NECA Defenders of the Earth Series 2 Garax Figure
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00:00Oh, evil's not an upcharge, it comes with a model.
00:03Here's a look at Nekotoi's Defenders of the Earth, figure 6, Garrex, the ultimate evil robot.
00:27Programmed by the wicked hand of Ming,
00:29Garrex is the most villainous robot in the galaxy. Evil leader of the Ice Robot Army,
00:34he alone has the capacity to alter and adapt strategy in the endless battle of heroes and
00:38villains. You look like somebody I used to know. Let's take the tape measure, though,
00:43either way, and figure out how tall the Defenders of the Earth Garrex stands.
00:46Originally, he wasn't listed on the back of the packaging at the time that the other five figures
00:50were released. So when we looked at Lothar, for example, Garrex wasn't even featured there.
00:55When Nekka had then later released Garrex, all of a sudden the figure set came to six
00:59instead of just the five. Does anybody really care? Oh, some of you care. Ironically enough,
01:03only five of you care. The tape measure is going to tell us that Garrex, evil or not,
01:08stands at seven inches in height, or roughly about 18 centimeters tall.
01:13Now, I have a Ming I can bring, but this one actually is inspired from the Galoob 1986 toy
01:17line, because Nekka had released two variations of each of the characters. There's also as well
01:22a Galoob version of Garrex, because this version of him actually is based more on the cartoon.
01:26Let's bring in some other figures as well, and you probably already see a trend happening right
01:29here. Garrex is considerably taller than all the others. He's taller than Ming, he's certainly
01:34taller than Mandrake the Magician, and he's taller than Lothar. Let's run through the accessories for
01:39this evil robot. Garrex has two styles of weapons, two firing energy effects that are unique to those
01:44weapons. I'll show you guys which one goes with which. Six interchangeable hands, and then an
01:48easter egg. Before you think we're going to be cracking any shells, the actual easter egg is an
01:52adapter piece that belongs to Zuffy. Zuffy was that purple little character that was included along
01:56with the phantom. Even though I have the phantom, I don't know the whereabouts of Zuffy. I'm starting
02:01to get a little worried. I hope he's okay. This is a scruff piece that would go on the back, so then
02:05any figure that has a gripping hand would be able to carry him around. Sort of think of it the same
02:09way as a mama cat carries around her little kittens. Now, you think that that's going to hurt
02:14a kitten. I wouldn't recommend, obviously, picking up the cat by the scruff if you have one in your
02:17house, but a mama cat, the moment she picks up her kittens, the cat the kittens sort of go in a
02:21freezed state. Then she can carry them around to safety. If you had, though, the figure, this would
02:26be basically clip around the neck area, and then you have this extra bit of skin. I guess that would
02:31be his fur. Now, I don't have a figure right now, but I do have one of the included hands for Garrex,
02:37and basically what it is, is you just take this hand right here, and you just clip it on just like
02:42that, and then he can carry around Zuffy that way. I think it's kind of cool. You know, the thing
02:47about it, though, is if you haven't already picked up the phantom, then you obviously
02:52don't have Zuffy, and if you don't have Zuffy, then this accessory really is null and void. It serves
02:56no real purpose other than just really thinking of baby kittens, and I'm all for the idea of
03:00thinking of baby kittens. Also, some of the other swappable hand options, you get a closed fist,
03:07and all of these look really nice. I love the way they've added these additional
03:11kind of shapes of blue. You also get yourself a gripping hand for holding one of the blasters,
03:16and you also get another more, again, like a pinching hand, because again, if you look at
03:21the pinch between the pointer and the thumb, it's again about that just the right size to
03:25be carrying around Zuffy. I don't want to keep talking about carrying around poor Zuffy. I still
03:30hope he's okay. I gotta really check the... maybe he's been sending me letters, and I haven't been
03:34getting them. Oh, Zuffy, I hope you're okay. Let's look at the blasters, though. Yeah, okay, so the
03:39blaster, one of them that comes included with this is this hand model. It's not, though, the exact
03:43same blaster as one of the other Defenders of the Earth. Not only is it a different type of blue,
03:48but also you can see the back handle is completely different. So let's take that hand, which is this
03:52hand right here, and you can see he holds it perfectly fine. Oh, don't worry. I'll show you
03:57guys how to swap the hands out as well in a second. Now, while you have this hand, this gun
04:02being held in his hand, you want to use this energy effect. These blast effects look almost
04:07identical from the top, but they look very different from the bottom. The one that has the
04:11burst is the one that goes on the end nozzle. So you take yourself the gun, find the hole, find the
04:16end of the nozzle, and it plugs in place just like that. It stays pretty securely. It isn't actually
04:22that much different from the Defenders of the Earth ones. It's... oh, I gotta make sure I flip
04:26it around the other way. Yeah, it looks to be almost identical. I would almost even say like
04:31Garrick's is just a little more blue, but it looks like it's a very similar style of shape.
04:36So obviously that can go into his hands. Let's do that right now. The other hands that he has
04:40are mauling hands. So maybe if Zuffy's giving him a tough time, he could just squish him like a grape.
04:46Oh, that's horrible. Stop talking about Zuffy that way. Changing out the hands. We want to make
04:50sure, of course, we've got the hand going. Yeah, okay. We want to make sure we've got the right
04:52hand chosen here. Just wiggle the hand, remove it from the post. Paint will come off. Just expect
04:59that. And then pop the new hand that you want to use. Pop that back in place. So now he's got the
05:04blaster that way. And of course you can just use the blast firing effect. Just attach on the end
05:08the exact same way I showed you. The other one that he has is this arm cannon. Get off all this
05:13extra paint. This arm cannon is molded in pretty much that same style of blue. Now you can either
05:19choose to have this on the ends of his arm. So like let's say, for example, we just take this
05:22other hand off. Expect more paint flakage. There we go. Yeah, it's all over the place. You basically
05:28just take your arm cannon and plug it in that way. It's more friction than anything else.
05:34Actually on the back of the packaging, I believe they have it on this side, but it doesn't really
05:37matter. I mean you can turn it this way as well if you want. Now with that, there's also a blast
05:43effect. Now the difference is that this one only has the post on the end. And you'll see with the
05:47hole on the end of the nozzle, that just fits in like that. I don't, I wouldn't want to say it
05:53sits as securely. The one that goes on this one sits a lot better. If you bang this, sometimes it
05:58does come off. One thing that's cool too, also about this cannon, is you can take this off.
06:04And if you look at the bottom of it, there's an indentation that almost looks like it's supposed
06:08to have a gun fit into it. It doesn't. It doesn't. If you take this piece right here, see the part
06:14that sticks up, it fits right onto the end of it. But honestly though, once it's on there, it's not
06:21the most secure. I know it's supposed to be on there, but it just, it feels like it doesn't,
06:26it feels like it probably could have attached a lot easier than it does. I mean, it shows certainly
06:30a lot easier to attach it, but I just don't feel like it stays as well in place. It comes off way
06:35too frequently. Now obviously doing it this way as well, you can take yourself the blast effect,
06:40which probably would have made better sense to do it first. And you can take this one and put it on
06:44the end of the gun. And as I did at the beginning of this review, you can double it up, double it
06:50up, sort of almost getting an up charge and getting an extra patty on your burger. There we go.
06:57Now he's got these extra, they're sort of off a line from one another. You can kind of bring
07:02them a little bit closer together, but I find like they get, you don't want to cross the streams
07:06or that really Ghostbusters. I guess it's more Ghostbusters. So there's those options. I think
07:10if anything, I'd probably just end up displaying the cannon arm on one side and then the pistol
07:14on the other. That works a little bit better. So let's go ahead and remove these, put them off to
07:19the side. He also probably needs himself a hand. So we'll put a hand back in place.
07:25There we go. And let's get a closer look at Garrix. Now Garrix here is actually based more
07:30on the cartoon Defenders of the Earth. The original 1986 Galoob toy line release of Garrix
07:36actually had more just the colors, just sort of a straight kind of opal or like, like kind of
07:42like a pearl color, like a pearlesque. That was the color I was trying to think of. So like the colors
07:46are a little bit more vibrant here because he looks more like a prism. He kind of reminds me
07:51of Crystar, like he would be a, is it Crystar? Crystar? Kind of reminds me of a villain from that.
07:56I do really like the head sculpt though. It's pretty simple though. All primary colors, all
08:00primary shapes like triangles. You got some squares and diamonds and stuff all on there.
08:05I do like the way they've done his eyes though. Now again, when we look at eventually the Galoob
08:09version, this guy also released by NECA, the face isn't going to change at all, nor is really the
08:13body. One thing though is going to be different is right down below here in his abdomen area,
08:18there's going to be an image of, of Ming. So that's one thing I kind of think that the other
08:22one, the toy version does a little bit better. But I think color-wise, this one might have it a bit
08:26more beat. Again, you've got the more primary colors of the white make, making more of the
08:31appearances here. Nice lighter colors of the blue and the darker blue added in there as well. It's,
08:35it's a really fun figure. It's one of those cases again, like I really advocate just if you don't
08:39know enough about Defenders of the Earth, doesn't mean that you would have to pass on a character
08:42like this altogether, because I think there's a lot of interesting stuff going on here. Unfortunately
08:46though, when it comes to his articulation, not that I'm going to be jumping to it right away.
08:50The one thing unfortunately he suffers with is that with the way they sculpted the top of his
08:54abdomen area here, when you bring his, his body back as far back as I'm doing right now, which
08:59realistically, most people probably aren't going to be displaying a character like this.
09:03You're going to notice though a lot, a little more of a gap space from the top of his torso to his
09:07abdomen underneath. Other than that though, like he looks pretty complete all around. And again,
09:11I just really like his more choppier, angular look. For the figure's articulation, starting back
09:17to his head sculpt, it's going to be in a ball joint, so it allows the head to rotate all the
09:20way around. The way that his head is also designed too, you'd have to kind of lift the head a little
09:25bit for a full rotation to happen. If you have it down like this, it's going to hit the sides of his
09:30shoulders. So you want to obviously bring his head up a little bit more just to accomplish that.
09:35Head's going to look down, only that low looks up. You can also rock it back and forth as well.
09:40The upper torso is going to be on a ball joint. Not much though, not much at all. Actually, you know
09:45what? More of a waist swivel than anything. I don't want to really say it's a ball joint on the top
09:49because clearly it isn't. He's only got a shoulder crunch or a torso crunch. More a waist swivel,
09:54a waist swivel than anything else. So like the other figures, for example, that we've looked at
09:59like Mandrake. I was drawing a blank there for a second. Like Mandrake, for example, if we just
10:05bring that figure in, he had more of an upper torso ball joint because again like all of this
10:10would basically be just a like a plastic molded piece over top of his body. With Garrett's though,
10:15he can't really hide all that much. So that's one of the reasons why this guy doesn't have an upper
10:18torso ball joint. Crunch though certainly is there. He has a waist swivel all the way around.
10:23The arms come out. I wouldn't want to necessarily say it's 90 degrees. It's a little less than 90
10:28degrees. Also too, the way that they've painted this, it gets really close in quarters right
10:33around here. And I would worry that that's going to start to scrape the paint. It hasn't happened
10:37yet for the hour or so I've had this guy in the packaging. Hopefully it doesn't happen over time
10:41though. The shoulders allow the arms to rotate all the way around. Swivel at the bicep. Double
10:47hinge on the elbow and the hands rotate all the way around. The legs split out only by that far.
10:54You can take the legs and move forward. You can move them back. There's a swivel there at the top
10:57of the thigh. A double hinge on the knee. Although I've noticed with my knees, not my knees, his
11:02knees, they're really tight. Really really tight. And then you've got of course your ankle pivot. I
11:07like also the way they've sculpted his feet. Apparently not all robots feel the need to have
11:12toes. Garrix though seems to have toes on his feet. Also move up and down, rock back and forth.
11:19There's also some decent levels of toe articulation as well. This guy's also going to get brought
11:24back to when we look at the Galoob release of him as well. And like that case, he was released
11:28pretty old. The Galoob version based on the 1986 toy line was released in 2023, I believe.
11:35Whereas this version of Garrix, I think was released in 2022 or maybe just on the cusp.
11:40Yeah, I think he was released in like September, October 2022. Either way, either way. Three years
11:44late that we're looking at this guy. He's a nice addition though to my collection. Now again, what's
11:49interesting is when at the time that both Mandrake was released and also when we got this guy right
11:55here, Lothar, Garrix was not featured on the back of the packaging. So because of that, when you had
12:01picked up these two characters, you may have been misled to believe that the figure line only
12:05consisted of five figures. When then Garrix was released afterwards, the packaging was changed,
12:10so it featured six characters. Again, I think it's a really neat looking character that if
12:15you don't have any knowledge at all of Defenders of the Earth, it's one that I think you could
12:19still pick up and display predominantly on your shelf. He's very unique from all the others and
12:24he's also quite different too from the Galoob release of him, the toy line inspired version of
12:28the robot, where you'll see that the colors will change. They get a little bit more simpler in
12:32design and he also has on his stomach Ming the Merciless, which isn't featured on this release.
12:37Something I did want to tack on to Garrix here and more the assembly of his arm cannon, you don't
12:41actually have to remove the hand at all. If you use the closed fist, the fist fits fine inside the
12:46cannon cavity, so you don't even have to worry about removing the hand at all, which is probably
12:51a good thing too, because then if you put all the other accessories into a bag somewhere,
12:54I'm big for that. Put it away in a tote, you don't have to go back to and say, oh geez, now I'm
12:59deciding not to have the arm cannon on him. Where's that blasted hand? No, you can just keep the hand
13:03on the end of his forearm. Now, Garrix though is one of two figures that we will be looking at
13:08this review or in this week's for reviews that happens to share the exact same name. Unlike both
13:13Mandrake and Lothar, where we only looked at just the figures standalone, Garrix also did benefit
13:19from not only just the Ultimates release figure that we looked at in this review based on the
13:22cartoon look of the character, but he was also gifted as well the Galoob 1986 toy line version.
13:28Seems to be the exact same body, a different deco altogether. He also has the arm cannon,
13:33but the arm cannon is going to be red instead of this metallic blue. I still think I like the
13:37coloring more on the cartoon version, especially liking the cartoon as a kid. I also like the
13:42prismatic kind of color scheme that they've given him with the lighter and darker blues.
13:45The thing I do really like though about the Galoob version of him is he has Ming the Merciless on his
13:50tummy tum-tum. Why did I say tummy tum-tum? What do you guys think of this figure? Let me know down
13:54below in the comment section. Have you guys been collecting? I know again, like three years late,
13:59man. Come on, why are you even asking questions? I'm still curious. I'd like to know. Have you guys
14:03at all been collecting the Defenders of the Earth when they first came out back in 2022? Are you
14:08still trying to track them down now? If you have, let me know if you've been collecting them more
14:12as the Ultimates figures or if you're more interested in the way that they look in the
14:15Galoob toy line. If you guys also did enjoy this video, why don't you do it a solid throw to like.
14:20You guys want to stick around for more so? I hope so. If you like the look of this figure,
14:23you're going to like the look of him again, as again, we're going to be looking at the toy
14:26version of Garrex in the upcoming review. As always, thanks for watching guys. See you next time.