NECA Defenders of the Earth Retro Card Garax Figure
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00:00Ming may have made his body, but Galoob gave him life.
00:03Here's a look at the NECA Defenders of the Earth, Garak's ultimate evil robot, toy version.
00:20Programmed by the wicked hand of Ming, Garak is the most villainous robot in the galaxy.
00:26The evil leader of the Ice Robot Army, he alone has the capacity to alter and adapt
00:30strategy in the endless battle of heroes and villains.
00:33Get a load of this guy's body, looks like he stepped out of the 80s.
00:37Taking the tape measure now, that's because he did by the way, the tape measure is going
00:40to pretty much tell us the same thing as it did when we looked at the cartoon version
00:43Garak's because they're using the same body.
00:46Because of that, same body, same size, 7 inches in height, or about 18 centimeters tall.
00:51Shouldn't really speak so quickly about sharing the exact same bodies.
00:55Same bodies at least from the neck down.
00:57You'll probably already see that the Galoob release of Garak's does have the much larger
01:01toy inspired head sculpt.
01:03And of course it does have the lenticular sticker of Ming the Merciless.
01:06Now it makes more sense to bring back in Flash Gordon because I didn't have the ultimate
01:09Flash Gordon at the time I was doing the reviews of the other characters.
01:12Here's also my favorite version of the Phantom.
01:15I like the lighter colors of the cartoon version of him, but I think the darker colors work
01:19a lot better, especially I love the blue and black striped trunks.
01:23Some of the other figures also we can bring in too.
01:25Here's Ming the Merciless.
01:27These are all again based on the original 86 toy line, so the colors are a little more
01:32subtle I think versus maybe like the cartoon counterparts.
01:35Ming the Merciless certainly does take a step down I think when it comes to his overall
01:39design.
01:40I'm also going to bring in this time around Mandrake the Magician and where is he?
01:43I'm going to bring in Lothar.
01:45Not that the fact that the figures did belong to this toy line, but just because again like
01:49Nekka never ended up following up and releasing retro card backs for really either one of
01:53these characters.
01:54So if you are specifically only a collector that's going out of your way to collect the
01:57Gloob 86 toy line, updated in articulation, certainly updated in detailing, you're probably
02:02then going to have to sore soak in the ultimate release of Lothar and Mandrake because they
02:06never released retro card backs of either one of them.
02:09Being that he is on his retro 86 card back, unfortunately Garak does get stripped away
02:13some of the accessories.
02:14Now you could though look at the 80s toy line and justify why they didn't include as many
02:18things with this figure.
02:19So like for example he doesn't have the firing effects, those are completely gone, and he
02:23doesn't also have the adapter piece for the back of Zuffy.
02:25What's the matter with Zuffy by the way?
02:27I can hear him barking.
02:28No, no, that was just the wind.
02:31The figure only really does have come included with him the arm cannon and the hand blaster.
02:36And again like the original figure would have also had those as well, so I can't fault them
02:38for doing that.
02:40He does also have two swappable hands.
02:42Now the hands are going to be exactly the same as the hands that we already had for
02:46Garak's before.
02:47So it comes with like the obviously the hand for holding the blaster.
02:50That would be ever crucial.
02:51And he also does come included with a closed fist as well.
02:54Now the hand before, now I did make this mistake when we looked at the Defenders of the Earth
02:58Ultimate Garak's, that I said you had to remove the hand in order to attach the hand blaster.
03:02You don't.
03:03You can actually leave this on his forearms, and I'll show you guys how that works in a
03:07second.
03:08The figure does also come included with his gun.
03:09Now his arm cannon I think is called a freeze gun on the packaging.
03:13It's really no different, whereas the one here from the Ultimate release, it's really no different
03:16at all to the original Ultimates.
03:19The only thing that's different here though is obviously this is a metallic blue, and
03:22this goes more just like a matte red plastic or matte red finish.
03:27Exactly the same way.
03:28They work the same way.
03:29He does also have his blaster, and the blaster, I don't know why I have one on one side, one
03:34on the other.
03:35Here's the original blaster.
03:37Not much different.
03:38Not much different other than just again, blue on the bottom, red on the top.
03:42This would be like a Cherry Icy.
03:43This would be Blue Raspberry.
03:45And then of course he does have on the ends of his forearms right now, he does have gripping
03:50hands or like mauling gestured hands.
03:52If you did want to remove those hands, by the way, one thing I did want to mention though
03:56is I couldn't help but notice with these hands, clearly what they've used is a plastic, probably
04:01like more of an opaque pearl plastic, and then what they've done is airbrushed over
04:05top of it, a little faint trace of blue.
04:08The blue I don't think has a specific dedicated area, like it had to go specifically here.
04:13I think they would have just had these all laid out and somebody probably with their
04:17eyes closed would have just sprayed it across.
04:20Big broad brush, not brush strokes, brush sprays with the air gun, basically just sprayed
04:25it across.
04:26Because there are a few little areas that, especially when you do change out the hands,
04:29the blue on the top and the forearm doesn't quite then jive with the hands themselves.
04:34You'll see what I mean.
04:35So basically we're just going to detach the hand that he has.
04:37Paint flakage will happen.
04:39Pop the new hand in place.
04:41There we go.
04:43And again, like some of the areas like you can see on the ends of his knuckles, for example,
04:47they just are left behind on the just the basic pearl plastic color.
04:51There's blue in some areas, but it's not blue everywhere.
04:55And again, if you want to change out this hand, just wiggle back and forth, by the way,
05:00you don't have to wiggle back and forth.
05:01They figure it has to.
05:02Oh, and actually I did make one mistake.
05:04The hands themselves, unlike though the other one, you actually have to have the hand because
05:09like this hand, you can see the thumbs go in.
05:12So in order for him to have the blaster, so you may want to even, in fact, take the hand
05:16off this one to put the arm cannon over here.
05:19So what I had said earlier by attaching this onto the hand, I mean, it easily attaches,
05:23but let's just say you're the kind of collector that wants to have all the accessories displayed
05:27with Garrix.
05:28Well, in order for him to hold the gun on this side, he's not going to be able to do
05:31that, right?
05:32Because obviously this hand has to go on the same side as this one.
05:35Disappointing because, you know, again, if you would want to have the figure displayed,
05:39this hand, for example, this hand would have been on the ultimate release of Garrix.
05:43So it easily could have gone on this side of the figure's body.
05:46And then this one, just show you what it looks like, holds the blaster, the blaster basically
05:52just fits, although not easily.
05:54It does fit though into his hands.
05:56I know this is really technically the hand that's better for holding Zuffy, being reminded
06:00of poor Zuffy, but somewhat realistically, you could have put the blaster in this hand.
06:05So then you could have had it on opposite sides.
06:07Can't quite do that though with the Galoob release of him.
06:09So you're really going to have to really be quite choosy.
06:11One thing good, at least, is if you have the blast effects from the other Garrix, this
06:16basically would just plug onto the end of his nozzle.
06:19Again, because the 80s line would have not had that, I can understand why NEC had left
06:23that off.
06:25So let's leave this off for right now.
06:26We'll put it off to the side, getting though a closer look at the head sculpt now for Garrix.
06:30I keep wanting to call him Garrix, but I think it's Garrix.
06:34Anyways, though, head sculpt wise, you can see are completely different from one another.
06:37The body molds are the same.
06:39They're sharing the same.
06:40It doesn't look like they've changed at all, anything other than deco, but the heads are
06:44very much different size.
06:46This one's wider.
06:47So if you really wanted to collect both, what you could say as just a rule, you can have
06:51this guy as maybe the leader.
06:53This one could be just a drone because he's part of the ice robots after all.
06:56Yeah, the bodies are exactly the same.
06:58The placement of the mouth being that the head is also bigger, the mouth is a little
07:01higher up and closer to his eyes.
07:04It actually looks more like he's smiling.
07:05This looks more like a Darth Vader Garrix.
07:09I think really between the two, I actually like this head sculpt just a little bit more.
07:12While yes, it's missing a lot of the lighter blue and the darker blue, the thing that goes
07:16for at least this guy, and it's very much like the original toy, has more of like this
07:20pearlesque kind of color scheme to it.
07:23The blue works when it does very well.
07:25Yeah, I know I mentioned already, there are a few little bare spots here for like his
07:28hands.
07:29I can just get rid of the paint on the end of my own finger.
07:32Yeah, on the ends of his fingers, unfortunately, while I had paint on mine, he's got, doesn't
07:36really have much paint on his.
07:37The majority of the body though is really painted well.
07:41And just to spin this around so you can see it from all the sides, it reflects nicely
07:45as well the studio lights around me.
07:48Now too, down below, he's got the lenticular sticker of Ming the Merciless.
07:52He doesn't open his mouth or anything like that, but I'm hoping though that you can see
07:55as you move it back and forth, Ming the Merciless is shaking his head.
07:59He's like, no, why am I down here below in this guy's stomach?
08:03It is a sticker by the way, and you can feel like it's got the lenticular like little grooves.
08:08I was like, I was like running my finger along this when I was a kid.
08:11I was a stupid kid.
08:12You know, just scraping along this, I eventually just damaged the stickers.
08:15Speaking of damaging the stickers though, my only one real concern though with Garrick's
08:18here is when you do do the torso crunch, obviously, because the top of the torso can crunch forward,
08:24it does seem like there's enough space.
08:26It doesn't look like it's going to run too close in quarters, but there are a few little
08:30areas on the sides here where it does make contact with the sticker.
08:34It doesn't look like, maybe it's not so bad.
08:37Maybe it's not so bad.
08:38Again, my real worry was moving this up and down.
08:40I mean, how often am I going to do this anyways once this guy's sitting on my shelf?
08:44I would worry though that maybe that would start to scrape, but maybe there is enough
08:47space.
08:48Yeah, it looks like there's enough space really between the top and the bottom.
08:52Other than that though, really other than the sticker, other than the red that they've done
08:55for the mouth and around the eyes, there's no other placement.
08:58There's no other, other opposing colors other than just again, like the pearl and the blue,
09:02but it works really well.
09:03I like the, I like the look of this figure.
09:05Still think I like the body better on this guy, but I think I like the head sculpt more
09:09on this one here.
09:11Now for the articulation here on the gloob release of Garrick's, the head's going to
09:14rotate all the way around being that it's still on a ball joint.
09:17You're not going to have as much mileage when it comes to moving the head down.
09:21So just to bring this guy back, for example, the head could look down a lot more because
09:25there is a lot more space underneath the head.
09:27With this head being so close to his chest, that's as far low as it can actually go.
09:32The head can go up as well.
09:34And I noticed too, with this figure, the head is a little loose.
09:37It's bobbling around a little bit more.
09:39You could obviously rotate the head all the way around as well.
09:42He has the upper torso crunch.
09:44Maybe even said in the review of the other Garricks that I thought there was like an,
09:47like an upper torso ball joint.
09:49Clearly, clearly there's no ball joint here.
09:52It's just working on a single articulated crunch.
09:56Some would have preferred, maybe this guy could have had more poseability going for
09:59him.
10:00I mean, yeah, it does lose a lot of being able to rock back and forth and really being
10:03able to do the rotations, but like an upper torso crunch.
10:07I'm fine with that.
10:08I don't think it really needs anything more than that.
10:10The top of the torso does swivel all the way around.
10:12Of course, his arms, speaking of swiveling, also do the same.
10:16You can bring the arms out, not quite fully at a T pose, a little maybe less than that.
10:20You can, oh, that doesn't sound right.
10:23With a little bit of convincing, convincing, maybe you can get the arms at 90 degrees.
10:28Swivel at the bicep.
10:29The figure does also have double hinge on the elbow and the hands rotate.
10:33There's no really, there's a hinge, but the hinge is tight on all these hands.
10:38It's successful.
10:39You can pull it off, but it's just super tight.
10:41That's all.
10:43Other than the, again, like the way swivel legs are on ball joints, you can see inside
10:46there.
10:47I mean, not that this was probably the original coloring of the plastic.
10:50Maybe it is.
10:51And if that's the case, it does show how much extra paint went over top of the surface
10:54of the plastic.
10:55Yeah.
10:56Maybe it was originally starting as white plastic.
10:58Forward on, forward and back on the legs.
11:01This by the way is soft, but it's not super soft, so it's not going to have a whole
11:04lot of give.
11:05There's a swivel there at the top of the thigh, a double hinge on the knee, which are
11:09a little looser on these knees than were on the original ultimate.
11:13Ankle pivot ups and up and down, ankle rocker.
11:16And of course the figure does also have toe articulation.
11:18And I say, of course, not that you guys would make the assumption that he has toe articulation.
11:21I mean, that's my job.
11:22My job is to tell you guys, yeah, he can also do those things with his toes.
11:27I'm putting the figure down here for a second.
11:29I'm not going to bring back all the other defenders there just because again, we've
11:33already had a look at all of those and I know I've brought them in several times already.
11:37Just to slide this guy over, it isn't just again, cosmetic changes that make one thing
11:41different from the other.
11:43Almost even really seems like Garak's here, the ultimate, was a little bit taller.
11:47It might just also be the way I've got this guy displayed.
11:49Putting them side to side or back to back in this case, same bodies, different approach
11:54to paint.
11:55And you know, again, like while looking at this one, maybe I am now warming more up to
11:59the idea of going with this being my favorite of the two figures.
12:03This one kind of kept the colors more primary, making use of a lot of those lighter blues
12:07and darker blues.
12:08Kind of again, like, I don't want to say like pixelated, but certainly like all over his
12:13body.
12:14The thing I really like about this one is also it's based on the original 86 Galoob
12:17line, but also because it does have the lenticular sticker on the front.
12:20He feels more like a toy.
12:21Does that make any sense?
12:22He feels more like a vintage toy, even though he's far from being a vintage toy.
12:27Even though again, like he's three years, three years, the lot number on the back of
12:31the card back says 21523.
12:34So I guess that would be like February, 2023.
12:38So about two years late that we're looking at this, a far cry from the three years on
12:42the other two figures, Mandrake and Lothar that we've also looked at during this week.
12:47Being though that the figure is like that two years old, I like that this one has again,
12:52like the upgraded articulation and a much different, a different detailed sculpting.
12:57I mean, if you were to obviously compare this one with the original Galoob release from
13:00back in the eighties, which I don't have, sadly, I feel like I may have had them at
13:04one point.
13:05I mean, they've come leaps and bounds better when it comes to these figures from NECA.
13:09If you had the chance to pick these up and I was maybe just to steer you in one direction
13:13over the other, even though I really do like the look of this one, I might probably persuade
13:18you instead to get this one.
13:19Just because again, like the color's a little simpler, but he feels a whole lot more like
13:23a toy.
13:24One workaround to having Garrick's display with both his guns is just use the right hand
13:28for the wrong side of his body.
13:29He already has one hand anyways, dedicated for holding the blaster.
13:32Well, what's left?
13:33The other left hand, the left hand, that's the closed fist, just use on the other forearm.
13:38It's concealed inside anyways, the cavity of the arm cannon.
13:40So no one's really going to know that you put the wrong hand on.
13:44One thing though, I didn't mention in this review, I did sort of cover off a lot better
13:47when we looked at the ultimate release of Garrick's, is that you can also take the pistol
13:51and attach it to the undercarriage of the arm cannon.
13:54Or in this case, you can see there's a cavity on the top of it.
13:57The blaster actually just sits snugly against into that.
13:59So you can actually have them wielding both the guns on one side instead anyways.
14:04From a detail standpoint, this one has a whole lot less going for him than the ultimate release
14:08Yet though, the pearl color they've given him and the lenticular sticker of Ming, the
14:13more that I look at this one, and then I look at the other one over here on the side of
14:16my table, I think I like this one though a lot more.
14:20Yes, he doesn't have all the extra additional hands.
14:22He certainly doesn't have also Zuffy's little adapter piece, but he doesn't really need
14:26it.
14:27The original 86 never had it either.
14:29I like also that this one has a much wider head.
14:31Between that, the lenticular sticker, I think this is the better of the two.
14:36Of the two though, Gareks that we've looked at, which one would you say is better?
14:39The Galoob one that's from the 1986 design or the one that's based on the cartoon?
14:43Let me know which one you think is better down below in the comment section.
14:47Once again, if you guys did enjoy this video, do it a salt and throw it a like.
14:50You guys want to stick around for more so?
14:51I hope so.
14:52You know, I hate to be the bearer of the bad news, but this will kind of be wrapping up
14:55also the Defenders of the Earth toy line.
14:58Not that I don't have any more obviously, and I don't think really for that matter NECA
15:02did release any more other than a couple of Flash Gordon sets that came included with
15:05the main, but they're more based on the movie.
15:08We've also looked at those as well.
15:09I would certainly encourage if you guys did want to go back and look at my earlier reviews
15:12of all the other Defenders of the Earth, they're here.
15:14They're on the channel.
15:15They're a little bit older though, so bear with me.
15:18If you guys certainly, like I said, want to stick around, there's going to be a lot more
15:21videos coming away for the rest of this week.
15:23And as always, thanks for watching.
15:25See you guys next time.