Standing at about 3-inches tall, the Glyninja Runmaru
is another nifty tribute to days gone by. And sometimes I'm worried I
get it wrong, but the colors are just so gosh darned close to Tecmo's
NES classic Ninja Gaiden's cut scenes. Instead of bare
shoulders, he has short sleeves with some pretty decent exposed "flesh"
and the newish head does a good job of giving you a new figure on an
aging body.
As one of many, many homage figures in 2016 we got the Gremlins-inspired Quallerran Lingrem
allong with a companion figure that looked vaguely like Mogwai. (The
creature, not the band.) This one doesn't appear to ape any specific
color of a specific or obvious (to me) product, but it doesn't seem all
that far off from the creature Stripe from the first movie. Maybe it's
based on the NES game, or a certain product, but a far as I can tell
it's just the Gremliniest Noboto money can buy. The character has
orange stripes on his shoulders and matching kneecaps, plus a swell
belt. Green plastic is largely left unpainted except for some tan bits
on the chest, fingers, calf muscle areas, and of course the face.
Sometimes when you see a figure you just sit waiting for a specific recolor. Skeleden Keldorac
is that figure. At about 2 3/4-inches tall, the Onell Design crew
took a standard Pheyden figure body and plussed it up with new upper
arms, lower legs, a new head, and some armor for the chest and shins.
The end result is a figure that's basically brand new, with an added axe
and new paint job to keep things interesting.
Since I first saw Outer Space Men
in Tomart's Action Figure Digest when I was a wee lad, I thought to
myself "Dammit, I can never afford these things." Never in a million
years would I expect to be able to correspond with one of its inventors,
nor that the likes of Cosmic Radiation Gemini would exist. And
be affordable. It's almost unfathomable - a space race-era toy line
lost to history would come back as an indie toy line, ad then cranked
out in glow-in-the-dark plastic. Yet here we are. If 2017 was
anything, it was certainly an example of how you really can't predict
anything - and this figure was one of five new glowing The Outer Space Men. 
Standing 3-inches tall, Pheytron
is an example of extreme non-subtlety. Sold blindly and left
unrevealed until he showed up in the mail, this figure was more
expensive than a standard Pheyden but that's because he has new paint
masks and some pretty spectacular tampograph printing to bring the
homage to life. Also, he's got a scarf - that's why he was $4.00 more.
Fans speculated if it would be another The Outer Space Men
figure or something else, with the price nudging me to believe it had to
be something else. My money was on a Traveler with a couple of heads.
I was close.
Batch 61! A new secret figure, awesome upgraded Knights of the Slice crossovers, and more are still available. A mysterious mystery figure of mystery has sold out. Click here to see the January 17 2017 Onell Design drop menu.
