Tag Archives: honor among thieves

Sep 15 2023

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (Golden Archive) Simon & Doric by Hasbro

A few days ago I watched D&D Honor Among Thieves again and I guess I was half a bottle into the Jameson and wound up picking up some of the figures off Amazon on clearance. I wasn’t going to review any of these, but then I came up short on time for today’s review and these were handy, so here we go. If that’s not a ringing endorsement, I don’t know what is! Random selection pulled Simon first and I decided to toss in Doric as well. Did they ever make it as a couple? Well, I doubt there will be a sequel so decide for yourself!

I have to say that I really enjoyed this movie… enough to see it twice in the theater and a couple of times now at home. Was it a great Dungeons & Dragons film? Eh, maybe not, but it sure as shit was a better D&D movie than the last one. Either way, it was really fun and I liked the characters. I also really like the design on these packages. The character art is very nice, but here’s a great example of not knowing what you’re getting inside. Also, these boxes are huge compared to the contents and they feel like they’re empty. If I was buying these in a store, I’d have serious doubts as to whether there was a figure in there at all! Let’s start with Simon.

Simon (the Sorcerer) Amur has a really solid D&D outfit and Hasbro did a great job sculpting it here. Even if I wasn’t familiar with the character, the figure just has a classic fantasy-medieval look about him. The blue tunic is textured, the tan sleeves billow out at the wrists, he’s got sculpted leather wrappings on his hands, and his shoes… well, he kind of looks like he’s wearing modern dress shoes, but it’s fine. The plastic cape has some nice texturing and there’s some muddied paint down at the edge.

Other wonderful details include the colorful satchel he wears over his shoulder and the spell reagent dispenser, which oddly enough reminded me of a birth control wheel. He also has a pouch or coin purse on the belt next to it. There’s just tons little bits and bobs here that make this figure feel like a labor of love.

The head sculpt is a pretty decent likeness, but I’m not really familiar with the actor. The only other thing he’s been in that I heard of was one of the endless Jurassic Park sequels, and I stopped bothering with those a while ago. The features use the modern printing method for the eyes and lips, and the hair sculpt is solid.

Simon comes with two accessories: The Hither-Thither Staff and the Helm of Disjunction. The staff is very well done with some sculpted detail in the shaft and some paint hits. The pale blue crystal at the top looks great. I’m glad we got this as an accessory because it was a really fun gimmick in the film.

The helmet also has some great detailing and some paint, but it’s cast in that shitty thin gold plastic that Hasbro sometimes dips into. But at least he can wear it.

The articulation here is mostly what you might expect with Hasbro’s six-inch lines. In fact, the only disappointing thing is the rotating hinges in the elbows which have a really bad range of motion. Poor Simon can’t even pull off a 90-degree bend and that’s just unacceptable. He comes with just the one pair of hands, with the right one sculpted to hold the staff and the left hand in a spell-slinging gesture. OK, let’s move on to Doric.

Doric the Druid was a fun character! Once again, I didn’t know the actress from anything else, but she was certainly good in the movie. This costume didn’t give Hasbro as much to work with as Simon’s but I think they still turned in a solid effort. The tunic has a layered look to it with some soft texturing. There are stitching lines sculpted into her shoulder pads, and she has a removable feathered shroud that goes over her right shoulder, which I think Hasbro counts as her accessory. Yeah, that’s pretty cheap! Her tail is pretty cool and it plugs into her ass with a ball joint so you get a little basic poseability out of it.

Sadly, Hasbro didn’t do as well with this portrait as they did with Simon’s. It stumbles a little bit in the sculpt and printing both. The hair looks nice and her little horns are cool. You can’t really see her pointed ears under the hair, which is a shame. I don’t think this turned out terribly, but it ain’t great either. I thought the actress was pretty cute and it doesn’t come across here very well.

Doric does have her little pop-up slingshot on her left arm bracer, which is pretty well done considering the scale. I was actually surprised they even attempted it, but it still doesn’t count as an accessory to me. Maybe Hasbro could have included some sculpted animal forms? I think that was a big miss. The lack of extras here just feels really wanting, especially with how big the boxes are.

Doric’s articulation is identical to Simon and that means she can’t pull off 90-degrees in those elbows either. I think that’s an even bigger tragedy here because she seemed like a pretty agile character. All in all Doric is OK, but I think Simon turned out better.

Yeah, today’s review was kind of quick and dirty, but at least I was able to turn something in. I don’t think these figures are at all bad, but they sure aren’t worth $25 a pop. Thankfully I got them for $12 each which is why I’m giving them a pass. They look good with The Beholder and I’m anxious to put them up against the Displacer Beast, which I will get to reviewing eventually. Indeed, I hope to get through all the figures here eventually, but they aren’t going to be high priority, so maybe I’ll save them for when I need some quick content or just do them all in one big speed-review.

Jan 25 2023

Dungeons & Dragons (Honor Among Thieves): Gelatinous Cube by Hasbro

Welcome to my cursed review! I had this one all done and ready to go a few weeks ago as a follow up to my look at Bobby and Uni from the D&D Cartoon Classics line, but then my computer lost its saving throw against Windows Update and got killed. It took me a week to get the computer to a point where I could comb through it for files and I managed to recover several thousand pictures from it. And after going through all of them, I found that the pictures for this review were not among them, so I had to just bite the bullet and reshoot. But as I was setting it up, I realized how ironic it was that this was a review that really didn’t merit the double effort, but I guess it’s worth offering up as a cautionary tale. So, let’s just get through this quick and dirty so we can all go back to our lives.

Hasbro acquired the license for Dungeons & Dragons a little while ago and seemed to be completely uninterested in doing anything with it, aside for some horribly generic looking Kre-O sets. REMEMBER, KRE-O??? I’m sure that building system had the folks over at LEGO sweating their balls off in fear of competition. Anyway, I guess the brand is finally getting it’s big push with the upcoming movie, Honor Among Thieves, and a toy tie-in. Unfortunately the brand is also mired in one controversy after another to the point where players are boycotting the film! I’m actually looking forward to seeing the movie, which is probably more a commentary on the sad state of cinema these days, than genuine enthusiasm. Still, I’m not really interested in the figures from it. I was, however, keen to buy a 6-inch scale Gelatinous Cube, because… come on… why not? If nothing else, it would make a fun accessory for the toon figures. The box dubs this as being from the Golden Archive, and I can’t possibly imagine what that may mean. The packaging is a fully enclosed, flat box, which means the cube has to be assembled, so let’s cobble it together and see what we’ve got!

The cube comes as six flat sides of soft rubbery semi-transparent plastic squares. There is a rather deliberate design to the way they lock together, but I use that term loosely, because nothing really fits together all that well. If you look closely at the pictures you can probably see places where the seams are pushed in or not aligned properly. It’s like trying to get the lid on a Rubbermade food storage container after it’s gotten old and warped. Plus, I got a hairline crack in one of the corners while assembling it. The top square is particularly vexing as it keeps wanting to burp open. Once it is together, the seams are really obvious and make it look like a container, which works against what is otherwise a fairly decent gelatin effect in the blue translucent plastic.

The sides of the cube are peppered with things that it’s sucked in and cannot absorb, as if they’re being pushed out to the surface and will eventually be rubbed off and discarded. It’s a pretty cool idea and some nice insight into the digestive system of these creepy cubical critters. These pieces peg onto the sides into specifically shaped compartments and range from weapons to chunks of bone, and other inventory items carried by the cube’s recent meals. The package boasts these as accessories, and it’s true some of them can be used by your 6-inch scale adventurers, but many are just literal junk, which I guess can be strewn about your dungeon as mere decorations. There’s a very cool ax and bow, a satchel, and a book which makes for a great questing item.

Opening the top of the cube reveals a sort of claw designed to hold a figure as if it is suspended within the cube and being digested. There are also some peg holes on the bottom plate to stand figures. I think the claw makes for a decent enough effect when the figure is viewed from the outside. The gelatinous plastic doesn’t obscure the post completely, but it looks OK.

There’s also a shield which can be removed to reveal a hole that a figure can stick his hand through, presumably so his fellow party members can try to pull him free. It’s a cool feature, I guess.

The Gelatinous Cube has an MSRP of $35, and that’s downright ridiculous. It’s a cool idea, and I’ve had some fun with it, and I can’t say I regret buying it, but it’s pretty poorly made and definitely not worth the asking price. Maybe if it had come pre-assembled so that it fit together better, but even then it’s just way too much money for what I’m getting here. At $20? Sure, I guess. I think they should have included some more useful stuff with it, like maybe a 6-inch scale skeleton. It does work very well with the toon figures, which is nice, because I doubt they’ll get anyone other than Venger to fight.