KR Review #17: Tauton

For me, December is a “yeah!” month for Key Raiders (well... not only for that, hehe). While some figures finally got their variants in the line and there will be more surprises in the coming days, my personal “yeah!” is for none other than the fighting lieutenant himself - Tauton^TM!

Tauton is the 14^th action figure prototype I've received from PoliganToys.

Details

Name: Tauton

Subtitle: fighting officer

Classification: human

Sex: male

Home: Tahron

Affiliation: Theriom

Rank: officer cadet; expert in hand-to-hand combat and weapons master.

Background

Tauton makes his first appearance in the third KR comic issue Clash of the leaders. At a young age, Tauton was asked by King Li-Khon^TM to step into his army of brave Theriom Troopers and take up the arms against the reptilian forces. As a result, he fought courageously with Tir-Hing against Bi-Harr's thirst for tyranny, eventually rising to the rank of officer. In addition to his great abilities in combat and use of traditional weapons, Tauton is also a skilled engineer and constructed a pair of robotic gauntlets as well as a set of advanced electronic weapons. Tauton is often called to fight for justice alongside the heroic Therioms, countering evil with his smashing power.

Articulation

Standard, except that the wrists are ball jointed and the right hand is especially engineered with a hinge to hold an arrow.

Description

Head: Asian features, olive brown skin, black hair, hazel eyes. He sports a band of golden fabric (ornamented with black designs vaguely reminiscent of Asian characters) worn around the head

Body: torso, arms and legs covered with a tight black uniform. The uniform looks solid black at a distance, but up close it appears to be painted in a camouflage pattern of black and very dark grey

Wearables: two studded glossy black bracelets, two black boots, a glossy black (obviously) belt and a golden groin protector. The sculpt of his feet vaguely suggests that the boots are actually a combination of socks and rope sandals.

Tauton is also equipped with two different outfits, which, to make it easier (and not because I like using words relevant to feudal Japan in a totally unrelated context), I will call ninja and samurai respectively. The ninja clothing is composed of a black thigh-length tunic, which is complemented with a hood (the piece formed of the two long, windswept ends of the headband can be detached at the knot on the back of his head), a dark-grey sash round the waist with a small silver dagger tucked in, and a very detailed golden bandolier (i.e., a shoulder belt), all in one sculpted piece. The samurai gear includes an alternative head wearing a full-face black helmet, a black cuirass with gold details, two golden shoulder armours (with raised, riveted ridges showing where the plates come together), two golden clip-on greaves with studded knee guards, and a golden tasset belt. Each element shows lots of tech-mech details, which add an interesting cyber character to the samurai look. The helmet looks like a rigid balaclava, which perhaps would fit the ninja outfit better, but the subtle presence of a dome on the top and a neck guard on the back still give hints of a samurai theme; the facial armour displays a reinforced mouth protector and a silver visor, which can be removed to make the eyes visible. One of the two greaves carries a sheath with the same small silver dagger seen in the ninja garb, which is unfortunately not removable. The tasset belt displays small silver weapons, i.e., throwing stars and hand grenades, all the way around.

Of course, these are the two extreme cases... the real fun starts with mixing and matching all those elements to create unlimited (well, almost) combinations.

Tauton's stylised "samurai" armour.

Action feature

Tauton is a skillful martial artists, kick-boxer and weapons specialist. These abilities are brought to life thanks to a great deal of accessories, of which many have been listed in the wearables section and more will be described later. But what really takes his combat skills to the next level is a pair of large golden snap-on techno-gauntlets. These can replace the original hands and are definitely (and intentionally) disproportionate. The gauntlets work both as armoured gloves and sleeve armours, and are characterised by different poses: fist for the left one and chopping hand for the right one.

Weapons and accessories

In addition to the alternative head, clothing accessories and gauntlets, Tauton comes with a black quiver that can connect to the back of either the ninja shoulder belt or the samurai cuirass; it contains several arrows (which are not removable, but have differently shaped fletching, indicating that each possesses a different specialty) and bears a number of holsters. These include one front and one side clips, which are designed to store a compound bow and a stick respectively, and two side scabbards for two swords. The swords, a smaller wakizashi and a bigger techno-katana, have slightly curved blades, which can be detached from their hilts and attached to the extremities of the stick to form a double-bladed staff. Alternatively, the stick may be equipped with two kamas at its ends. Additionally, we get a nunchaku with a functional plastic chain, which can be stored on the tasset belt and even connected to one end of the stick to create a flail, and a single arrow, which can be held by the special right hand. All these weapons are partially black and partially (the metal parts) golden colour.

Finally, the bandolier and the tasset belt can be decorated with two swappable snap-on emblems: a red Theriom symbol (a seven-pointed star with the two side points elongated) and a silver symbol that evokes a throwing-star.

Overall, Tauton is a solid figure for the line. I'm really glad that his gauntlets are worked up to be compatible with other figures, like Xonedar^TM and the Destructomorph Troopers^TM. Also, some original thought went into the design instead of just a straight comic rendering: the new pieces, such as the ninja tunic and the swappable emblems, are all sharp and kick-ass, allowing for plenty of display options.