Gen. Arak Attack

We hope you're not arachnophobic! Made to fright and designed to fight, General Arak Attack knows how to set a trap for his enemy. He can launch a bug attack with his hairy arms that will scare the pants off you! This bug is scary, hairy, and he's got all his eyes on the Grossery Gang! The second Grossery Gang series, "Bug Strike," saw the anthropomorphic foodstuffs donning military garb to fight off invading insects. The packaging was redesigned to resemble a big green boot with broken shoelaces and a hole where the big toe is poking through. Like the first series, it was split into two waves, which would normally be fine - except Target didn't carry this series, only Toys Я Us did, and by the time the second series was ready to go, TRU wasn't. But the entire assortment has recently appeared at discount retailer Big Lots, just in time for our Horror Month! Arak Attack is a new character for the series, so the squishy little rubber figurine he comes with is a first; there's never been one of him before. It could stand to be a little more "spidery," though the colors on the final product are nearly identical to the digital render on the back of the packaging for once: the only noteworthy differences are the color of his belt buckle and the fact that his feet are the color of his body, not boots. Arak is a grizzled and chiseled tarantula from the biggest, nastiest landfill in the whole Outback. [So... Adelaide, then? --ed.] When he gets angry, he can sink so deep into Aussie slang that he might as well be speaking Javanese. He has six black eyes with orange pin-prick pupils in the center. The eyes vary in size and placement, rather than being symmetrical - Lucas the Spider he ain't! His skin is a purplish blue, with lighter colored lips and his mouth open to reveal bright white fangs. Scary dude! He may be the self-appointed general of the Bug Strike, but he certainly doesn't dress much like any military you've ever seen! He wears an orange helmet, boots, and has orange chains wrapped around his forearms. Two of his forearms - he's a spider, after all. Tarantula. Whatever. He has spiky red shoulderpads and a utility belt with suspenders. His body is done in that same deep indigo-purple color as the face, though the center of his abdomen is a bright blue. The body has a little bit of a bumpy texture, possibly meant to be fur, and he's got quite the booty sticking out behind him. He does have all eight legs, even if he's only using two of them as such: two to stand on, two to be arms, two reaching up over his shoulders, and two small ones poking out of his armpits. Each of his limbs ends in two fingers and a thumb (or toes, as the case may be), so it's not a case where the "real" arms get more attention than the extras do. General Arak Attack is one of those figures whose head and body are one solid piece, so no popping the noggin off and replacing it with the tinier spider. Trantula, whatever. He does get the swivel/hinge shoulders and hips, though, and the two vestigial arms growing from his sides are swivels, so you can raise them and wave them about. He also gets an action feature: the two arms on his back are molded as one, and the piece is spring-loaded; pull the arms down, let them go, and they snap righht back up. What's the point of that? Well, it has to do with his accessories. Being a spider (tarantula, whatever), Arak carries around two small bugs that he's wrapped up in webbing. There's a mosquito named Crikey and a fly named Chunder, and no, we're not kidding about either of those. They're both molded in silver and unpainted - presumably that color was chosen because of all the webbing - and are sized just right to fit in the big figure's hands. Pull his arms back, and he can catapult the two snacks-in-waiting at his foes. It's a bit odd that the tarantula is the villain of this plot. Who would rather have rotted food in their home or office than a spider? I can see three spiders from where I am right now. And of course, every spider you spare while you're alive fights on your side in the afterlife. Having garbage fighting against the general concept of "cleanliness" in the first installment made sense, but this is just blatant anti-arachnid propaganda. -- 10/13/18

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