Jumping back in with a Key Raiders review of a particularly fun figure - The Xonatron!
The Xonatron is officially the first large scale figure in the KR line, even if we have already seen figures of this size (or larger) with the Titanic Fighter variant of Mor-Rak and the robot configuration of CoBoN.
This Xonedar variant has never been on the top of my want list, but the guys at PoliganToys did an impressive work with the prototype of this mixed creature. Let’s take a closer look!
Details
Name: The Xonatron
Real name: no name is actually mentioned for this character in the comics; at PoliganToys he has informally been referred to as "Monster Xonedar"
Subtitle: mutated form of Xonedar
Classification: uncertain
Sex: male
Home: Tahron
Affiliation: Theriom
Rank: lieutenant commander.
Background
There's not much to say about the Xonatron, except that he only appears briefly in the not-yet-printed final KR comic issue. In the story, we'll see a horde of mysterious invaders besieging the city of Ra-Hal. This new army includes three shape-shifting giants, who are unleashed by their leader upon the Therioms. During a fight, Xonedar overpowers one of them, Pleutron, by combining with him to form the Xonatron, a giant cyborg-like creature. Despite the double-edged nature of this merged life-form, Xonedar's mind manages to manipulate Pleutron into battling against the other two giants. Eventually, Xonedar frees himself just seconds before the three giants are brought down by Sei-Lha, who uses the power of her techno-armour to literally tear them apart piece by piece.
Articulation
Standard, except that the connection points at the waist, shoulders and hips are ball&socket (but the shoulders and hips are also hinged), and the neck features a double ball joint.
Description
Head: the Xonatron wears a dark-blue cyber helmet with silver details that is very reminiscent of Xonedar's mouth-shielded headgear. Besides the larger size, other differences are the absence of the dark visor and the presence of a squared opening in the mouth shield. The former exposes the deep set solid dark-purple eyes topped with thick black eyebrows, while the latter reveals the slightly open mouth (with the human-looking front teeth shown as a sign of anger), both surrounded by yellowish skin
Body: the figure is 23 cm tall (around 9'') and shows a very bulky sculpt. Wherever exposed, the skin displays a porous texture and a yellowish colour. Each hand is actually a large silver&blue 2-jaw articulated claw, very similar to one of Xonedar's signature snap-on tools
Wearables: a dark-blue armour with dark-green details, two silver wrist guards, two booster rocket-shaped silver boots, a dark-blue belt and a silver crotch piece that kinda looks like an engine. The tech armour shows tons of circuitry and panelling silver embellishments, and also has the same power reactor/lenticular sticker (whose design animates and colour shifts from red to green as it is viewed from different angles) seen with Xonedar, though there's no spinning feature here. An additional broad silver armour covering the back of the shoulders extends into two armholes and bears two hoses that stretch onto the chest plate. Each arm is equipped with a dark-blue shoulder pad that is connected to the wrist guard via a silver exoskeletal device; as a result, only the biceps and part of the forearms are left exposed. Each leg displays a dark-blue thigh/knee protector that carries, besides a number of silver details such as tubes, wires, pistons and gears, what looks like a tank tread on the front.
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| Xonatron's stylised armour and neck/shoulder guard; the circle at the base of the chest plate represents the power reactor. |
Action feature
In the comics, the Xonatron is generated by the fusion of Xonedar and Pleutron (one of three transforming giants) during an intense fight. In the 1980s, the advertising of a line of flexible, sticky action figures called Manglors promoted that the figures could be stretched, squashed, torn apart and then reassembled to their original form. The packaging of the toys even encouraged children to mix and match the parts of the various figures. The line was very controversial, because those advertising claims were proved untrue, since it was impossible to get the many pieces to hold together. Well, I wish such a technology could exist, because it would be very suitable for uniting Xonedar and Pleutron into the Xonatron. Instead, we get a preformed Xonatron figure that has a modular action feature with many snap-on body parts: head, neck (double ball-jointed), torso, pelvis, arms and legs. Apart from some silly part-swapping, so that for example a leg replaces an arm or the head connects to the butt, at the moment there's not much to play with, unless we get more Xonatron figures to create some weird combinations. The real fun will start when the three giants figures are also available. Those and the Xonatron will provide enough body parts to create countless different creatures or to amalgamate into a crazy enormous monster.
Additionally, similarly to Xonedar, the Xonatron's wrists and calves are extensible. However, in this case the extension feature is executed not by means of snap-on pieces but by real telescoping extremities. The range is obviously quite short, but the amount of cyber detail to those extensions is huge.
Weapons and accessories
Aside from his own several rearrangeable pieces, the Xonatron includes a few accessories. First is a silver&blue blaster that resembles Xonedar's snap-on cannon, although it is handheld (thanks to a hole in either pincer's joint that can accommodate for the weapon's handle) and has no spring-loaded missile (which is a shame). The butt of the blaster bears two plugs that, I guess, will allow the gun to connect to some other weapons from the three upcoming giants.
Also, we get a number of additional body parts: an alternative head, one extra leg, a pelvis extension and two Y-connector joints. The head is a fun piece, it's just the rendering of an early Xonatron's head sketch. It has a very blocky structure and a metallic blue colour, with an upside-down triangular glossy dark-purple visor, a W-shaped yellow strip in place of the mouth, and two horn-shaped silver projections emerging from the sides and pointing outwards and slightly up. The third leg looks different from the other two and can be plugged into the socket on the backside of the crotch piece, to make a three-legged creature. This leg has a monstrous appearance, with a porous yellowish skin (plus some dark wash and few translucent white spiny appendages towards the thigh), a clawed foot (with four white claws) and a dark-green shin guard that is equipped with a spiky ray fin-shaped ornament protruding from the calf. The silver pelvis extension has the same engine-like look of the crotch piece, into the back of which it plugs similarly to the leg. This piece really has no function now, but it carries two sockets on the sides and will probably be useful to hold additional legs when we have the other figures. Finally, the techno-looking silver Y-connector joints make it possible to create double shoulders, hips and neck. Again, not very instrumental now (it's a pity they didn't include an extra neck piece to produce a double-headed chap), but they'll come handy soon.
Overall, the Xonatron could have a few improvements, like a missile-firing blaster or an additional neck piece, but the final product is definitely satisfactory. I love interchangeable systems in toys, there is something special about part-swapping and being able to have this kind of fun with a 9” figure is rare. The only thing that’s going to make this better is more pieces... shape-shifting giants, Xonatron's waiting for you!
Special thanks to Matthew "Xonatron" Doucette of Xona Games for allowing us to use the name Xonatron.
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