Last week, I received an e-mail from fellow Four Horsemen fan, superdoug! If you’ll recall, the Four Horsemen had seven sets of Power Lords remaining after sending out their press kits. They wisely decided to send those out to folks that had pre-ordered; a chance for their fans to get some cool toys early! Well, superdoug was one of the lucky seven and wanted to share in the awesome he received. So today, superdoug’s got a guest review for us featuring Ggripptogg & Grabbtargg, & Ggrapptikk (Yep, all three! I just ran out of room in the title!). Have at it, superdoug!
Hey so this is my first ever review so bear with me. First off I am a child of the 80s and 90s. I grew up on G.I. Joe, He-Man, Transformers, Ninja Turtles, Disney Afternoons, X-Men, Spider-Man, Batman and Superman: The Animated Series, but never once did I ever hear of Power Lords. I do not remember ever seeing them at a friend’s house, in the store, or in an ad. Now, based on the little I know about the original line, part of it might be because I was actually too young and the line came and went before it would have hit the radar. With that being said, secondly I have kids of my own, limited space and a limited hobby budget so when the 4 Horsemen announced this line I wished them well and thought I would be able to hold on to my wallet. Not only that, but I had already stopped buying this scale. These were any easy pass until I got my hands on one. I am now completely hooked and if you have any of the earlier figures these full painted ones blow them out of the water!
Below I am reviewing the baddies of this first wave. Ggrapptikk (the blue one), Ggrabbtargg (the orange club exclusive) and Ggripptogg (the red). Now the blue guy was included in the top tier club level, but anyone can buy him. The orange guy, he comes with tier 2 and tier 3 of the club and if you are in either of those tiers you could buy extra. That rubbed some people the wrong way but in my opinion it’s a great idea.
Packaging: The packaging on these guys is lots of fun. The 4 Horsemen did a great job in designing packaging that can be reused. Now the corners can get a little bent up if you are not careful, but overall it’s pretty easy to put the figures back in. The look of the package is really reminiscent to my childhood toys. You get a great picture of the figure on the front and on the back you get info on the character and pictures of over figures in the line to collect. It would be lots of fun to run into these guys in the stores. The bright colors would draw curious people in to pick them up and look at them.
Sculpting: If you have any of the earlier releases the sculpt is pretty much the same with a few added goodies like two-sided faces and different forearms. Something I did not realize until seeing some comparison pictures is how close Ggripptogg looks to the original. The 4 Horsemen really stayed true to the original sculpt. They sharpened the lines here and there and added some details, but it is fantastically similar. Continue to Page 2…
What a great review and pics. I encourage you to do more of these, Superdoug. I quite enjoyed it.
I was eleven or so when the original Power Lords line was released by the model kit company Revell and remember it well, even though it only had a DC comic book miniseries and a video game to support its short-lived shelf life. I didn’t collect them mostly because the two-sided human figures made no aesthetic sense to me whatsoever, but I have a great fondness for most toy properties of the 70’s and 80’s, so when the 4H announced that they were doing these in 3 3/4 scale, my interest was piqued. I always wished that all the major 80’s lines (such as Masters of the Universe, Thundercats, Silverhawks, MASK, and Rambo) would have been done in this size range.
The actual carded figures look way cooler fully painted and the packaging would indeed look great at retail in this day and age. I hope the line does well enough to merit covering the remaining original characters and perhaps create some new ones, even if there isn’t sufficient demand to army build at Star Wars or G.I. Joe levels.
Nice job for the first time out, greenhorn!
Nice work!
Good job, Doug! Looking forward to the word balloons in your next review. 😛
awesome superdoug… it’s great to see these in the hands of real horsemen fans who love toys. well executed on the review, too. the only other thing i would love to see in a review is some actual parts swap with other glyos-compatible lines, just to see how well this cross germination of the joint system works… like putting some axis joints in these hips. 🙂
I hate the whole club concept. The Horsemen can make good enough toys that it’s sad to see them resort to Matty-like hype tactics.
I really wanted to pick up a Ggrapptikk solider but that price is awfully high. I get that it comes with a bunch of accessories, but it’s not like you can use the extra red arms and head without buying a completely separate figure.