KR Review #11: Xonedar

It’s been a few days since I’ve reviewed a KR figure. The Destructomorph^TM Troopers should be the next up for review, but I’m not much in the mood for reptilian robots at this moment and I’ll be taking a look at Xonedar^TM instead!

Xonedar is the 10^th action figure prototype I've received from PoliganToys.

Details

Name: Xonedar

Subtitle: hyper-technological engineer

Classification: partially human

Sex: male

Relationships: Sei-Lha's father

Home: Tahron

Affiliation: Theriom

Rank: lieutenant commander; expert in intelligence, mechanical & materials engineering and surgery.

Background

Also Xonedar's first appearance takes place in The hidden halberd, where he's presented as a Theriom member of great renown, who was seriously injured during a terrible accident while working on a shipbuilding project in the past. He was healed by his fellow soldier and loyal friend Koptros^TM, who transformed and grafted his body with cybernetic parts by encasing each of his cells into a microscopic technological structure invented by Xonedar himself at an earlier time. By adjusting the properties of these techno-elements in his body, Xonedar gained the ability to shape himself to almost unlimited forms. He was then upgraded for battle with several built-in weapons, so that he could serve the Therioms in their fight against evil once again. Confronted by his foes, Xonedar uses his unstoppable robotic strength in heroic combat and his amazing bionic eye to spy on the evil enemy.

Articulation

Standard, except that waist, wrists and calves are ball jointed and there is no abdomen crunch.

Description

Head: he constantly wears a dark-blue cyber helmet with silver details, which only allows us to see the mouth surrounded by black skin; the rest of the face is covered by a single large dark bionic eye

Body: black metallic arms and legs, showing lots of machinery/circuitry patterns; the legs look particularly reinforced in the thigh and knee areas. Under the armour he displays a clear transparent torso accented with steel edging, inside which a complex combination of bluish-grey gears, valves, wires and organs (e.g., heart, lungs and guts) is visible; this is quite a surprise, because I don't remember if what's under the hood has ever been shown in the comics. At the centre of his chest there is a lenticular sticker, whose design animates (this reminds me a bit of the Shazam logo when it “listens” to a song) and colour shifts from red to green as it is viewed from different angles; there will be more about this later

Wearables: a silver armour with dark-blue details (the two colours alternate clockwise), two silver gauntlets, two silver boots (displaying details similar to wheels and continuous tracks), a silver belt (displaying small tools, i.e., a penknife, a pair of pliers, a pair of tweezers, a hammer, a screwdriver and a wrench, all the way around) and a dark-blue crotch piece. Everything looks a bit bulkier than what we have seen in most of the other figures so far.

Xonedar's stylised helmet; the dark oval at the centre represents the bionic eye.

Action feature

Fasten your safety belt, because this is going to be one of the craziest journeys into the action feature section we have taken so far. Let's start with the head... such a small part and so many features! The eye is rotating, which means there are three interchangeable eyepieces placed on a horizontal drum that turns via an earphone-shaped dial on the right side of the helmet. The first eye is dark-purple colour and is supposed to be Xonedar's default far-seeing eye (which in the comics is a combination of a high-resolution camera and a radar, and looks completely black), the second eye is a dark-orange&black high-energy detector (which resembles the trefoil symbol used to warn about ionising radiation), while the third section of the drum is actually a socket. The latter shows a few cool cyber details and bears a hole at its centre, which is used to connect further plug-in eye pieces, namely a night/thermal vision goggle with a big green lens and a silver&blue zooming (for real!) directed-energy cannon. Both pieces can be easily removed thanks to their protruding parts, but of course they prevent the drum from turning when connected. One more thing about the eye - the top-rear part of the helmet is a transparent window; when the drum displays the dark-purple eye, the light will first pass through this window and then through the hole in the cyber-socket positioned at 120° to the displayed eye, making the latter glow. Actually this works best with a strong light (I used the flash of my smartphone) in a relative dark environment, but in general the effect is quite perceptible, although it's not even close to the light beam that he uses to blind opponents in the comics.
That was just about Xonedar's head, but what about the rest of his body? Earlier I mentioned a lenticular sticker at the centre of Xonedar's chest, which is also visible when the armour is worn and gives him a kind of Iron Man look. Fictionally speaking, this chest-piece is a sort of reactor which powers Xonedar's vital functions, while in real life it simply spins via a dial on his back, causing its design to change and its colour to gradually fade from red to green to red and so on. The two parts, chest-piece and back-dial, are linked by a couple of gears inside Xonedar's torso, making the rotation effect somewhat gimmicky.

Last but not least, all the ball&socket connection points are particularly robust and allow several of Xonedar's body parts, i.e., head, torso, hands and shins, to be easily disconnected. Why? Well, he's a sort of cyborg and by reading his background story we learn that following an unspecified (but probably very bad) accident, every single cell of his body has been encased in a techno-element, giving him the ability to take different robotic forms. I wish such an ability could be mirrored by the figure, but of course it can't be. However, some of Xonedar's "powers" seen in the comics are well reproduced, such as his extensible neck, limbs and torso, and his transforming hand. I'll get more into the details in the accessories section.

Xonedar's stylised armour; the circle at the centre of the chest plate represents the power reactor.

Weapons and accessories
Xonedar comes with a large number of snap-on accessories. First of all, the extensions for his neck, torso, wrists and calves; these show a silver colour and many more cyber details than in the comics, which I really like, and in my opinion their length is just right, not too short, not too long. Since neck, wrists and shins are fictionally not only unlimitedly extensible but also flexible, each extension has one articulation point, expanding Xonedar's poses in a way that I couldn't have imagined. The torso extension is not articulated and is thicker than the others, but is also equipped with a small sliding door that reveals a hollow space within; this is a nice replica of the "bomb crusher" tool he will show in one of the next comic issues. Besides the extensions, there are also three silver&blue snap-on tools that can replace his left hand: a large 2-jaw articulated claw, a blaster with a spring-loaded missile, and a chainsaw. These tools are very nicely sculpted, also with many cyber details; funny thing is that we can attach them to any socket connection points we want and not only to the left wrist (though that's where we see them in the comics), with plenty of crazy combinations.
Additionally there are four other accessories: a microphone, a mouth shield, a long range listening device and a double rifle. Both the microphone and the mouth shield snap (one at a time) into the helmet, giving Xonedar an extra-cool look. The listening device slightly resembles a radar antenna, but is actually a parabolic microphone that plugs into the left side of the helmet, opposite to the earphone-dial. Finally, the dark-blue rifle has two side-by-side barrels and also works as an arm guard. This piece looks great and can connect to a sort of holster on the back (preventing, in this case, the dial-spinning feature) or split into two single rifles. The two bullets (which almost look like missiles) are also separate pieces and can detach from the weapon, but there is no spring-loaded mechanism in this case.

Overall, this action figure is badass! And not only because of the great deal of accessories, but also because it is an excellent replication of one of the the most formidable characters in the entire KR universe. Not even one small disappointment? Well, yes, the earphone-dial on the helmet. I wish a different solution for rolling the bionic eye could be found, so that the helmet would look as symmetric as is shown in the comics (update: there will be an identical, but fixed, earphone on the opposite side). By the way, now that we know that several variants are going to be released, I really hope Xonedar will get his own... in the comics he's seen merging with other characters or even transforming into a motorbike! Please, PoliganToys, give me those!