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Having already stocked their Seventh Kingdom world with all manner of cows and elephants, the Four Horsemen surprised their fans by branching out into other species. But that was nothing compared to the shock tht awaited fans with the announcement of the final two FANtastic Exclusive 2007 variants. Not only were they different creatures, they were from an entirely different kingdom!
Decimating anything and anyone in their path, two ghoulish beasts lumber out of the darkness to do battle! With inhuman, guttural noises they scream out their own names as if they were battle cries! Ggruxx and Ssejjhhorr - the evil Mutant Warriors!
So, wait, after four elephants, a hippo, a rhino and a warthog, we finish up the Anitherian Nine with these two things? All the animals in the world to choose from, and the Four Horsemen give us Ggruxx and Ssejjhhorr? Well, I guess you can't appreciate the good without the bad.
The mutants share the same body as Ramathorr and the other figures, as you'd expect. In case you missed our reviews of the first seven figures in this set, it's a great sculpt - the Four Horsemen did a superb job, as always. One good thing we can say about the mutants is that their decidely unnatural skin pigments really cast the sculpt in a new light. Yes, the smaller elephants were available in orange and dark red,
but that's nothing compared to electric lime green and a maroon stomach wrap when it comes to sheer eye-gouging hideousness!
And speaking of hideous, the mutants get new heads. Well, they both share the same new head. It's still damn gross, though. Even ignoring the huge black horns (re-used Ramathorr tusks) and the nine black spikes jutting out through their skin,
these guys are still monstrous. Their heads are misshapen lumps with a few armor plates running back along the top. They have one huge, yellow, red-rimmed eye with a vertical slit pupil in the center of their faces, and two smaller black eyes below that - or, well, just one: the right eye is there, but the left seems to just be an empty socket. The mouth is huge, and has only four teeth: two fangs on the top lip, and two fangs at the tip of the lower jaw. So, yeah, like we said: hideous.
In addition to the normal Anitherian Nine armor,
both sculpted-on and separate, Ggruxx and Ssejjhhorr are wearing fur skirts. Ggruxx's is light brown, while Ssejjhhorr's is much darker. Between the faux-fur loincloths and the new heads, these two actually manage to look like more than just repaints. For weapons, they each carry a pair of battle axes.
In the poorly-made first run of the figures, the mutants seemed to get the worst of it. Not only did they suffer from the same
chronic looseness as all the other figures, but a lot of them actually fell apart in the package. The new samples are actually plagued by some problems, as well: not only are the mutants the hardest figures to keep standing, thanks to a combination of slightly loose legs and weirdly massive heads, but poor red Ssejjhhorr is prone to broken arms; like, the plastic in his shoulder shreds when you try to turn his biceps. Thankfully mine doesn't have that problem, but it is rather endemic.
They may have two of the most unmemorable names in a line already plagued by inexplicable nomenclature. They may be the low end of the "must have" spectrum. They may be difficult to stand and even harder to look at. But they're not total crap, which is more than I thought I'd be saying. I only ended up with these two because it was cheaper (and more reliable) to buy one Anitherian Nine set from Store Horsemen than to buy the seven good figures from the various retailers. So in that regard, Ggruxx and Ssejjhhorr are fine: if you like the design, then you'll probably dig the figures. If you're just lukewarm about them, though, save your money - you won't be missing much.
-- 06/22/08
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