Okay, time to switch gears to the figures themselves. These two are actually part of a “trio” along with Anubos (who was paired off with Scarabus’ for Monday’s review) dubbed the Dark Deities by the Four Horsemen that are based on the respective Egyptian Gods: Anubis, Thoth, & Horus. Scarabus obviously has some Egyptian ties himself, and here among his guardsmen we find some familiar look faces? Are thse the gods themselves now in servitude? Perhaps one day we’ll know the answer, but for now we must be content with the awesome figure.
The thing that makes these two guys really stand out is their color pallette; these two just seem more vivid than the rest of Scarabus’ cadre. I don’t mind one bit though. I like the blues on Horos and the white/copper combination on Thothos ended up being one of my favorite color schemes. For him, the brighter colors and the lack of any particularly dark areas makes me see him as a wiser, more balanced character than the others. Again, we’ll have to wait and see if my hunch pans out.
Though I enjoyed his colors, I wasn’t as fond of Thotho’s head sculpt. That’s not a repudiation of the piece – it’s an excellent ibis head and is perfect for a figure loosely based on Thoth, but it just isn’t appealing to me. He has plenty of fans though, so don’t let me spoil the fun.
Thothos regular Scarabus faceplate has a nifty scheme to it (one that looks pretty sharp on the main Scarabus actually), but I really dug his accessories – largely because of the green colors. He’s got green flames, green trim on his gear, and green Timekeeper armor. I’ve long wanted a green repaint of the Timekeeper Nybbaz and this encourages me to finally get around to customizing one.
Horos finishes off the trio and is the brightest hued of the whole group. I love the blue on him, it’s fiting as Horos was the god of the sky. I guess I just like the way it makes him pop out when he’s in with the group in the same way that the silver & purple draws attention to the Dormant Form Scarabus.
The color choice on him that really surprised me though was the magenta for his gear. I wouldn’t have chosen it, but I ended up loving it. I admit that I played around a bit more with the green gear from Thothos (the Four Horsemen need to incorporate more green into Fantastic) I ended up really enjoying the magenta cool just as much. To round things off, Horos included a set of bronze Timekeeper armor.
There is one other thing I wanted to mention on these two figures in particular. I’m looking ahead to Raven and thinking about the hooves on these particular two figures. I’ve said before that the hooves weren’t my favorite part of the sculpt overall, but they do seem a little more odd on these two than the others (Harues & Azazel aside, of course). I’m not sure what the scale/dimensions are on the upcoming Fantastic Exclusive 4 Winner, Raven, but I’m really hoping that I can swap those bird feet on to Thothos & Horos here when the time comes. As exceptional as this pair is, I think that might really enhance these two particular figures. We’ll give it a go when Raven reaches collector’s hands.
I think that sums up pretty much all I can say about the articulation. You might have noticed that no capes only appeared in the first and last pictures. The cape does block some of the movement at the neck and shoulders and gets in the way during some of the deep poses, but it’s still flexible enough that you can have with it on. So, one more thing that these figures managed to get right. Basically, these are well-articulated figures. There may not be anything innovative here, but there doesn’t need to be. The joints work well together and like some of the best articulated figures, you find more joints than you tend to know what to do with!
All the versions of Scarabus are currently available for order at StoreHorsemen.Com and check back with us tomorrow for a look at two more figures from the 10-pack!
A huge thanks out to all the Four Horsemen – Cornboy, Jim, Chris, and Eric – for making Scarabus Week a reality!
I don’t normally do this. They always say that once you get an article on the books that you leave it alone, but I just wasn’t happy with this one. It ended up being a bit of a rush job. Since it had only been up for a few hours, I decided a rewrite was in order! Hopefully, it’s a more cohesive piece now.
Birds with hooves? Now I’ve seen everything!
:-p
Thanks! I forgot that I wanted to mention that! Little bit of editing will fix that right up…
Basically, I’m hoping that the upcoming Raven’s ball-jointed feet might be able to swap on to these two with a little customizing. I’d love that to be the case.
horos’ staff looks incredible, that magenta is triple badass.
i must say, my one regret on these is that the ab crunch got axed. it means that they’d need to use different materials on the ab armor, but given how awesome the waist armor came out, i think that’d have been fine.
i actually like the hooves. they’re weird, but awesome.
I do enjoy the hooves for what they are, you know me though. I’m ready for some Fantastic Exclusive dudes with boots. 😉
It is a shame that there’s no cross compatibility with the Raven though, that could be really cool!
Am I the only one that’s having problems accepting these two as evil? I think my personal iconographic prejudices are to blame, but for some reason I can’t picture figures with 1) such bright color schemes and 2)ibis and falcon heads as demonic harbingers of doom.
Either way, Thothos was one of the five that I was targeting for my collection, and these pics confirm that. (I was going to pass on Horos, but this stupid review is tempting me.) I like to picture Thothos, Anubos and Horos as actually having animal heads instead of animal helmets, and that they’re actually sibling deities to Scarabus that try to counter Scarabus’ machinations.
i wrote up a short piece a while back, for the personal mythos, that scarabus was absorbing extradimensional deities to further expand his powers because when he incarnated as another deity, it suppressed his natural weakness (and since i use him as a djinni, that weakness is granting others’ wishes). he absorbed those particular gods because they were “good” aligned and even though he can express his desires through them, when he’s incarnated as one of those deities, he’s immune to compulsion spells that target “evil” deities.
a complicated way of saying, “scarabus is such a badass, he can become a good guy who can still do bad things, but they won’t be inherently evil.”
Some of them just don’t have an inherent evil in them and these are definitely two of ’em. I really like the idea that they are the actual gods conscripted into Scarabus’ army.
I ordered Scarabus, Haures, and Azazel, but that Dark Deities 3-pack is looking awfully tempting. Maybe next month I will order it.
Every time I look at Thothos I think of Assassins Creed. That color scheme just yells Ezio Auditore or at least the Ezio I played. Now I just need to figure out how to give him a hood and some hidden wrist blades….
I’m looking forward to Haures and Azazel for tomorrow! The Dark Deities are one of the coolest subsets though.
And now that you mention it, I do see some Assassins Creed colors! LOL
I hope we hear details on more of the characters at SDCC. I would love to see this come out on a regular basis as long as the QC stays where it is! DO you have a link to the original characters who were part of the poll from a few years ago?
I know! We need to see the Order of Lunogoth and the DÆmythor Family!