Welcome to MTV Geek’s continuing reviews of action figures from Mattel’s Green Lantern Classics Series 2! Today we’re looking a toy that can be turned into one of two characters, simply by switching out the extra included head: Green Lanterns Medphyll and Naut Kei Loi! As usual with these types of figures, you can find both versions individually packaged, and both come equipped with the head of the other. Of course, that also means if you want to display both characters, then you have to purchase 2 figures so those extra heads shall be prevalent in your accessories bin. Thanks to the Green Lantern Classics Line and the upcoming DC Universe Classics wave featuring the deputy Lanterns, our Corps shelves are starting to sag like Kyb’s… ummm… well, go take a look at Kryb for yourself. Let’s kick things off with the bio from the back of the package:
Two of the most unusual heroes in the Green Lantern Corps are the fishlike Naut Kei Loi and the plantlike Medphyll. A native of the ocean-planet Aeros, Naut Kei Loi wears a helmet filled with his home-waters even as he travels the stars. Medphyll hails from planet J586, a world of sentient plants. Both distinguished themselves during the Crisis on Infinite Earths.
When it comes to the sculpt, the heads are mostly the only new additions. They share the same body that has been used for Hal Jordan, Tomar Re, and a vast number of DC Universe Classics figures throughout the last few years. The only real difference is the feet. Yep, these guys are able to run around the galaxy on dual-toed feet, just like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! Fantastic!... except for Naut Kei Loi who doesn’t have those type of feet in any of his handful of comic appearances. Speaking of Naut, his head sculpt is like a mix of Abe Sapien and a Large Mouth Bass. The detail is sharp and he is still very recognizable, even when wearing his breathing helmet. The helmet itself is made up of two pieces – the collar and the “bubble”. The helmet has a very retro sci-fi feel to it and makes Naut stand out from the pack of other freaks and weirdos that populate the Green Lantern Corps. Medphyll is much simpler, for a sentient tree with one giant Simpsons-esque eye. His “hair is made up of sculpted foliage, and his mouth is wide and neutral. Medphyll has a very detailed, yet cartoon-y look about him. Still, The Four Horsemen made this guy fit in with the rest of the Corps figures despite his former comic incarnations.
As you’d expect, the paintwork on these guys is really concentrated on the heads. The body has the same paintjob as other Hal-suited Green Lanterns, with the exception of the gloves. Instead of stark white, these are painted with a gray shade that matches the GLC Series 1 Kyle Rayner figure. The heads are both just as distinctive paint-wise as they are sculpturally. Medphyll utilizes brons and tans to bring out the sculpt on his face, while a drybrushing technique has been used on his hair to show the organic quality and shapes of the individual leaves. Naut Kei Loi is painted in very aquatic greens and blues and has a very high-gloss finish to simulate being wet. Naut actually has one of the best paint jobs we’ve seen on any DC Universe figure from Mattel to date! The figures we reviewed both had tight paint with minimal slop or inconsistencies, so that’s a pat on the back to the factory on this one!
In the articulation department, these guys aren’t full of surprises. They incorporate the same basic DCUC articulation model that has been used since the line’s inception. The only difference is that the Naut’s head is very hindered in its range of movement due to the addition of the collar-piece. Of course, once you snap the bubble helmet on, there’s no moving it around anyway. The body features a ball-joint neck, swivel/hinge shoulders, swivel biceps, hinged elbows, swivel wrists, hinged torso, swivel waist, swivel/hinge hips, swivel thighs, hinged knees, and hinged ankles. You can pose these guys however you want, which comes in handy in a Green Lantern display since everyone is pretty much wearing the same uniform.
The accessories mostly consist of the extra head and are joined by the left leg of the Collect & Connect Stel figure. Once again, there are no ring constructs included with a ring-slinger. It’s almost criminal for these to not be included. It’d be like packaging Batman without a batarang – it’s just not done!
Need to complete your Corps? Well, you can’t go wrong with ol’ Fish-Face and Brown-Broccoli Man! Over the years, the comic artists tasked with creating hundreds of different alien races have managed to imagine a lot of insanity that’d be more related to LSD-infused madness than heroic warriors of Right; and lucky for us, Mattel is finally bringing these guys into our homes in the form of highly-articulated wallet killers! With the price of toys becoming almost as ridiculous as the price of fuel, getting two characters for the price of one is a definite bargain. Be sure to check your local stores, comic shops, and (on May 15th) the Matty Collector website for your own chance to snag these Emerald Warriors!
Stay tuned to MTV Geek! for all your Green Lantern toy coverage!
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