Toy prototype details
Name: HadjtiTM
Subtitle: scaly amazon
Line: KR|Horizon
Item type: action figure - Nº 13 in the line.
Character details
Name: Hadjti
Classification: chondrichthyan
Sex: female
Home: Tahron
Era: 15 years after Foundation
Affiliation: Destructomorph
Rank: auxiliary warrior.
Background
First appearance: KR|Horizon #1 - The Destructomorph legacy
Brief bio: evolved from an ancient species of deep-sea creatures endowed with both gills and rudimentary lungs, Hadjti was the quartermaster of a group of marooners feared by many anglers who had only heard legends of those dreaded sea rovers. After their defeat by the hands of the Semhadrians, she was one of a handful of pirates who escaped and didn't surrender to their rival marine tribe. Eventually, Hadjti agreed to join the Destructomorphs and swore her allegiance to Deptilion. Because of her low rank within the faction and a considerable appetite for power, she ultimately joined forces with two fellow soldiers, the greedy AgledasTM and the silent but menacing EldogrumTM, with whom she saw her opportunities for advancement grow. However, the trio was forced to stand idle following Deptilion's demise during his final battle with the Therioms, and they survived by subjugating local folks and devouring livestock. When years later Nemhetra learnt of the existence of the powerful helmet that had been disassembled and hidden by her cousin Barkos, Hadjti was ordered to retrieve one of its fragments, which was enshrined in a temple on the island city-state of SemhadarTM, and took great pleasure in obeying her new master's command.
Articulation
Standard, excluding hinged abdomen and with the addition of a ball jointed tail.
Description
Head: similar to a mix of different types of sharks, characterised by grey-brown skin and an elongated, narrow flattened snout resembling a sword blade. About halfway along it, the snout bears a pair of long barbels as well as two additional flattened blade-like lateral projections on either side (each with a nostril and a small solid blue eye placed at the end), while its slightly keeled end is edged with large, sharp whitish teeth along each side. Two more pairs of small solid red eyes are located at the base of the rostrum, and behind each pair is a spiracle. The jaws are lined with prominent long, narrow nail-like whitish teeth, and are fictionally highly protrusible - although they are normally held flush against the underside of the head, in the figure they are extended almost to the end of the snout
Body: fairly slender; the grey-brown skin has a rough texture from a covering of placoid scales (or dermal denticles). The shoulders and the thighs are equipped with triangular flashy fins, whose margins are translucent grey; a similar, prominent dorsal fin (with a venomous spine located at its leading edge) projects from her back. While her 3-digit right hand and both feet are webbed and clawed, her left hand is replaced by two snake-like, flexible appendages. She also carries an extra neck piece that fits right on top of the body (it is glued on, but it might be possible to pry it off if one had will to do so) and shows three pairs of gill slits. Finally, she has a long, thin whip-like tail, which is a separate piece emerging from a hole in her suit and bearing a short tail guard at its base, a silver-spiked black cuff halfway down its length as well as a serrated ivory-white venomous sting at the end of a subtle heterocercal caudal fin
Wearables: a segmented, close-fitting one-piece black garment (similar to a swimsuit that covers the torso, except the back and upper chest) with light-blue details (including a trim along the upper edge, a stingray-like, diamond-shaped mark sculpted in relief on the front, and the entire part that covers the crotch), two black bracelets and two black calf protectors (each made by wrapping a disk-shaped piece of material round the forearm or the lower leg and fastening it with silver spike-rivets to create a rounded, spined fin-like structure sticking out of the side), and a studded glossy black belt. All the black (except for the belt) and light-blue components of her outfit seem to be made of scale armour and laminar armour, respectively. Additionally, she has two fairly large lizard-like, vampire squid-faced creatures wrapped around her trunk, with the beasts' heads emerging over her shoulders. The creatures' tails and necks criss-cross behind Hadjti's lower and upper back respectively, while the remaining parts of their bodies intersect each other diagonally on the front of the figure's torso. Their seemingly gelatinous bodies vary in colour from velvety black to pale and dark shades of red. A webbing of skin connects their eight facial arms, each lined with rows of whitish spines and equipped with suckers at the end. Their fairly large globular eyes appear blue with reddish streaks in the irises, while their beak-like jaws are ivory-white. Each has four short salamander-like clawed limbs, as well as a pair of ear-like fins projecting from the sides of the head and spanning almost the body's entire length, joining near the tail and kind of resembling wings.
Action feature
In the comics, Hadjti's two parasite creatures can fall off her body and help her attack their adversaries. Unfortunately, this feature cannot be recreated entirely with the toy, meaning that the two beasts can be removed from the figure's body, but cannot separate from each other, which is a bit disappointing. To display Hadjti without the two critters, it's necessary to detach her head, unplug a little fastener between the two tails, and slip the whole thing off the figure. Once the piece is removed, you can see a structure in the form of a suction disc on the underside of each creature, which can fictionally take a firm hold against Hadjti's body similarly to a remora. Nice little detail!
Additionally, Hadjti has the ability to store up immense amounts of energy in her left-hand appendages, then burst out in an electrocuting action, stunning her trapped foes before snatching them up by rapidly extending her jaws. So, the figure comes with two translucent blue lightning effects that can be attached to the two electric eel-like parts.
Weapons and accessories
Apart from the lightning effects, Hadjti comes with a devastating four-bladed axe, which is composed of a long metallic light-blue haft and two broad, differently shaped silver blades (whose cutting edges are parallel to the handle) at two opposite sides of each end. Each blade is roughly shaped like a fish tail fin: one resembling a pointed rhomboid, one ending in a jagged, more-or-less vertical edge with a slight inward curve, one shaped like a crescent moon and ending in two prongs, and one ending in a number of rounded cutting edges. The haft can also split in the middle, to produce two smaller double-bitted battleaxes.
Additionally, the figure includes an open reliquary, on which one of the three fragments of the lost helmet is displayed for veneration by the local community. The reliquary resembles a small fluted Corinthian-style limestone column supporting the helmet piece (which comprises part of the skull and the back).
Final thoughts
Character value: ♦♦♦♦ I mean, she is a shark-woman with multiple glowing eyes, a stinging tail, electrocuting tentacles, and an intricately frightening face. It’s like she is Tahron’s answer to a PredAlien, and, honestly, her characterisation is pretty much perfect for me. All those elements certainly make for an interesting action figure
Articulation: ♥♥♥ All of the joints are strong, but still fluid, and nothing inhibits the articulation. She does have her tail, but that is only articulated at the base, while I would have loved to see some more posing options there
Sculpt and paint: ♣♣♣♣ The head sculpt is absolutely beautiful and it is one of those perfect representations in the line; I don’t have anything to criticise here, and, you know, if the head is this detailed, the rest of the figure is surely following suit. If I did have to nitpick something in the paint department, I wish the wrist and shin guards were coloured more like in the comics, where they're more of a tarnished silver, but that is pretty slight
Accessories: ♠♠♠ Her axe is unique and looks good, but I had to take a hairdryer to straighten it out from the packaging. Now, while I certainly wasn’t expecting them to do it, it would have been kind of cool if PoliganToys had done something to recreate the retractable jaws. I am not saying to add a real feature, but an alternate head would have been a nice homage, especially since Hadjti doesn't even get separate versions of her two monsters
Playability: ♪♪♪♪ As far as construction and engineering go, I don’t have anything to point out in terms of design, she's just an enjoyable figure to stare at, as there are many little details that are fun to discover
Overall: ☺☺☺☺ I love this figure - she brings all of the detail and uniqueness with her (really, the sculpt and engineering put her very much in a class all of its own), but she still fits in perfectly with the rest of the line. She is definitely one of the best female villains in the KR world, and I think she lands near the top of the 2020 figure lineup as well.
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