 Astro-Nautilus
The Man from Neptune
Outer Space Men Infinity Edition Series 1
Item No.: n/a
Manufacturer: Four Horsemen
Includes: Neptune staff
Action Feature: Swap parts with other Glyos-compatible figures
Retail: $19.99 (bundled with Metamorpho)
Availability: December 2010
Other: Remake of Colorforms alien figure from 1968
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It's rare that a figure you see in a magazine makes an impression on you that lasts for years, but Astro-Nautilus, the Man from Neptune was just that kind of toy. The original figure from the 1960s was featured in Tomart's Action Figure Digest in the 1990s, a magazine which used to be one of the twin bibles of the hobby but is now really tough to find. But I digress. It showed Astro-Nautilus as this big, roughly 7-inch tall Gumby-style bendable figure with four tentacled arms and a staff... and a secondary market price in the very high hundreds-of-dollars range. In short, "See this figure? You can never have it." Skip ahead a few years, and in 2010 the very talented Mattel and Ex-McFarlane Toys sculptors The Four Horsemen announced they got the license, and they were going to make action figures out of them. Well, that's close enough for me!
The roughly 4-inch figure improves on its ancestor by doing the unthinkable: adding joints. Using the Glyos construction system, the figure about 17 points of articulation, with each arm jointed in two places. This allows some movement to grip the staff, instead of it just sort of hanging there until gravity pulls it down. The original 1960s figure toy also seems to be notorious for discoloration, so with this figure you can actually see what the original intended color of the costume was supposed to be rather than some faded, molted mess.
The accordion joint aesthetic was kept to retail the original look of the character, and while it is a little goofy it certainly works well here-- otherwise the guy would be in an all-bronze jump suit and that'd just be dull. He has a diamond-shaped blue insignia on his chest with a red dot which, as far as I know, isn't particularly significant of anything. (Maybe you know more about astronomy and it has something to do with how the sun looks from Neptune.) It's a nice detail, rather than just sticking us with a bland plain suit. Another fun detail which is tough to see from the photos is the "nose." The nose is really just another tentacle, you can see little suction cups underneath it which, I assume, gives this undersea-themed space alien the powers of an octopus elephant, or the "octophant." (Don't confuse this with the Octophantom, that's something else.)
Multiple versions of Astro-Nautilus were produced with this mold-- July 2010 saw a purple release, October 2010 saw the blue version, this version hit in December 2010 and a red version with either silver or gold accessories (depending on the luck of the draw) hit a few days after this version.
Packaged or loose, this is a great alien being toy. It's unfortunate you can't buy it at retail, but at least it got made and I hope the Four Horsemen made enough money off these to continue the run.
--Adam Pawlus
Additional Images
Click here to see more Four Horsemen figures in Figure of the Day.
Click here to see more Outer Space Men figures in Figure of the Day.
Click here to see more Glyos Compatible figures in Figure of the Day.
