KR|Horizon Review #13: Destructomorph Goblins

Toy prototype details

Name: Destructomorph Goblins^TM

Subtitle: bionic troopers

Line: KR|Horizon

Item type: multi-pack (2-pack) - Nº 2 in the line.

Character details

Name: Destructomorph Goblin

Classification: bio-robotic hybrid

Sex: undefined (due to its ability to lay eggs via parthenogenetic reproduction, it is probably female)

Home: Tahron

Era: 15 years after Foundation

Affiliation: Destructomorph

Rank: drone.

Background

First appearance: KR|Horizon #1 - The Destructomorph legacy

Brief bio: after the defeat of most of Kinod's army during Demo-Rha's attempt to overtake Tahron alongside Alterok, the surviving holopodian mutants became outcasts who wandered along the borders of Tahron. However, a small group managed to avoid their banishment and became unauthorised guardians of Dekropolis. Years later, Tenophar^TM, the last surviving member of that squad, informed Nemhetra of the existence of the prodigious helmet that had been disassembled by her cousin Barkos, and helped her retrieve it before being double-crossed and killed. Mistrustful of the robot enforcers that once served her parents, Nemhetra nonetheless saw value in those powerful minions and agreed with her spiritual advisers that their use could prove beneficial. Using a combination of sorcery and science, she repaired the troopers’ cybernetics and cloned Tenophar into numberless replicants, who were stripped of their bodies and left with only their heads. Each clone's disembodied head was permanently encased in a domed cockpit, which was filled with the mystic water from Dekropolis' understructure and mounted to the torso of a restored android body. Outfitted in insect-derived bionic armour using a complex symbiotic interaction, these cyborg soldiers were also connected to the central computer-brain of Nemhetra's headquarters. That way, she augmented the old troopers and mass produced a deadly army of advanced, surgically enhanced soldiers capable of self-repairing battle damages, reshaping their design for combat versatility and efficiency, and overpowering all enemies, which came to symbolise the frightening return of the Destructomorphs.

Articulation

Standard, with the addition of a hinged extra tail/abdomen piece, two ball hinged arms (fully articulated in the orthopteran type) and, in the hemipteran type, two pairs of ball hinged rear appendages (wings and tentacles).

Description

In the comics, the Destructomorph Goblins appear as bio-robotic androids (part organic, part technological) that can transform into armed insectoid drones. Although the two figures are characterised by the same basic conformation, they belong to two different categories and look slightly different. So, I'm going to describe the two Goblins separately.

Orthopteran type

Head: like with the original Destructomorph Trooper, the silver (instead of black) metallic head resembles an Ankylosaurus' skull, characterised by a wide and low shape, a few mechanical and electrical components (including three new small blue LEDs on the forehead, which resemble eye spots), evil-looking shiny green (instead of glowing red) compound eyes and the front part of the jaws ending in a beak (here flanked by two additional side mandibles). He also wears a horned golden-yellow headgear, whose design is slightly different from the original version and kinda recalls a segmented hood. Two additional horns project backwards and down from the back of the head, right below the helmet's antenna-shaped silver horns

Body: all his limbs (including two main arms, two mole cricket-like arms and two legs) are characterised by a slender, segmented black chitinous appearance (bearing numerous details along their length, such as cracks, bumps and dark-brown stripes) and is protected by a number of silver metallic plates, which show some spikes and machinery/circuitry patterns, and act as shoulder guards, rerebraces and thigh guards. The main arms feature a pair of pincer-like grasping hands; each gripping hand is composed of two claw-like black fingers, the longest of which is spiky, while the shortest is toothed. The secondary, slightly smaller arms extend from the sides of his abdomen and end in a pair of shovel-like dark-brown hands; each hand is broad and flattened, and shows a series of tooth-like black structures. The elongated digitigrade legs are fictionally powerful and adapted for jumping; each thigh looks robust, while each knee is bent to accommodate the foot portion with the heel section high up. The legs end in four-digit dark-brown feet, with three massive claw-like black toes in front and one in back. The back armour carries two sets of narrow, blade-like silver vestigial wings pointing backwards. An extra insect-like abdomen piece is attached to the back of the crotch and is characterised by silver metallic segments that are ring-shaped and joined by seemingly flexible black membranes. Under the removable armour, the torso is the same tech-mech piece used for the original Troopers, with identical dials, sliders, buttons, knobs and rectangular lenticular sticker at the centre of the chest (which gives an illusion of coursing sound waves)

Wearables: a metallic red armour with golden-yellow details, two metallic red bracers, two metallic red calf protectors, a grooved metallic red belt with a buckle that looks like the Destructomorph symbol (i.e., a square-shaped spider whose back slightly resembles a demoniac face), and a laminar golden-yellow crotch piece. However, most of the torso is concealed by a cockpit for the holopodian mutant head, whose primary purpose is for mobility and protection as the head is vulnerable outside of this compartment. Apart from some differences in the colour scheme, this head is very similar to Tenophar's head, which came with the Queen Holopodian: the five "arms" are connected by a reddish, seemingly muscular membrane and radiate from a central disc that has an anthropoid dark-brown calcified nose; the two purplish top arms exhibit a pair of evil reddish eyes, which are topped by rough, dark-brown brow ridges and bear two elongated lobes resembling sensory appendages; below the eyes on either side of the head are bunches of tendril-like reddish filaments, which look like the stinging tentacles of a jellyfish; the purplish bottom arm is similar to a protruding chin and carries a humanoid mouth, which is slightly open and reveals several sharp yellowish teeth. The cockpit has a transparent protective covering through which the head can see, as well as holes for it to extend its tentacles through, so that it could manipulate objects. The head is built into the cockpit and while the entire portion is actually removable from the armour, the head itself is not accessible on its own; this choice was made so that the cockpit would be fully sealed and water could be added to create an interesting effect (the back of the cockpit has a little spot with a removable plug for this purpose). Each bracer and calf protector bear a double row of spines and a silver spur near the upper and lower end respectively.

Hemipteran type

The second figure is identical to the first one except for the following details:

• The secondary mole cricket-like arms are replaced by small arthropod-like dark-brown arms, each terminating in a black claw
• The feet are completely black and much simpler compared to the Orthopteran type's complex digitigrade feet
• The upper back is equipped with two pairs of large silver posable wings; each hind wing (which is patterned with dull dark-brown veins) is connected to the fore wing (covered in ridges where different metallic surfaces join), forming a single structure that shows several tech-mech details (including a counter-gravity field generator) on the underside. At rest, the wings are held folded overlapping the back
• The lower back features a pair of long silver bendy appendages, which resemble two mechanical tentacles and end in dark-brown pinching weapons for grabbing and crushing foes.

Destructomorph Goblin's stylised armour; the circle at the centre of the chest piece represents a peg, to which the head-cockpit or other accessories connect.

Action feature

Both figures can be posed in either an anthropoid mode or an insectoid mode. It's interesting to sum up the way the former configuration transforms into the latter, both fictionally and in reality, to appreciate all the cool details:

1. Two insect head halves slide over and unite using a sort of nano-engineering technology, to conceal the cockpit of the holopodian mutant head on the chest. In the toy, it's necessary to remove the cockpit portion from the armour and replace it with an additional insect head, which is held vertically parallel to the torso, with the mouth at the bottom. This head is characterised by a scaly glossy black hood that surrounds and merges with a silver snout. It displays a pair of long, thread-like black antennae with multiple joints (each antenna can pivot, so it can point towards any direction, and ends in a stinger that resembles a scorpion's tail), a pair of large bulbous black eyes which give all-round vision (each featuring a red glowing horizontal slit plus a beady-eye spot in the centre), seven smaller blue eye spots arranged in a star-shape on the forehead and a complex golden-jawed grasshopper-like mouth composed of a finely serrated upper labrum, two heavily toothed mandibles, two maxillae with cutting edges and a number of small teeth (flanked by two pairs of black segmented appendages or palps), and a two-fanged lower labium (also flanked by a pair of short palps)
2. The insect head on the chest folds up to conceal the robot's head. In the toy, the insect head is simply detached from the torso (exposing a peg on the chest plate that can be hidden with an additional triangular, reactor-like yellow glowing piece) and attached to the neck ball joint in place of the standard head, lying at an angle to the body (the sockets that connect to the chest and to the neck are different)
3. The six limbs of the anthropoid mode also work as the six legs of the insectoid mode (the feet swing to align with the lower legs)
4. The "tail" piece folds down to become the insect abdomen
5. In the hemipteran type, the wings spread out to a flapping position.

Additionally, in the comics the insectoid Goblins have the ability to combine and create larger armoured robots; these range from a three-unit droid (with one Goblin forming the legs, another one forming the torso and the arms, and another one forming the horned head), to a massive mecha with two "stag beetle mandible"-shaped wings, which is the combination of approximately hundred Goblins. Ten selected Goblins are also able to merge with Nemhetra's robatar, to form her evil super-robatar. Obviously, none of these features can be recreated with the toys.

Weapons and accessories

Apart from the insect head and chest reactor piece, each Destructomorph Goblin comes with a golden-yellow laser pistol, whose design is very similar to the previous Destructomorph soldiers' (Troopers and Riders) guns.

Additionally, each Goblin has an alternative head that is equipped with a black overhead cannon (which fictionally comes out of the helmet) and shows green glowing eyes.

Also, the package includes a pair of barbed silver stinger-missiles, which can optionally plug into the figures' "tails", insects' mouths, pistols or overhead cannons.

Finally, there is a stone nest in which two separate "eggs" are laid. In the comics, these eggs, which are actually parasitised pupae of giant insects called poligavoids, are used by Nemhetra to produce the monstrous bionic Goblins who serve her: the bio-robotic androids, composed of the former Troopers' bodies and the holopodian mutants' heads, parasitise the larvae of the poligavoids; each android germinates in the living larva, kills and mummifies it, and then an insect-looking cyborg body emerges from the egg-like corpse of the poligavoid. Each chrysalis piece is enclosed in a hard brownish, black-spotted shell (this outer case is cracked in certain parts, exposing a greenish-yellow leathery glowing membrane) and twined in a silver cable (the link with Dekropolis' central computer).

Destructomorph Goblin's stylised helmet with overhead cannon deployed.

Destructomorph Goblin's life cycle.

Final thoughts

Character value: ♦♦♦♦ Since the Goblins showed up in the KR|Horizon comics in all three episodes, they are definitely characters that jump out at me as a must-have in the line

Articulation: ♥♥♥♥ They move just like most figures in the line and feel quite similar to previous insect-themed figures

Sculpt and paint: ♣♣♣♣♣ The Goblins are great looking figures that definitely stand out on display thanks to their badass appearance and vibrant colour scheme. I really like their head sculpts... all of them! They have a neat, clean paint job and a great silhouette thanks to their many appendages

Accessories: ♠♠♠♠ They've got some excellent accessories, including interchangeable heads, which is a really nice feature. Seriously, I wish more figures in this line had different options for interchangeable heads. The stinger is also a cool and rather wicked looking accessory that the figures can even hold better than their standard guns

Playability: ♪♪♪♪ These are probably going to become my favourite evil warriors in this series and will always be a part of the group of figures I will be playing with. I mean, they're semi-robotic reptile-insect-holopodian hybrids! How could you not like figures like these?

Overall: ☺☺☺☺ I was surprised by how impressive the Goblins turned out. Being main KR|Horizon characters, they have definitely got an awesome design and they make for a great looking multi-pack. They are pretty epic and really make me feel like I'd be getting a lot for my money here.