[Toy] Modern Ever-Living Mumm-Ra

Toy has posted a new item, 'Modern Ever-Living Mumm-Ra'





Taking a break from Transformers, I though I would rip out a fellow that took me
a while to get a hold of. Mumm-Ra the Ever Living. Not to be confused with
Mumm-Ra the normal living. As I watched the modern Thundercats show and enjoyed
it, I decided that having Lion-O without Mumm-Ra is a bit like Optimus without
Megatron, Harry without Voldemort, Drift without hateful angry Transformers
fans.So I pooled some resources and hunted this big boy down. Actually, come to
think of it, I have a feeling I bought this guy from a local Toys R Us when they
first showed up on the shelves in Australia. Not buying something online for
once?? Heaven forbid!I have noticed a trend of the bad guys not getting quite
the same amount of love that the good guys get when it comes to toy design,
which I suspect is entirely due to discrimination! Or the fact that bad guys
dont appear to sell as well, which I think is a shame as normally the baddies
are much more interesting than Vanilla Hero. So how does Modern Mumm-Ra stack
up?Better then I expected, except for one GLARING oversight


Fairly standard blister pack with multilingual blurb on the back. Remember
folks, these were only released for the U.S.A at first, after a year and a half
they filtered through to Australia As usual there is some fantastic artwork for
Mumm-Ra on the package. The toys have been fairly good, but the artwork for
these has been astounding. I recently got my hands on the Thundertank and Storm
Charger vehicles and they have amazing artwork as well.


This guy is in the 6 inch scale (15cm) and actually a little bit larger than
that. He has a few accessories and will require a tiny but of assembly.


He has his blade of Plun-darr in both dangerous and not-so-dangerous modes, a
gauntlet and some tassels for that Mumm-Ra look as well as some exchangeable
hands. Oh and a helmet.Straight out of the box, his helmet will probably fall
off but this is OK as you need to plug some tassels into his head and it gives
you a good chance to have a gander at his face.Handliy the tassels are marked L
and R. Actually quite a lot gets plugged into his head, which is interesting,
but a tad annoying as it is only held on by his helmet, which on mine has a
tendency to come off rather easily.


Tassels plugged, now for his cape and helmet.


I think that looks pretty good. The helmet is positioned accordingly and the way
the red tassels are flying out like that looks cool. I think of them as the
remnants of mummy Mumm-Ras cloak. I have heard of some people complaining about
the positioning of the red tassels, as they are horizontal and cant be pushed
down at all. I can understand that but one must remember that when Mumm-Ra turns
into this he is overflowing with power. I like to think that the flowing
bandages are doing so because he is so juiced up. Much like Gokus hair (from
Dragonball) or Super Sonic.Now that he is kitted up, we can have a full look.


I think this is quite a nice toy. The sculpting is well done, it is large and
powerful looking and articulation is pretty good. He is not as jointed as Lion-O
but what he does have is enough. He comes with ball jointed neck, hinge elbows
that go 90 degrees, limited ball jointed wrists, bicep swivel, U/D/L/R hinged
shoulders, double jointed knees, U/D/L/R hinge hips (hindered by his pants) and
hinge jointed ankles, with a nice ankle rocker in there too and a hindered
waist. I think he has a swivel at his boot as well (Checkk). His balance is
surprisingly good though, which I suspect is due to his large feet and overly
long arms for counterbalancing.






The above pictures demonstrate the restrictions his pants place on the legs. You
cant lift his thigh all that high, but it does have a split so you can spread
them apart a fair bit. His open hands can be changed to fists for weapon holding
however these open ones are good for magic wielding, divulging your plans to
your enemies, general gesticulation and boasting.
One glaring oversight (and you may have picked this up already) is his complete
lack of wings. What is doubling annoying is that there are slots in his back for
wings that have been sealed. Obviously it would have been a cost cutting
procedure, which I can understand as judging by the way this line was made and
handled I suspect they didnt think it would succeed (partly right and wrong at
the same time).


The paint work is ok, nothing special and gets the job done, and nothing horrid
either, it does leave a couple of wraps unpainted though (by his elbows, pic
above). I really like his chest mark, its very sexy. I just wish his plastic
wasnt quite so shiny though. A matte grey wouldve enhanced this toy quite a
bit.The head is nicely sculpted and ball jointed as well. the only problem is
the neck is hindered by his tassel wraps so it is effectively limited to left
and right turning only. On the plus side though, the helmet snake ( ?) horns,
crest and helmet itself are nicely detailed and coloured. They did a good job
with the golden plastic that appears to have flakes in it. Hopefully not to the
degradation of the helmet in later years though.


And now for his weapons. The blade of Plundarr comes in two formats, the smaller
dagger version and a MASSIVE version. It is really nicely coloured and not as
squishy as Lion-Os Sword of Omens. The sword mode comes in two halves which need
to be clipped together and the dagger is just one piece. The dagger looks much
like the same weapon that the Mummy Mumm-Ra has. Both blades are very nicely
sculpted with the jewel in the middle. Eye of Plundarr? I forget what its called
right now. Now eye markings on this jewel though. While the sword mode is
suitably arse-kick looking, it is a tad unwieldy and the dagger just looks a bit
ridiculous in Mumm-Ras huge hands which isnt helped by the loose grip with which
he holds it.


He also has a Gauntlet, which I also assume is Of Plundarr. This one differs
from his weakened mode versions in that it has skeletal fingers snaking off of
it. Once again, it is a nice golden colour, not as sexy as the helmet but pretty
good nonetheless. As far as I am aware, this one doesnt hold the dagger. It just
clips onto Mumm-Ras forearm via a black clip.


Its also rather large.What I quite like about this figure is that he comes in a
good size compared to Lion-O and his weakened Mumm-Ra form and is still fairly
poseable.



Bow before me Lion-O




So is this the ultimate Mumm-Ra figure? Nope, I think he can be done a lot
better but since the show has been canned, I very much doubt well see many more.
He is a good Mumm-Ra let down by shiny plastic and visible screws and joints,
which this line was plagued with and a complete lack of wings, which he seemed
to always have in the show. Sad. What could have been hey?




But most of his bad points are easily countered by his good points. I love the
floating tassels and his opened hands. He looks like a bad-ass bad guy and
towers over Lion-O even without his wings. If you dig the 2011 Thundercats then
you can do much worse than this guy as he is a very solid figure. With a few
more points of refinement, he couldve been great.



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