • a flight stand (what?)
  • and a mystery trash bag. (See the end of the blog entry to know what you get here. NO SPOILERS!)

How does the Mouse King work

I was very cautious this time. I have had a recent spat of problems with Mythic Legions figures. The Monkey King had a lot of problems. Last month, though, I broke Maxillius the Harvesters neck. There has been another recent Cosmic Legion that I will be blogging about soon…and so…I didn’t take any chances. I got the hairdryer out first before I removed any parts.. And thankfully nothing has broken or been too difficult to manage.

He has all of the articulation you expect, but this time he has a huge harness with seven mouse heads on it. Five of these heads are the same. There is one savage rat head with bared teeth, and then there is the king head with a crown of seven bones. This piece by itself weighs as much as the rest of the figure. Luckily, they gave him big feet, but this time with reversed knees, which are anatomically true for a rat I’m pretty sure, but the more I pose him and mess with him, the looser this has become. He also has a tail that works exactly like the Monkey King’s tail as well as the Ninian Infantry tail. In other words…it is bendy and very posable, BUT it doesn’t want to stay in the hole. It did better after I hairdryered it, but it still isn’t reliable. Which is a shame because like real rats, that tail would help him balance.

But…stop SpartanNerd. You are getting ahead of yourself! This sculpt is AMAZING! Of course it is the Four Horsemen Studios work. There are so many details here that just show tremendous love for the subject here, and so much care for their fans. This harness has a gruesome SPINE on the back, and tipped with a violent spike. Where have we seen this before? This is a throwback design from Todd McFarlane’s Spawn…the Violator and similar characters had these spikes.

The Mouse King and the Monkey King do battle at the good-guys office Christmas party. You can see the harness very well, with the five regular heads and the two other heads: Savage and King. Also, you can see how large the cape is. AND the tail. You can find reviews of most figures pictured on the SpartanNerd blog and the SpartanNerd YouTube page.
PICTURED: Masterverse New Eternia Beast Man and Mythic Legions Belualyth. Both are beast masters who control animals.

You can easily remove the harness like any other Mythic Legions head, and this gives you the option to make just a generic mouse or rat warrior. And so…the Mouse King can be used all year long, not only just at Christmas! (Well…a Mouse King can be used anyway all year I suppose.)

You can see in the photo above, I believe the only re-used parts on this figure is the chain mail loin cloth. Maybe the sword is also re-used from a previous figure. Maybe the hands are the same as the Monkey King’s?

Something new to point out about the torso. This figure has new butterfly joints in his shoulders, giving us the ability to make even more dynamic poses with our Mythic Legions. The Mouse King is the first, but evidently all new releases going forward will have this! I have found them to be really tight, and was sure to use the hairdryer. But I had no problems.

PICTURED: Figuara Obscura The Mouse King and Super7 Ultimates! King Conan. Both are doing battle to see who the real king is. If you look close, you can see the Mouse King has a stripe of blood on his face. And King Conan’s gigantic sword is dripping with blood.

Maybe they can just get along.

PICTURED: Figura Obscura Mouse King and Mythic Legions Ninian Infantry.

You can reverse the cape also, which gives us a different look. I find that in the photo above, some kind of nerve for “The Secret of NIMH”, a movie from the 80’s/

SPARTANNERD RATING OF FIGURA OBSCURA THE MOUSE KING

He earns a 5/5 hands down. Definitely one of the greatest figures of the year!

Here is my metric.

  • A point for sculpt
  • A point for paint
  • A point for articulation, especially with no stupid problems. (OK. The tail)
  • A point for accessories
  • A point for what he stands for as a unique action figure

No QC problems this time. AMEN! says Reverend SpartanNerd. (The hair dryer really improves the tail). And you can use this figure year round as a generic rat warrior creature.

Do I wish anything was different? Well, I think they will offer this in a different color some time in the future, probably brown. You might be able to do an homage to Master Splinter in this way. I also wish the seven-headed harness could be used on other figures. The way they did it, they sculpted the frilly collar onto the harness. Additionally, there is a small piece of mouse neck on every hole of the harness. So this head really only can be used for the Mouse King. And one more thing…mind you that these are not complaints…only some things that could improve it even more. We could have been given a mouse rear end. What I mean is…a regular rat body that you could put a head on. Surely in some future we will have this, but if we were given even only one, that would have been something else awesome.

But the Mouse King is awesome as he is! 5/5!

NOW IF YOU WANT TO KNOW THE SECRET ACCESSORY…KEEP SCROLLING. OTHERWISE

TURN

BACK

NOW!

!!!!!

!!!!!!

!!!!!!

!!!!!!!

YOU WERE WARNED!

A Nutcracker head! Here I have placed it on the Kitbash Bros. Gamecocks Knight. There is no Nutcracker body, so you can put him on whoever you want. You could also have it as a severed head beside the Mouse King, which was my first instinct. This head looks battle scarred and beaten, with an eye missing and just some busted up details!

Just something else that pushes this figure over the top! Thanks for reading! Like, subscribe, comment…check out my YouTube channel! Merry Christmas!

Mythic Legions Undead Builder Pack

by

1

(See the video unboxing and review on the SpartanNerd YouTube channel!)

I went with my Apple Cash to the Toy Federation, hoping to find Beaulythe to be my first Mythic Legions lady. (I know I didn’t spell that right!) They had a few Mythics there, but not who I came for. So then I started looking around at other stuff. Eventually I came to something I actually never heard of…”The Undead Builder Pack.” Seemed like a winner for a guy with a big collection of skeletons. Keep reading to see how it turned out!

PACKAGING

This is the same Mythic Legions package, with the same “classic” kind of art. BUT. This time it is a full oversized image in the background, meaning I can now throw away the older small ones I have around.

The card image behind the blisters

You have a double blister inside that you can see the figure very well. And all the accessories. And that is what this figure is REALLY about. The back features the art from the Necronominus wave, but zoomed out.

The big skeleton god is appears smaller in this exposed version of the image. And let’s take a second to talk about him. I have been critical of this image…that the figure looks goofy. Blah Blah Blah. But I saw it in person…Like I almost bought it instead of the undead builder pack. That headdress can’t look right in a 2d image…too goofy. In full on person, it looks amazing. It is kind of like Maxillius the Harvester, with all these intricate bone details all over the armor, etc. The cross sell also features the other figures released in this wave, including the one I came to get but they didn’t have, but also the Turpiculi, which I suppose I will eventually get. I was just really shocked at how cool Necronomius (I can’t say it or spell it) came out. And so this means…the Undead Builder Pack must have been cool enough to come away with instead of those guys! Also of interest to the readers, the skeletal horse, Conabus (spelling?) also has far more details in person than I had detected from images.

We do have a brief bio…it says something like “the dead do not rest in peace on Mythos.” But it says it in a verbose and over-the-top way.

WHAT DO WE GET IN THE PACKAGE?

Rather than get the figure out and put him together in some way, I figured it would better serve us all to show a picture of the items in the two blisters. There is so much here!

  • Undead figure, with translucent ghostly jaw-less skull, arms, hands, and thighs, and feet.
  • two different “smoke” effects
  • Three alternate head sculpts
  • Opaque rotten arms
  • Opaque Rotten thighs
  • translucent and opaque angle joints
  • Opaque Feet
  • Mace
  • short handle axe (halberd head)
  • curved sword (khopesh?)
  • belt
  • shoulder armor
  • Back adapter set
  • small smoke effects
  • handcuffs with metal chain
  • alternate collar piece
  • Six ghostly hands
  • eight opaque rotten hands

And this is the WINNER! I have no other action figure with this many parts. Not even Black Falcon!

BUT…

FIGURE REVIEW

As a figure with all of this, like if this was the only one you had, that would be incredible. But I think the Four Horsemen were thinking people like me would be adding the parts of this as accessories to our other existing figures.

As a figure, vanilla out of the blister, he is pretty good. These translucent ghostly parts have a “gumminess” to them that is very welcome, and makes this figure extremely versatile.

It wouldn’t have been my choice to market him with the translucent half skull as the main look. It is OK, but that screams “ghost” to me and not “zombie.” They should have put the head with the open mouth on there. But this is me nit-picking about their choice. This doesn’t have any bearing on how great this set is!

The half skull head with ectoplasm effects really improves Warrior Beast Head Hunter. Also, add extra arms to Skeleton Legion Builder II!

He comes apart easily and is very modular, and also highly articulated as a positive consequence. The opaque undead parts are masterfully sculpted. These feel like the classic Mythic Legions, and you might need a hair dryer. (I didn’t). And the details. Wow! We could have had two symetrical thighs, but no the Horsemen went the extra mile and gave us different decayed details on each one. And this is so throughout the character.

Wal-Torr the Mad showing off those spectacular thighs!

ACCESSORIES

Yes. This can be a standalone action figure for a fan of zombies I guess. But the real magic is what it brings to everyone else. As such, I am giving you lots of examples in Mythic Legions as well as other figures.

The three weapons…we already have the axe head. The other weapons were new to the SpartanNerd.

All of those heads and hands!

And so here is my only one complaint. And the Horsemen did this on purpose I’m sure. We are a torso/waist, set of wrists and lower legs from having a second figure. In fact, I wish they had done this. Gave us TWO full figures in the package. One fully ghosted and the other fully zombified. I mean. We are literally six parts away from that.

But the nature of this set is that we will customize our other figures.

SPARTANNERD RATING OF THE MYTHIC LEGIONS UNDEAD BUILDER PACK

MASTERVERSE New Eternia Evil-Lyn energizes her staff while holding the spectral skull of an evil master.
Thulsa Doom, a figure that woefully lacked snake themed items, can hold the little smoke effect as a magic serpent.
In honor of Mattel giving us all kinds of cool origins figures in the $10 CLUB GRAYSKULL membership, I put the decayed head on Masters of the Universe Classics Despara. See the irony. The sarcasm! Why no MASTERVERSE in the Club Grayskull? They didn’t make this clear!

It can’t give anything but a 5/5.

  • Sculpt- The Four Horsemen bring us another incredible piece of art
  • Paint- The opaque parts are sickening gray, and the armor and weapons have very nice paint. The head sculpts are also painted very well. The translucent parts don’t have paint and don’t need it. (There is a dab on the face sculpts)
  • Articulation- The ghostly parts are very modular, and I didn’t need a hair dryer for the parts in this set.
  • Accessories- This figure is almost ONLY accessories, if you like to count alternate hands and feet as accessories. Otherwise the smokey energy effects and the three weapons are very nice.
  • Significance- I bought this so that it could add to my skeleton collection. And it does that very well!

And we are moving into the “Mega Bloks” kind of aspect of Mythic Legions. Masters of the Universe Modulok. This kind of figure. And I actually have the blue knight builder on order, so there is more like this to come eventually to the SpartanNerd. AND…Back to the Tupiculi. That guy is firmly one of my future buys.

I award the Mythic Legions Undead Builder Pack 5/5. Do you agree or disagree, Hub City Geeks? Let me know in the comments!