KR Review #9: Theriom Troopers

It's a funny thing that there are plenty of armies in the KR universe, but what we haven't got in the line so far are army builders.

PoliganToys has finally taken a chance on army-building with their first multi-pack prototype ever - Theriom Troopers^TM!

Details

Name: Theriom Troopers

Real names: there are three characters, whose names are Wrapthur, Tang-Lha and Grabtrak; to be honest, I'm not really a fan of these names, because they have never been mentioned in the story, they are just made for the action figures and sound a bit silly in my opinion

Subtitle: heroic sentries

Classification: mammals (in particular, Wrapthur and Tang-Lha are humans)

Sex: Wrapthur and Grabtrak are males, Tang-Lha is female

Home: Tahron

Affiliation: Theriom

Rank: privates.

Background

The Theriom Troopers are a constant presence in the KR universe and appear since the first issue The hidden halberd. The strongest and most skilled warriors on Tahron are regularly recruited by Tir-Hing to help guard Theriom City and defend the surrounding territories from attack. These heroic guardsmen are trained in multiple forms of hand-to-hand combat and are masters of capture weapons, including grabbers, bolas launchers and net guns. Whenever peace on Tahron is endangered, it is the bravery of such elite privates that often beats back the evil forces.

Articulation

Standard, excluding hinged abdomen for Tang-Lha.

Description

Heads: Wrapthur and Tang-Lha have human features, both showing cream white skin and dark eyes (Wrapthur also sports a brown soul patch, while Tang-Lha has a mole near the upper lip). Grabtrak has a similar appearance to a warthog, identifiable by the large brown head with two pairs of tusks protruding from the mouth and curving upwards. I appreciate the attempt to bring a part of the huge physical variety that characterises the Theriom Troopers (in the comics we can see humans and non-humans, males and females) into a 3-figure set, but I think injecting some racial diversity between the two human figures would have made this even better. Each of the three characters wears a silver helmet with gold details, whose size and shape are adapted to the type of head

Bodies: Wrapthur and Tang-Lha are sculpted using the same proportions seen in other human male (e.g., Masq-Lor) and female (e.g., Sei-Lha) figures; in addition, both show cream white skin. On the contrary, Grabtrak exhibits a brand new, much bulkier sculpt. I really like this new body structure, which instantly communicates brawn, and I hope to see it again in future figures. Grabtrak also displays a brown fur

Wearables: all the three characters wear gold armours with silver details, golden bracelets, golden boots, golden belts and silver groin protectors. All these elements show lots of electro-mechanical details, which give the troopers an interesting cyber character. Additionally, the heroic sentries are equipped with grey removable arm and thigh armours, each decorated with a diagonal blue stripe. Last but not least, each private carries a backpack, which bears a bright circle at the centre and four cords that run to four cuffs around the bracelets and boots; fictionally speaking, I guess this backpack is a portable reactor engineered to power some kind of servomechanisms attached to the troopers' wrists and ankles. Very very cool detail.

Theriom Troopers' stylised armour. Size and shape vary according to the body structure of the characters.

Action feature

This is another case in which most of the "coolness" of a figure lies in the action feature that comes with it. Each of the three characters is equipped with a large silver technological capture weapon. Wrapthur's weapon is a net gun. The mechanical device is well made, with lots of cyber details. The four corner-components attached to the blue net present four pins on one side of the net, to keep this in place before being fired, and four suction cups on the opposite side, to secure a foe against, for example, a wall. Tang-Lha is equipped with a two headed bolas launcher. This weapon looks also great, with the red spheres snapping securely into the two ports and the cord long enough to entangle an enemy's body. Finally, Grabtrak comes with a grabber, which can extend and clamp an opponent by means of two green gripping jaws. Again an amazing design with sculpted wires and gears, despite the extension feature is obviously limited by the length of the weapon itself (in the comics the clamp can move several meters away), perhaps a telescopic system would have helped to make it more "realistic". I know from PoliganToys that the original idea was to design these weapons with a trigger-activated spring-loaded action, but the idea was eventually discarded because too costly. However, I can't complain, because the three weapons look nice enough... they even have little cannons on the sides!

Weapons and accessories

The weapons for these three guys have already been described extensively in the previous section, but there are a few more accessories which, together with the removable leg and arm armours, give an added value to the figures. Each helmet is equipped with a clip-on translucent visor (blue for Wrapthur, red for Tang-Lha and green for Grabtrak) and a clip-on headset (on the right side of the helmet), which comprises an earphone, an antenna and a microphone in one piece. In addition, each groin protector can be decorated with one of two different clip-on emblems: either a Theriom symbol (a seven-pointed golden star with the two side points elongated, in three different sizes: smallest for Tang-Lha and biggest for Grabtrak) or a symbol that evokes a capture weapon (a blue x-shaped net, a red circle and a green pincer pointing downwards).

Theriom Troopers' stylised helmet.

Overall, I'm totally satisfied with this set, not only because it includes three different figures, but also because each figure has a lot of personality, with interesting details, surprising sculpts and great accessories. The down aspect for this multi-pack is probably going to be the price; even if at this moment there is no information about how much a regular figure will cost when KR get on the market, it's not too difficult to predict a high price for a 3-figure pack like this one. But that's another story for now and I can only express a very good opinion about the Theriom Troopers.