Produced by McFarlane Toys
Asking Price: $14.95 each.
My Advice: If you’re a total Conan freak, grab them.
On further with McFarlane’s second series of Conan toys, “Hour of the Dragon,” and we come to two figures which were, for all intents and purposes, made for each other, so we’ll tackle them together, shall we? We’re talking about Conan the Warrior and the Man-Eating Haunter of the Pits. Conan is the same old asskicker we’ve come to know and love, while the Haunter is the thing that looks like Gorilla Grodd on a really, really bad day.
The sculpts are impressive as hell, and that’s par for the course with McFarlane’s stuff. Conan is muscular out to here and his clothing and gear are all excellently represented. Considering Conan’s leaping from a considerable height, the body pose reflects that well. The only grief I have is with his sword, which bent a little in the packaging and I simply couldn’t get to straighten out. Conan comes with the sword and axe you see pictured, plus a rod that goes into his right thigh to enable him to do that leaping thing. The base comes with it too, obviously, and the sculpt on it is quite nice. Mmmmm, gristle and bone. He also has eight points of articulation (upper thighs, waist, neck, upper arms and wrists).
[ad#longpost]The Haunter is very impressive as well. He’s spikey and mottled and just basically looking nice and pissed off. As you can see from the look on his face. And his pose is a nice lunge at what’s supposed to be Conan coming down from on high with a present for him. He has a smaller base that fits in with Conan’s and comes with five points of articulation (waist, upper arms, wrists and neck).
The problem with these two should be fairly obvious. One, it’s kinda useless to own one without the other. Since Conan is perpetually leaping, he can only be posed to leap down and attack something. While this is fun to do with other toys you might own, it kinda limits the playability. Same with the Haunter…at least here if you had a bit more articulation, you could make him be lunging at something else, but that arm stays up there. Makes me wonder why they didn’t release them as a set and just be done with it.
With the King Conan boxed set, it kinda makes sense that you would have something posable and that’s all it was good for. But here, since they are action figures, it just seems a shame to have such limited poseability and playability. Don’t get me wrong, for what they’re designed to do, they’re quite cool. But know going into it that you’re going to pose them up on a shelf and basically leave them there.
