KR Review #68: LoGoN

It might be easy for a relatively obscure character to get lost in the horde of KR prototypes that has been produced this year. But when you are LoGoN, a guy that looks like CoBoN on steroids, you demand your props!

Well, it also helps that this third large scale figure prototype from PoliganToys is the best piece of such proportions in the line yet.

Details

Name: LoGoN

Subtitle: hostile robotic machine

Classification: land vehicle

Home: Tahron

Affiliation: Destructomorph (formerly belonging to the Theriom faction)

Rank: transport.

Background

LoGoN's only appearance takes place in the not-yet-printed final KR comic issue, the same episode where also the Xonatron and Tmohrr appear. LoGoN is said to be a prototype of CoBoN, originally designed and built by Xonedar and Koptros, and is depicted as an off-road armoured vehicle that looks identical to its successor, except for the colour being metallic-black rather than silver. It is recounted that LoGoN's AI algorithm became corrupted, causing unpredictable and dangerous responses of the automated vehicle. For that reason, it was deactivated and placed in storage. Believed to be non-functional, its central processing unit has been reactivated via an unauthorised data transmission by a mysterious Destructomorph member, who has eventually stolen the vehicle with the aim of using it as a powerful weapon against the Therioms.

Description

LoGoN is able to convert into an heavily armed humanoid-looking robot with wheeled legs that also functions as a powered exoskeleton for its driver. This is the only form of LoGoN included in the package. If a transport version is ever made available, this will merely be a black repaint of CoBoN's vehicle mode.

Like its heroic robot counterpart, this figure is 30 cm tall (around 12'') and, due to cost saving reasons, it is mostly rotocast, which means it's essentially hollow. Except for lacking the hinged abdomen, LoGoN has as much articulation as a standard KR character, which allows the figure to move sufficiently well and pose properly in a number of dynamic action scenes. It also has all of the attention to detail in sculpt that one should be expecting from such a figure. Its "body" has tons of little details, while staying very accurate to the vehicle configuration. The paint job is great too, with a glossy black colour on its bodywork components and flat black (plus some silver here and there) on the parts that become exposed after the transformation.

Basically, the lower body derives from the front and rear parts of the vehicle that include the wheels (its feet are essentially a pair of two-wheel in-line skates), the arms from the sides, the back from the canopy and the head from the nose. The head reminds me of Optimus Prime a bit, which doesn't look evil enough in my opinion, but after all, having being built by the good guys, it makes sense. However, the centrepiece is the front surface of its torso, which includes the chest plate (derived from the forepart of the vehicle, which displays a scanner bar, represented by a black lenticular sticker, with green and purple patterns, i.e., two lines that sweep horizontally and a central pulsing "eye" that allows its driver to see) and the abdomen, and consists of a removable shell made of metal and glass.

Action feature, weapons and accessories

This all-new robot comes complete with real rolling wheels and two large pivoting black&silver weapons (i.e., a spring-loaded rocket launcher and a plasma cannon) mounted between its torso and arms, so that they can either be set in a vertical rest position or flipped over the shoulders for attack.

Also, in the comic issue that I previewed, LoGoN is operated by a mysterious white-suited driver; during its transformation into robot, the vehicle merges the driver with itself as an enclosed operator. So, the figure's trunk includes a static-ish bust of the driver’s upper body, which can be seen through the transparent parts of the front shell and can be completely exposed by removing such shell. The only moving part of this bust is the helmeted head, which is a ball jointed piece and whose white helmet (with a black visor and a thin longitudinal ochre line on the top) looks like a combination of the Stig (Top Gear) and a Peacekeeper (Hunger Games) headgear. The driver's torso is covered with a white armoured suit that has few ochre details and some cyber elements (such as tubes and circuitry), and shows a slender figure that suggests it might belong to a woman. The bust also displays beautifully sculpted silver tech-mech parts that mimic the physical connection between the driver's suited limbs and LoGoN's internal structure.

LoGoN driver's chest plate.

Overall, while I would certainly have preferred a complete vehicle + driver + robot set, I’m not willing to end this review with a low score because of that one drawback. I don’t think I would have criticised PoliganToys much if they’d said it was too expensive to develop a CoBoN-style multi-pack version of LoGoN and not produced anything at all. But instead, they created an outstanding, well-sculpted and super-detailed amalgamation of two components of that hypothetical 3pk. And they deserve big respect for it. This is easily the all-around best giant figure in the KR line so far and potentially an absolute must-have for collectors.