Thundercats: Armor of Omens w/ Lion-O

The modern Thundercats line of toys by Bandai left a lot to be desired by many.  I was super excited when I heard that the 'cats were coming back and I anxiously hit several stores last year waiting to find the new toys.  I ended up buying several figures from both the 4 inch and 6 inch scale.  However I quickly fell behind watching the new cartoon and lost a little of my excitement.  It wasn't long after that I heard rumors the series was coming to a close.  Toys started to disappear from retail shelves and so I wrote the series off.  Lately however I've started to see the toys on deep clearance which is great for my wallet.  The Armor of Omens was one of these clearance purchases I made.

 

Standing in the store I thought "why not?".  Then I started to have buyer's remorse before I got him out of the box.  He looks cool in the packaging, but he also looked like a big golden brick!  I only saw a little bit of the episode where Lion-O first activated the Armor of Omens so I was a little cloudy about this toy.  For those of you that never saw the armor in the new cartoon here is a little clip:

After standing in the aisle long enough I finally convinced myself to go ahead with the purchase.  In hindsight I'm really glad I got off the fence because this surprisingly is a pretty cool figure.

The armor (or figure) stands approximately 12 inches tall.  The figure is cast in gray plastic with the armor bits painted gold.  The feline face on the chest is gold plated.  There is some slight assembly out of the box - you have to snap on the brown "hair" on the back of the head and attach the tail.

When it comes to the Bandai Thundercats toys they seem to be hit and miss.  Seems as if Bandai hit with this release.  There is a good bit of sculpted detail on the armor.  Because of it's play feature there isn't a lot of articulation; which I know will be a major turn off for a lot of collectors.  The head and rotate a full 360 degrees, but you'll have to lift up the arms as the shoulder armor prevents the head from turning as is.  The arms rotate 360 degrees at the shoulders and the elbows are hinge joints.  The forearms surprisingly swivel giving the arms more range of motion than I would've guessed.  Below the waist there isn't any moving parts...bummer.

If you notice on the back of the figure you can see a small on/off switch just above the tail.  When you switch the toy on the toy can make several sword slashing sounds.

The gold chrome lion chest lifts up and the midsection folds down to reveal a cockpit of sorts to insert the included gold Lion-O figure.  Presumably you could use the regular Lion-O figure as well, but I haven't tried it...I'm lazy.  Like many of the other toys in the series, the Thunder Lynx magnet on the back of the figure is what activates the toys gimmick.  Once you place the figure inside and close the panels, the eyes light up and flash red and you hear "Thundercats...Hoooo!".  

The included Lion-O figure is cast entirely in gold plastic and features 8 points of articulation.  No accessories for the figure are included since it's main purpose is to be placed inside the Armor of Omens.

The one accessory included is a huge Sword of Omens.  The sword is cast in a very soft plastic and in some cases can come out of the packaging warped.  I'm sure this could easily be straightened out using a hair dryer or some boiling water.  Thankfully mine came out pretty flat and straight and I hope it stays that way.  My only complaint about the sword is the eye on the sword's hilt isn't painted.

Overall I've enjoyed most of the Thundercats toys Bandai released, but this piece particularly surprised me.  While I loved paying 75% of the MSRP, I kinda hate that I missed out on this toy for so long.  It's really a shame though that Mumm-Ra's suit of armor was never made.  If you have a chance to score this on clearance or for a decent price (check Ross, Marshall's or TJ Maxx) then go ahead.  It's one of the last toys released and have it's own special charm.