I’m trying to parse out my reviews of Super7’s third wave of ThunderCats Ultimates, since there are only three figures and who knows when more will ship. Last time I checked out Slithe and now I’m turning my attention to that cantankerous clockwork clunker and evil space pirate, Captain Cracker!

You get the same beautiful style packaging as we saw last time, but Cracker’s box is a lot smaller, as he doesn’t have nearly the chonk factor of Slithe. It seemed to cause some collectors a lot of distress to see Captain Cracker turn up in Wave 3 of Super7’s ThunderCats. No doubt, they were hoping for a more prominent character, but I was pleased to no end. As eager as I am to complete my ThunderCats and Evil Mutants, I’m fine with them peppering the waves with more peripheral characters. And it’s not like Cracker was a one and done villain. After he was introduced running afoul of Mandora the Evil Chaser, he returned for two more episodes, the third of which even got him top billing in Cracker’s Revenge!
ThunderCats character designs tend to cut two ways. You’ve got your bad-ass characters and your goofy characters. Guess which group Cracker belongs to! But goofy or not, he has the potential to make for a great action figure!

And on the whole, I think that fun potential is realized here. Despite being a robot, Cracker wears clothes! His plastic wardrobe consists of tan trousers with a brown shoe on his left foot and just a metallic peg protruding from his right knee. He’s got an orange shirt with sculpted black vest, ragged sleeves, fingerless white gloves, and a brown belt with a sheath for his dagger. The sculpt is pretty basic here, which fits for the animated aesthetic. I do think it was a little cheap sculpting the vest as part of the body, rather than making it a separate piece worn by the figure. The paint could have been a lot cleaner around those ragged sleeves. If this were a twenty dollar, off the rack figure, I could be more forgiving.

At least they didn’t cheap out on the heads, as you get two portraits to choose from. The standard features Cracker offering a malevolent mugging and evil grin, showing every one of his weird white robot teeth. Super7 did a nice job capturing Cracker’s personality with some very nice detail. The Captain has a sculpted dew-rag “tied” around the top of his head. He’s got a prominent, a pointed spike for a nose, and an eyepatch bolted to his face. His exposed right eye is drawn on his face and looks wonderfully cheesy. Cracker has what looks like whiskers for a mustache and right eyebrow. I seem to remember the mustache sparking when Cracker got mad in the cartoon.

The second head gives Cracker a surprised expression, with his jaw clamped shut and his one eye wide open. Who’s laughing now, Cracker?

The Captain comes with three sets of hands, including two fists, two relaxed hands, one right accessory holding hand and one left graspy hand. Considering he comes with two weapons, I’m kind of put out that we didn’t get a left hand for holding his other weapon. So, let’s take a look at the weapons.

The dagger is a nice piece, with a gold painted hilt and a silver blade. It fits snugly into the sheath on his belt, and he can hold it perfectly fine in that one accessory holding hand.

His other weapon is a cutlass, and this is all silver. Either they were going for something simple to emulate the animated look, or they were too cheap to paint the hilt. Honestly, I can’t remember what Cracker’s sword looked like in the cartoon, so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. It’s fine. There’s no scabbard for it, but you can thrust it through his belt when he’s not using it. It sure would have been nice to have him hold the sword in one hand and the dagger in the other, but nope!

Cracker also comes with a wrench, which I assume was included based on the scene in Mandora and the Pirates, where he threatens to take Quick Pick apart with the wrench if Mandora doesn’t give herself up. I suppose he could also use it to do maintenance on himself. Also… Can we get a Quick Pick figure, please?

And last but not least is Cracker’s bird, which I’m pretty sure was never given a name, but hopefully someone will correct me if I’m wrong. [Oh, wait. It’s Polly. It’s actually printed on the back of the box!] Actually, you get two versions of The Captain’s trusty sidekick, one with wings at his side and one with wings spread. Both of these are sculpted and painted very nicely, and both feature rotating heads. They also both feature a peg in the feet that plugs into the hole on Cracker’s left shoulder.

The peg works pretty well, but for it to work, Cracker’s arm needs to stay down. I would have loved another display option. Like maybe a way to clip the bird to his arm or a hand with a peg hole to hold him.

I like robots. I like pirates. It stand to reason that I would love a robot pirate! With that being said, I think Captain Cracker turned out pretty good, but not quite great. It felt like I had a litany of nitpicks in this review, and they started to add up. Cracker is a great looking figure, and I’m happy to have him in my collection, but I think this was a figure that needed to really win fans over for being released so soon in the line, and I’m not sure he has what it takes to do that.