It’s been a couple of months since I checked in with Super7’s ThunderCats Ultimates. Where does the time go? If you’re keeping score, I’ve been looking at Wave 8 and so far I’ve covered WilyKit, Captain Shiner, and Hachiman. So let’s wrap up the wave today with the first of the Lunataks, Alluro! The Lunataks showed up in Season Two, to give the ThunderCats all kinds of grief and they were pretty prominent characters going forward. Nonetheless, LJN never cashed in on them by putting any Lunatak action figures in stores. It’s a pretty crazy omission, but to be fair the line only lasted three years. As a result, I was really excited to see that Super7 was digging into this particular team next. Sure, if given the choice I may have gone with the Berserkers, but this was still a major win.

I don’t have much new to say about the packaging. It looks great despite Super7 nixing the slipcovers. The window shows off the goods and you get some character art and a brief character blurb on the back panel. Everything is collector friendly, but I’ve begun purging these boxes because I have to make space for a giant Cat’s Lair before the end of the year. Alluro was the Lunatak’s super creepy master of psy-ops. He could control people’s minds, making him a pretty powerful force to be reckoned with. And, I have to just say how much I loved Doug Preis’ voice work for the character. The voice work in ThunderCats often annoys me because there are so few actors voicing so many characters, and to be brutally honest, a lot of them don’t do a great job distinguishing between the multiple characters they do. I believe Alluro was the only character voiced by Preis in the series, which made him stand out. He did a great job giving Alluro a smug and creepy affect with a bit of Peter Lorre thrown in. Superb!

Alluro manages to stand out, even among a group of freaks like the Lunataks. He’s tall, with a broad and muscular chest, and arms that seem a bit too long for his frame. He goes topless, exposing his lavender skin. There’s a wide belt with a sculpted eye motif in the middle, and a loin cloth hanging below it. This rig is held up by a pair of brown suspenders and a couple of thin crossed belts underneath. Despite the modesty skirt, he actually has a pair of sculpted brown slacks, which give way to orange boots with some sculpted decorations and a pinched toe at the tips. For a pretty simple outfit, the layering here works well. The colors look great and this guy looks like he just stepped off of one of Rankin-Bass’ animation cells!

You get two heads to choose from: One is offering an evil smile and the other an even more evil-er laugh. I don’t know where the inspiration came from for Alluro’s features, but it’s really imaginative. He’s got a bald pate with a crescent moon symbol on his forehead. There’s a gray, mask-like coloring around his eyes and brow ridge. He’s got prominent cheek bones, a set of balls for a chin and big pointed ears. Meanwhile a mop of gray straggly hair cascades down his front and back. The whole portrait is rounded out by his yellow eyes with some mesmerizing rings for pupils. Both heads suit the character beautifully, and while I usually go for the more neutral expression for every day display, I may go for the laughing one here, because it just looks amazing.

If you’ve been on board with any of Super7’s Ultimates lines, you should know what to expect from the articulation here. The rotating hinges in the elbows and knees aren’t going to win any awards for extreme posability, but I’m OK with it. I will say that Alluro’s elbows feel like they have slightly less range than some of the other figures, as he can’t quite even do a 90-degree bend. Otherwise, the joints all feel great and he’s still plenty of fun to play with. You get four sets of hands: Fists, two sets of accessory holding hands, one pointing right hand, and one wide open right hand.

Alluro’s primary accessory is his Psych Club, which he uses to bend the minds of his adversaries. The club has a hooked end, which can be used to hang off his belt and the head is shaped like a crescent moon. There are two crystal orbs that can be plugged into the top, either blue or yellow, and these are ridiculously hard to install. There’s no give in the moon emblem and the sockets on the orbs feel like they are a little too far apart. I was able to get each one in after a lot of cursing and frustration, and now I’ll be leaving the blue one in there for all of time. Some heat would have probably helped. The rest of the included accessories are all from the Season Two episode Psych-Out.

First up is this scroll that Mumm-Ra gave Alluro to find the Egora Talisman, an artifact that gives whomever possesses it so much confidence that it makes them nearly invincible. Personally, I always thought over confidence was a weakness to be exploited, but whatever. The scroll is just a piece of plastic with a map printed on it. Which is odd, because in the episode, the scroll just seemed to have hints written in rhyme that directed him where to find it. As luck would have it, it was in a cave near Cat’s Lair, which alerted Lion-O and the team that something was up.

And then you get the Egora Talisman itself, which includes the cool little chest it was stored in. The chest has a skull motif sculpted into it, along with gold painted reinforced bands and corners. It opens and the Talisman can be stored inside. For such a tiny accessory, the Talisman is nicely sculpted and painted. In the episode, Snarf was the only one not crippled by Alluro’s mind control so he stole the chest out of the glovebox in Alluro’s ride and used the Talisman’s power to defeat him. Of course, we later learn that the Talisman inside was smashed and powerless and that Old Snarf beat him all on his own. Never underestimate a Snarf! Here endeth the lesson!

Alluro is another fantastic addition to the ThunderCats villains line up and I really love the accessories included from Psych-Out. It’s so exciting to see the Lunataks show up in Ultimates and embark on assembling a team that have never had figures before. Especially when we’re talking about characters that became regulars in the second season of the cartoon. I’ll admit I had my doubts as to whether we would see these guys in Ultimates, because are they really going to ever do Luna and Amok? But we got the answer to that right quick, as they are already in production. Of course, Chilla turned up in the next wave, but before I get to her, I’m going to round out the Thunderkittens with Wilykat… hopefully next week!