KR|Horizon Review #20: Eldogrum

Toy prototype details

Name: Eldogrum^TM

Subtitle: sand-blasting thug

Line: KR|Horizon

Item type: action figure - Nº 17 in the line.

Character details

Name: Eldogrum

Classification: reptile-like pinniped mammal

Sex: male

Home: Tahron

Era: 15 years after Foundation

Affiliation: Destructomorph

Rank: auxiliary warrior.

Background

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

Brief bio: a member of a grouping of nomadic pinnipeds who acquired reptile-like features to adapt to the extreme desert, Eldogrum was enlisted into the Destructomorph army when Deptilion's forces invaded his home sandplain. A heavily built creature with a disproportionately small head and a huge barrel-shaped body, he was turned into a thoughtless enforcer by Demo-Rha. Although he was physically strong, his limited intelligence and his vulnerability to high pitched shrieks, which would cause him to panic, led his wicked mentor to dismiss him as a mere foot soldier. Unfit for command, Eldogrum soon came to the service of the greedy adjutant Agledas, who recognised not only his strength, but also his skills at creating violent whirlwinds using his powerful lungs. Following Deptilion's demise during his final battle with the Therioms, Agledas enhanced and exploited Eldogrum's abilities to subjugate whole villages, by terrorising the local folks with gigantic sandstorms if they did not comply with their rule of law. When years later Nemhetra learnt of the existence of the enchanted helmet that had been disassembled and hidden by her cousin Barkos, Eldogrum was ordered to retrieve one of its fragments, which was enshrined in a temple in the dry, pebble-strewn valleys of Harir^TM, and he accepted the task, hungering for more rivals to perish by his destructive exhalations.

Articulation

Standard.

Description

Head: vaguely similar to a walrus, characterised by cinnamon-coloured (i.e., orange-tinged brown) warty skin, seemingly empty dark eye sockets, and a wide open mouth displaying many sharp ivory teeth as well as two long downward-pointing tusks. The eyes actually look to be of a bright yellow reptile type to stand out a bit, but that detail is almost impossible to see with the too dark eye sockets, which are surrounded by rough, yellowish calcified outgrowths that form a prominent brow ridge. Roofing the upper lip is a broad mat of stiff yellowish bristles, giving him a whiskered appearance. A growth of long, stiff yellowish bristles on his spike-crested head is kept off the face by a steel diadem bearing an ovoid purplish gemstone in its centre as well as two side crests (each crest is composed of a silver horn and a large pointy ear-like golden-yellow ornament)

Body: he exhibits a brand new bulky sculpt, whose exposed limbs show highly wrinkled, cinnamon-coloured skin that is sparsely covered with warts and fur, as well as claw hands and feet with long dark-brown nails. The skin appears especially thick around the neck, thanks to an extra air sac piece that fits right on top of the body and shows significant nodules. Each thigh is equipped with a pair of broad, flat radially-arranged (i.e., one directed towards the front and one towards the back) flashy flaps similar to fins, whose surfaces are patterned with veins. Finally, he wears a pair of steel armbands that extend upwards forming two shoulder guards, each equipped with a pair of flattened projecting surfaces similar to the leg-fins

Wearables: a high-tech golden-yellow armour with dark-purple details (including a number of tubes that seemingly connect a backpack to his throat sac, and a weapon holster/carrier on the back), two yellowish-brown bracelets, two yellowish-brown calf protectors with knee guards, a yellowish-brown belt (displaying a high-tech golden-yellow buckle) and a badly torn dark-purple loincloth. The bracelets, shin guards and belt are made of a light tan plastic with a pale brown dry brushing, which gives these items an interesting peach-beige sandstone look.

Eldogrum's stylised armour.

Action feature

In the comics, Eldogrum has the ability to exhale giant vortexes of violently rotating air, which can generate powerful whirlwinds and even create an entire army of evil creatures made out of sand. For achieving this destructive effect, Eldogrum's strange pan flute-shaped compressor-backpack is connected via two dark-purple pliable tubes to two vents on the abdominal area of his tech armour; the armour, in turn, is seemingly connected to the air sac under his throat with the aid of additional tubing. More details about this feature in the following section.

Weapons and accessories

Eldogrum comes with an incredible weapon, which is a combination of a crossbow, a double-bitted axe and a blowgun, and can be stored on his back thanks to an included dark-purple carrier equipped with two snaps. The weapon has a metallic dark-purple main frame (which also serves as a tech-mech blowgun for creating the above-mentioned air vortexes), two golden-yellow pivoting limbs (which also act as axe blades when they are in a "flexed" position) and a separate silver quarrel. The foregrip on the bottom of the main frame allows the figure to hold the accessory like a crossbow (it's even got an extra rotating handle sticking off one side for two-handed firing), while the blowgun's mouthpiece (which fits perfectly in the figure's mouth) functions as an additional handle, so the accessory can be displayed as a melee weapon.

Additionally, there is a yellowish-brown dust devil blast effect that plugs snugly into the blowgun's muzzle or, alternatively, into Eldogrum's mouth.

Finally, 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 tree stub (with ornamented metal hoops round it) supporting the helmet piece (which comprises part of the skull and the right side). In theory, the three pieces that come with Eldogrum, Agledas and Hadjti can be fitted together to produce the complete helmet.

Final thoughts

Character value: ♦♦♦ The three Destructomorph auxiliary warriors are the definition of dark horse characters, in that they were only created so their eventual disappearance would be something that nobody would care about, but they have a huge potential to become fan favourites. So, here they are, getting toy prototypes. And this toy, like the previous two, is insanely good

Articulation: ♥♥♥♥ Eldogrum is articulated just the same as any KR figure. Thankfully, his bulky armour doesn’t impede his articulation much (perhaps only a little around the shoulders)

Sculpt and paint: ♣♣♣♣ His sculpt is awesome! Seriously, Eldogrum is one of the best looking KR|Horizon figures I've seen. The head-sculpt is incredible and really gives him a fearful, stern demeanour. The tech details on his chest and belt buckle nicely tie him in with Nemhetra's army, despite not having a typical Destructomorph look. There are also paint highlights and accents all over, which are brought out by some subtle colour differentiations - it is small, but it helps bring out a lot of detail

Accessories: ♠♠♠♠ I love his weapon. It features some great sculpting and looks really, really brutal, definitely making him appear like a bloodthirsty warrior

Playability: ♪♪♪ This really is a fantastic figure – he’s big, sturdy, detailed, and certainly fun to play with

Overall: ☺☺☺☺ Even in light of the really strong prototypes that have been produced recently, Eldogrum still stands out. It will be tough for the subsequent figures to live up to him, but I am positive the folks at PoliganToys are up to the challenge. After all, the whole series has been characterised by utterly exceeding expectations. If the remaining characters can be like this epic figure, then we’re in luck.

KR|Horizon Review #19: Fai-Rha (Horizon Edition)

Toy prototype details

Name: Fai-Rha^TM (Horizon Edition)

Subtitle: heroic advice-giver

Line: KR|Horizon

Item type: action figure - Nº 16 in the line.

Character details

Name: Fai-Rha

Real name: Rhadiel Amhalgaard^TM

Classification: human-primivod hybrid (but she looks completely human)

Sex: female

Relationships: younger sister of Desion (Masq-Lor) and Herrion, cousin of Nemhetra

Home: Tahron

Era: 15 years after Foundation

Affiliation: Theriom

Rank: Senior Advisor.

Background

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

Brief bio: during her childhood, Rhadiel was abducted together with her older brothers by her uncle Ir-Ash and offered to the Spektrosaurs in exchange for recruitment in their army. In Artelon, she was raised under the name Fai-Rha by Lor-Drek, to whom she looked up as her father until she learnt of his villainous nature and chose to defect to the Independent Warriors. While helping her leader Bellius fight the evil reptilian forces, Fai-Rha was recognised by Elykta as one of Tir-Hing's abducted children. Called to fulfil her destiny, she joined forces with her brother Masq-Lor and the Therioms, who were caught in a four-way war with the armies of Bi-Harr, Lor-Drek and Deptilion. After learning to use a prodigious helmet for channelling an ancient power and acquiring incredible abilities as well as forming new arms in the midst of battle, Fai-Rha remained in Theriom City to fight off evil until she and her family could reunite with her long-lost brother Herrion. While she was serving in the role of Senior Advisor years after the oppression of their foes had been ended, the threat of the Therioms' old enemy once more brought Rhadiel and her brothers to one final conflict with the wicked Nemhetra and her army of dreadful creatures. By wielding their halberds and recovering an ancient power hidden in their magical helmets, the three courageous siblings could at last return to their mission in a glorious new form.

Articulation

Standard, excluding hinged abdomen.

Description

In the Horizon comics, it is revealed that each prodigious helmet holds a sample of liquid alloy, which was hidden by Galamars after forging the enchanted artefacts. When the liquid metal is combined with a tiny amount of the helmet wearer's blood, a small cyan ball lightning arises and creates a statue (called totem and made of the same material as the helmets and halberds) of an animal, behind which there is a sort of chair. When the helmet wearer introduces their halberd into a slot on the side of the totem, and sits in the chair with their hands and feet positioned on apposite rests, a connector automatically inserts into the helmet's socket, i.e., the hollow left after extracting the liquid alloy vial. The wearer appears to lose consciousness, when in fact their consciousness is relayed into a robotic avatar (called robatar) that forms from the totem moments later. Fai-Rha's totem is a sitting panther and her robatar, which is the figure included in this pack, can be described as follows:

Head: similar to the White Ranger's helmet, characterised by a silver outer shell with a pair of cat ears and a sharp-toothed mouth guard, a matte black face shield, and a glossy black visor surrounded by a cyan glowing edge that is connected to two fierce feline eyes on the forehead

Body: protected by a vac-metal gold cuirass with metallic red details, vac-metal gold gauntlets, boots (with knee guards) and belt, and a metallic red crotch shell. Besides these basic components, there are various dull black pieces of armour to protect the rest of the body, such as shoulder guards, rerebraces and thigh guards. There is an impressive amount of intricate decorative features all around the numerous components of this protective covering; I especially like the small Theriom emblems engraved on the wrist and knee guards, and the little gaps here and there that reveal steel tech-mech details beneath the armour.

Both the helmet (with vac-metal gold side and top crests) and the cuirass (with added Theriom emblem, i.e., a seven-pointed star with the two side points elongated) display a few decorative details that recall Foundation Fai-Rha's outfit.

Fai-Rha's robatar's stylised cuirass; the oval on the chest plate represents the Theriom symbol.

Action feature

To simulate the retractile laser-like claws seen in the comics, a pair of long cyan glowing blades (kind of reminiscent of ULTRAMAN's specium blades) can snap into each forearm armour. Additionally, two articulated flaps at the back of the armour on the calves can reveal a pair of leg boosters with cyan glowing propulsion effects.

Weapons and accessories

Fai-Rha's robatar comes with a set of accessories that are meant to update Apprentice Advisor Fai-Rha, for representing her older version in the role of Senior Advisor. The set includes three heads, a piece of armour and two weapons. The first head is characterised by light brown skin, long black hair drawn back into a chignon and secured with elaborate gold barrettes, and green eyes. The other two portraits are identical, except that they wear the silver magic helmet, one in its inactive form and one that displays the black panther visor activated.

The additional backless armour/tunic is painted in golden-yellow with pearlised red details and is made from a flexible plastic. It can go on and off easily thanks to its wide, plunging neckline that slides over AAF figure, and has a waistband that clasps in the back - although it makes the figure look a bit bulky, it thankfully fits the original dress and works well for the most part. I really like the Romanesque quality to it, owing to those four large lappets on the front, and I am actually quite surprised how much it doesn’t inhibit the movement and articulation, even with the cape on.

The weapons include a halberd, which is one of the four components of the Key (the one with the S-shaped blade) and the same halberd that belongs to Lor-Drek in the Foundation series, except from being painted with some greenish oxidised bronze details here and there rather than plain silver. The other weapon is Fai-Rha's signature bō stick made of worn out reddish-brown wood and adorned with relatively simply designed tarnished silver ends.

Finally, the figure comes with some great additional accessories: a cyber-steed, an extra cyber-head and a massive bladed weapon that serve as the third and final instalment of the Build-a-Figure plan in the KR|Horizon series. As explained previously, some of the action figures in the line come with a number of components needed to build an even larger figure, specifically a heroic super-robatar that is shown at the end of the KR|Horizon comic book series. The included creature is a robotic version of Merados, which in the comics also forms from the totem together with the robatar. This figure features joints all over the place: ball jointed upper neck, hinged lower neck, hinged shoulders/hips, and swivel-hinged knees/hocks, fetlocks and tail. It is, of course, an all-new sculpt that resembles a mix between Fai-Rha's original steed and Jeeg's Panzeroid, and has a detailed silver&metallic-purple body marked with jagged black stripes here and there, a translucent red mane and tail, and two pivoting launchers with separate missiles (which can be replaced with two included spiked silver sword blades) on both sides of the body. The extra head (which is supposed to form from the robatar's body when Fai-Rha's black panther visor is activated, and to become the right wrist of the super-robatar) looks like a large-scale, Voltron-like robot panther head, while the weapon is a huge tech-mech version of the three siblings' halberds joined together. Now that I have completed the cyber-steeds line-up, which all feature multiple weapon attachments and include motorbike-like seats for their respective riders, we finally come to the main attraction, the fully transformed super-robatar (or SR)! I had a blast converting the three figures into this towering toy and, I must say, the transformation process is not too challenging. Morphing the mechanised version of Ki-Wun, which balls all up to form the torso, is the initial step: its tail lifts and flips against the back, its head swings down to form the beast crest on the SR's chest, the forelegs fold and compress into the shoulder armours (which become part of the SR's shoulders and rotate forward, so that the missile launchers are placed on top), while the hind legs straighten to become anchors for the SR's four-legged lower body. Cyber-Merados' back splits open wide and then shuts to accommodate its head, which bends and retracts into the body. Mecha-Zor-Kan's legs and tail collapse down to fit around its belly, while the nacelles, which form the SR's arms, slide outwards and its body swings 180 degrees to become part of the SR's winged back. The rest of the process is as simple as sliding out all the six missiles (for replacing them with other pieces) and connecting the three components: Ki-Wun docks into Merados by entering the neck hole with its legs, while Zor-Kan locks onto Ki-Wun's back and shoulders. Finally, there's the head and the wrists-plus-hands that have to be attached: Herrion's and Fai-Rha's giant cyber-heads attach to the SR's forearms (their jaws open wide in order to insert two of the four available hands into their mouths), while Masq-Lor's one connects to the SR's neck (its ears rotate outwards to become horns and its lower jaw opens wide to reveal the SR's humanoid, bright-eyed face, which strongly resembles Desion's visage). The entire process reveals remarkable craftsmanship, not only in how it all transforms, but also in the toy's solid construction - I never once feared that anything would break. The impressive combined SR form is 30 cm tall (around 12'') and features a four-winged anthropoid upper body with a horned beast's head on its chest, as well as a horsey lower body; it also has laser blasters on the shoulders, shooting fists (while new hands fictionally regenerate from the forearms), giant sword blades on the hindquarters, a triple halberd for melee combat as well as for throwing (fictionally dispensed by the unfolding "peytral"), and the ability to produce a powerful energy beam from the mouth cavity in its chest. A beautiful panel in the third and final KR|Horizon comic issue shows how the SR's silhouette recalls the Theriom symbol, with the head, upper wings, arms-plus-lower wings and forelegs representing the seven points.

Senior Advisor Fai-Rha's stylised helmet with side and top crests.

Final thoughts

Character value: ♦♦♦♦ Although Fai-Rha is one of the main characters of the KR|Horizon comics since the beginning of the story, her robatar version only appears in the second issue of the series and, I have to say, it is captured perfectly here - she looks great!

Articulation: ♥♥♥♥ The figure features the same strong durable joints as others in the KR line: stable enough to hold poses, and solid enough to stand up to play

Sculpt and paint: ♣♣♣♣ Many excellent design decisions have been made here, making this robatar version of Fai-Rha different enough from the two previous figures that are linked to her brothers. The paint detail is excellent too, I spotted no overspray or mess anywhere on the figure

Accessories: ♠♠♠♠ Among the many add-ons, with its great articulation and pivoting rear cannons, cyber-Merados is a really fun toy on its own

Playability: ♪♪♪♪ It's tough to go wrong with this figure. She's fun to play with, has a cool design, and her mecha-steed is just aces

Overall: ☺☺☺☺ Horizon Fai-Rha is one of the best figures in the line, and an excellent complement to her brothers' variants. However, even if you didn’t want to complete the super-robatar figure, but you did want a great toy, this would be a figure worth owning.