KR Review #41: Lor-Drek

I'm actually ahead on my KR reviews, so I thought I’d end this month with a look at the first figure in the Spektrosaur^TM faction - Lor-Drek^TM!

This 32^nd action figure prototype from PoliganToys is so impressive! He has easily become one of my favourite figures in the line so far.

Details

Name: Lor-Drek

Subtitle: dreadful leader

Classification: reptile of uncertain group

Sex: male

Relationships: adoptive father of Fai-Rha

Home: Tahron

Affiliation: Spektrosaur

Rank: marshal.

Background

Lor-Drek's first appearance is in the sixth KR comic issue Reptiles reunited. The last member of a race of magical dragon-like reptiles, Lor-Drek allied himself with Bi-Harr to fight in many epic battles during the war against the mammalian enemies. After several defeats, he became disgusted with Bi-Harr's leadership and left the reptilian army to form his own faction, bringing Tahron into a three-way war. For a long time the Spektrosaur army remained shadowy, until Lor-Drek was informed about the Rexodons’ plan to conduct a final attack against the Therioms. He decided to join Herrion/Loghar, seeking revenge against Tir-Hing, who had "stolen" his adoptive daughter Fai-Rha. Lor-Drek uses his ability to disguise himself as a human for tricking his foes by appearing harmless, but then reveals his true nature and leads his soldiers into battle.

Articulation

Standard, plus a hinged lower jaw, a pair of ball hinged wings and a tail that features two swivels at about one-third and two-thirds of its length.

Description

Head: similar to a Spinosaurus, but with a more dragonish look, characterised by a long and narrow snout, ochre (i.e., light brownish-yellow) skin, a large dark-green cranial crest, long pointy ears (each ending in a rather long, curved whitish horn), evil large dark eyes with vertical glow-in-the-dark yellow pupils, large sharp teeth along the edges of the jaws and a faintly forked tongue sculpted on the inside of the mouth

Body: ochre scaly skin, claw hands and feet. On the back, a dark-green neural spine sail and a pair of large bat-like wings project through openings in the armour. Also, a long, thick tail emerges from the bottom edge of the armour and extends downwards; this tail is a partial reuse of Li-Meh-Zor's appendage and ends with an ochre zigzagged point (which personally reminds me of Pikachu). The wings and the tail are painted in ochre on the underside and dark-green on the upper side. Additionally, the skin forming the surface of the wings presents several tears and holes

Wearables: a silver armour with brown details (the chest plate displays the Spektrosaur symbol, i.e., a greenish flame, at its centre), two silver bracelets, a brown leather armband around the right arm, two silver boots, a silver belt and a tattered brown scaly loincloth. Both the wrist guards and the belt buckle are shaped to resemble Lor-Drek's head slightly; while each bracer extends forwards to form a knuckle protector, the buckle holds a long strip of dark-green fabric.

Lor-Drek's stylised armour; the circle at the centre of the chest piece represents the Spektrosaur symbol.

Action feature

In the comics, flight is Lor-Drek's most obvious ability. This figure's impressive wings work in a different way compared to Alatryx's ones; they plug into the back armour (they can easily be removed, in case) and each only has one swivel/hinge point of articulation. However, they have a really great range of movement and I’m happy they are able to do more than just looking cool behind the figure.

Occasionally, by wrapping his wings around his body, Lor-Drek can disguise himself as a human. The transformation from reptile to human form takes a little work, but the process works ok overall. First, it's necessary to detach the head and the arms. Then, the armour, which is a whole solid removable piece including the sail, the wings and the tail, must be taken off by unplugging two little fasteners on the sides and disconnecting it from the back. Afterwards, a long cloak, whose soft plastic is painted in dark-green and shows a kind of "segmented" finish that somehow echoes the wings texture, wraps around his torso and legs, and connects on the back via a number of tabs that must be plugged in one by one. Finally, a pair of alternative arms and an alternative head must be attached. The arms are covered by long and wide dark-green sleeves and the hands show a white skin. The head wears a dark-green cowl that slightly extends downwards on the back, to blend in with the cloak (the extension is pliable and doesn't hamper the head movement). The face shows Hispanic features, white skin, darkened eye sockets (looks like he used quite a lot of black eye shadow), vaguely vertical slit-shaped dark pupils (just in case you've forgotten that he's in reality a reptile), strong cheekbones and a big black goatee on a prominent chin. This head sculpt is good too - despite the darkened, reptilian eyes (the latter isn't actually a very obvious detail), I don’t find him particularly villainous. He looks downright helpful, which is exactly the purpose of his camouflage.

Weapons and accessories

Besides the cloak and the swappable head and arms, Lor-Drek comes with a silver halberd, which is one of the four components of the Key (the one with the S-shaped blade) and the last halberd we get after Deptilion's, Tir-Hing's and Bi-Harr's ones. This means that we can finally assemble the Key! I think I've never mentioned this before, but, yes, the four halberds can actually be combined to form the legendary metal artifact, for the possession of which the four factions fight. It's all about joining the halberds two by two via small tabs between them and then fitting the two pairs of halberds together via two small slit-shaped recesses.

Finally, I am really glad for the inclusion of an additional accessory - a walking staff for Lor-Drek's human form. It's simply a long wooden stick, but it works as a human-hand-filler perfectly and has an undulating end that, again, evokes the true reptilian nature of the character.

Comic

Together with Lor-Drek's action figure we get the sixth comic issue Reptiles reunited, which has already been discussed in Kon-Rauan's review.

Overall, I’m really happy with Lor-Drek. Of course, the most positive thing about him might be that I finally got the chance to review the first Spektrosaur character after nearly seven months. However, I couldn’t have asked for a better figure to get started on that faction. The sculpt and the poseability of the wings are impressive. And both the heads alone are worth the whole figure for me. I can't wait to see the next Spektrosaur members, as Lor-Drek is pretty lonely at the moment.