Day Three arrives and there’s been a slight change in plans. I absconded to the studio late last night to take pictures of Horos & Thothos for the paint article, but the colorful figures had other plans. They (or maybe me) wanted to focus on articulation for today, so the pics took a turn for movement.
Our third installment in Scarabus Week could’ve gone one of two ways… Paint or Articulation. I wasn’t sure which one to do, but I loosely decided on paint and grabbed Thothos & Horos as they’re the two most colorful of the group. I have a different camera for close-ups and I started clicking away at all the little details, but after a bit of posing them to get various shots, I started to pose them more dramatically and, before too long, I’d grabbed the regular review camera and this became an articulation review instead. So, yeah, the figures more or less convinced me that they’d rather do articulation than paint. I didn’t argue.
The first thing you notice about the articulation is that… you don’t notice it. This is probably one of the underappreciated aspects of the design. The robes are layered not only to aid the articulation, but to also help disguise it. The cuts in the arm are similarly hidden by layered straps. In fact, very little of the articulation is even visible when the figure is in a neutral pose. I think, perhaps more than anything, that shows how expertly these figures are designed. At first glance, you might think him a little statue, but once you have him in your hands, you find out that’s he much more…
The leg articulation is pretty straight-forward though the curve of the calf and the ball-hoof required a bit of a learning curve. The articulation – a hinge knee and a ball-jointed hoof are relatively simple, but the anatomy itself requires a bit of though. Basically, if you leave the single-hinge knee joint fully closed/upright and line up the thighs with the back, you can find a more balance neutral pose with the hooves. If not, you’ll find that Scarabus has a tendency to stand with one shoulder back.
For the rest of the leg, the hips are most similar to DC Classics along with a swivel thigh. The aforementioned hoof ball-joint is embedded into the calf a bit, so it doesn’t have a lot of movement, but it does gets the job done.
The torso only features a few points: the waist, the optional pincers, & the tail. The waist joint is a simple swivel. It does have some give, but I don’t think that’s an intended feature though (so don’t be rough with it). The ball-jointed pincers are a fun addition to the figures and have plenty of range, but I find that I keep leaving them off more often than not. They’re cool and they work well, but, for some reason, I favor the figures without them.
The tail is probably the only part of the figure that I’m going to tell you to be careful with. I haven’t had any problems with my 10pk yet, but Vault dropped off his Light & Dark Talismans yesterday and the white one lost his tail in the weeks since that review. The peg is visible back there, while the tail has broken free and is now MIA.
On the torso, an ab crunch was sculpted (you can tell from the back), but was dropped during production to keep the figure under budget (I’m pretty sure I remember the 4H telling us about it). I do miss the joint while playing with the figure, but it’s not a deal-breaker. The figure still has great range despite its absence. I should also point out that the layering would have appeared to obscure the cut lines for it had it been included, so that’s still pretty cool even though the joint wasn’t included.
What’s left… the ball-jointed head has good range though the “horns” do block some movement here and there. Still, there’s full-swivel, some up and down, and really good tilt. The smaller heads like Melchon & Nergall should be rather excellent. The arms feature ball-jointed shoulders, swivel biceps, hinge elbows, and ball-jointed wrists.
While the legs are fun, I love how expressive the arms can be. I know there’s not a lot of special articulation here, but it’s literally all in the wrist (and the six different hands). No matter what poses you can get a figure into, the face and hands are typically static and can’t convey the emotion of the pose. With the interchangeable ball wrists, Scarabus solves that problem and it can really sell the poses. Continue to Page 2…
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!