Kickstarter Exclusive Monster

Usually when we review a Kickstarter toy, it's something we told you about on the blog - not this time, because the campaign was already ending when we first heard about it. Mighty Maniax are a throwback. Like the Kickstarter said, Decades ago, cartoons were made from toys, and videogames were made from cartoons. It's always been a dream of [Rocom Toys] to bring a world like Masters of the Universe, Transformers, or TMNT to life. Mighty Maniax is being created in that same spirit. There is a bit of a backstory to the figures - the main character is Johnny Tombstone, who has the ability to sense evil and destroy it, and he's buddies with Fishstik the water creature and Viper the ninja/werewolf - but none of that really matters yet; right now, they're just neat designs. Since the toys are 80s/90s retro, I went with the Kickstarter-exclusive figure, whose colors speak of the same era. The first series had two basic types of figure: Soldier and Monster. This is a Monster figure, which is (for our money) a much more impressive sculpt. Like, how hard is it for a dude in body armor to turn into a ninja or a motorocycle rider? Not very. But the Monster body has to look like fur or scales or fire, using nothing more than the paint color, and that's hard to do. The detailing on the... "material," since we don't want to pin it down to a specific composition, is sculpted in a chunky, triangular style, with the heaviest portions on the shoulders and chest, but with some present around the waist and on the thighs as well. Each Mighty Maniax offering includes three heads - for the Monster, it's a werewolf, a swamp creature, and a gorilla. (There was also a version that included a fourth head, a flaming skull.) And yes, because of the way the body was designed, whichever head you put on will look absolutely right in place on the shoulders. That's not a simple thing to achieve! Mighty Maniax are definitely influenced by Masters of the Universe - like the old '80s figures, they have that same sort of squatting posture and over-inflated anatomy. Don't expect to integrate them into a collection, though, because they're only 3" tall. They're made from Glyos-compatible pieces, for what that's worth, so all their joints are swivels. And all their joints can pull apart for mix-and-match fun! They move at the shins, hips, waist, forearms, shoulders, and neck. The Monster body gets clawed hands and feet with sharp nails. The figures are available in several different colors, each favoring a different monster - it's not like the pea green body is intended to make the Kong look good, you know? Since I was mainly getting this for another werewolf, I was tempted by the black version; but when in doubt, get the one you'll never be able to get outside the Kickstarter. Like we said way up above, it's a totally tubular combination of bright pink and light blue - hardly the colors you'd expect on a monster, but definitely something you'd see on a poster or notebook from the time period. The body is pink, with the blue limited to the hands, feet, stomach, and the faces. The paint on the hands and feet fades between the two colors, and each of the faces gets a little bit of yellow: everybody's eyes, plus teeth on the werewolf and gorilla. I was sorely tempted by the fancy glow-in-the-dark set, which featured the Soldier, the Monster, all the heads (including the bonuses) and a bunch of weapons, but $60 for two 3" scale toys seemed ridiculous. At least for a $20 pledge, this one included a pin, a card, a song download and a videogame demo level - not necessarily things I want or even care about, but they do help justify its cost. The Mighty Maniax Monster is a fun little toy, with the oddity of its colorscheme being a big part of the draw. -- 07/07/21

Tweet