Monthly Archives: April 2022

Apr 4 2022

Mythic Legions: Malleus by The Four Horsemen

On the last Mythoss Monday, I checked out the mighty skeleton warlord, Mandibulus, and mentioned that I had yet to review his two siblings. And that makes this as good a time as any to rectify that, starting with today’s look at his brother, Malleus!

Malleus hails from the very first assortment of figures offered in the original Kickstarter. Unfortunately, he didn’t make the budget cutting that I had to do to get what was going to be an enormous expenditure down to a slightly less enormous expenditure. Luckily, Malleus was offered up again as part of the third assortment of All-Stars and he finally landed in my collection.

One of the two sons of Necronominus, he is billed as a devout enforcer of his father’s teachings. Because this figure comes from the original batch, there’s nothing here that we haven’t seen before many times over. But, that doesn’t make him any less great. Malleus’ armor is a combination of the knightly torso, belt, sash, and hip pieces and the more crude Orc shoulders, collar, gauntlets, boots, and lower leg armor. The upper portions of his skeletal limbs are exposed to show off that he is indeed a boney fellow. The knightly pieces of armor are given a green wash, perhaps suggesting an original brilliant emerald color that has long faded, along with the green sash to match, and brass painted rivets. Meanwhile, the Orc pieces are presented in their usual black iron finish with all those lovely nicks and pitting in the sculpt. I really love this combination, as it gives him a battle-ready ruggedness with a hint of style to make him stand out as a noteworthy warrior.

The Four Horsemen are masters at sculpting these 6-inch scale skulls, and Malleus’ features a lot of personality. The bone has a brown finish to suggest the rotting flesh that once covered it, and there are all sorts of cracks and fissures to make the skull look ancient. The jaw is hinged, so Malleus can let loose a mighty war cry, and his imperfect teeth just add to the individuality of the sculpt. The skull looks particularly sinister when nested in the middle of the wickedly spired battle collar, ensuring that no one is going to get in a decap-attack!

Malleus’ sidearm is the trusty cruciform sword we’ve seen many, many, MANY times throughout this line’s history, and as you all may know by now, it’s still one of my favorites. Painted entirely in silver, the sword features a straight cross-guard and a disc pommel. It isn’t at all fancy, but rather just the sort of trustworthy and serviceable design, that a seasoned warrior would depend upon.

But, sometimes you have to make a bigger statement on the battlefield, and to do that Malleus comes with the first wave’s ubiquitous battle axe. At one point it seemed like TFH were handing these out to the figures like a bank hands out personalized pens to perspective clients. I’ve probably said this before, but at one point I was getting a bit tired of seeing these, but I was genuinely pleased to see it again when I opened this figure, because it really is a tremendous design and a great sculpt. The battle axe can be configured to be single, or double-bladed, with a small spike to replace the off-blade. But, let me ax you a question… Do you ever deploy your skeleton warrior to the battlefield and think, Oh shit. I should have had him bring TWO axes?

Well, TFH have you covered, because they not only included two of these beauties with Malleus, but they each have the option to be single or double-bladed. Personally, I think wielding two of these at once may be a bit much, but I’m not going to say no to an extra accessory.

At this stage of the game, some may look at Malleus as a bit of a been there, done that kinda figure. And to be fair, he was released way back when, and I’m certainly late to the party with this review. But, I can honestly say, I didn’t feel any of that when I opened this guy up. Malleus is comprised of an excellent and well thought out selection of parts, and he makes for another awesome skeleton warrior to add to my shelf. Next week, we’ll check out the sister of this trio!… Morgolyth!

Apr 1 2022

Transformers Legacy: Skids by Hasbro

What’s this? A new main line of Transformers? Well, at least that’s my assumption, that Legacy will be replacing the Trilogy of Siege, Earthrise, and Kingdom as the new Generations line, and what better character to launch this Legacy series than… Oh, it’s Skids. Ok, then…

Well, I do like the art design! Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, I like it better than what we’ve been getting. The character art has been phenomenal, but some derivation of the boring black package with generic font Transformers running up the side has been with us for a while. This is colorful and trippy and while the Legacy logo doesn’t really scream Transformers brand to me, I can get behind this. Unfortunately, like the packaging we saw in my Buzzworthy Bumblebee review, Hasbro has stopped using plastic windows to save the planet and now leaves the toy exposed to the elements, as well as the sticky fingers of children. I would much rather they just use a completely enclosed box, but whatever. Let’s start with Skids alt mode.

Ah, the Honda City Turbo. It’s a car I never heard of before meeting Skids, and one that I haven’t heard of since. I should go on record here by saying that I’ve never been a fan of Skids. He was kind of a non-entity in the Sunbow cartoon. Indeed, off-hand I can only remember him being in two episodes: Quest for Survival and Triple Takeover. Both are great episodes, but certainly not because Skids happened to be in them. His toy was released too late to be part of the original Class of 84 Autobots, but too early to be included with the hot newness of the 1985 roster. I do distinctly remember finding him in Sears and my Dad saying, “oh, a new Transformer?” You want him? And I said nah, and wound up getting something else instead. At the time, there was just nothing about him that made him desirable to me and he was one of the only Autobots in the 1984-85 line up that I never owned.

Skids is a box on wheels, and certainly doesn’t share the stylish contours of the vintage Datsuns or sexy Lamborghinis. But with that being said, this is a fantastic new version of the original car form. Hasbro didn’t go too far off the page with this one, keeping the same midnight blue body and the same red and white striping on the sides. The front grill is gray with yellow headlamps, and there’s an Autobot emblem on the hood. The windshield and front windows are tinted blue, and you get lots of nice sculpted detail, including quad exhaust, a gas cap, and the screen on the front and back bumpers. The back is a little bland, but all in all, this is a nice alt mode for what it is.

Skids comes with a few weapons, and these can be attached using any of the three ports (one up top, and two on the sides), if you want to weaponize this mode.

Transforming Skids is pretty intuitive and the resulting robot looks surprisingly nice. The front bumper chest and door-wings has always been my favorite look for an Autobot, and Skids wears them quite well. Yeah, the chest is sharply squared off, and reminds me a bit of Armada Red Alert, but I ain’t hating it. The rest of the figure is nicely proportioned, and adds some more red to the deco, both down on his feet, and smack dab in the middle of his robot cod piece. And when viewed from behind, he’s all closed up and polished to a shine.

The head sculpt is very close to what I remember the original toy looking like, although I’m remembering him with yellow eyes instead of blue. The silver face paint looks sharp, and he wears a slight expression of disapproval on his lips, like he just saw that Spike’s report card and he got a C- in Algebra.

For an Autobot who’s primary function is a theoretician, Skids does come with a lot of weapons. You get two silver blasters, one is a stout single barrel pistol, and the other is a dual barreled gun, which can combine together to form a pretty formidable looking piece of hardware.

You also get what I think is supposed to be some kind of Energon Ax, which can also combine with the guns in a number of ways to make, well… I don’t know what. The ax replaces the rocket launcher that came with the original toy, and I’m cool with that!

The only reason I picked up Skids was because he was a new figure in a new line, and I was excited. But in reality, Legacy appears to just be an extension of what we’ve been getting in the War For Cybertron stuff, which is pretty much what I’m looking for in my Transformers anyway. Change the packaging all you want, Hasbro, but you’ve been batting a thousand with your Generations Transformers lately, and I don’t want to see that change. As for the figure itself, Skids if great! I’m legitimately surprised at how happy I am with this pick up, and he’s going to look fantastic on my Autobot shelf!