Plastic Imagination Rise of the Beasts Gaamik - Metallic Black Rhino with Grey Paint Plastic Imagination, 2014
Day #1,057: November 21, 2014
Gaamik - Metallic Black Rhino with Grey Paint The Rock Steady Rhino
Rise of the Beasts Wave 1 Figure
Item No.: n/a Manufacturer:Plastic Imagination Includes:n/a Action Feature:n/a Retail: est. $7.00 each Availability:November 15, 2014 Other: Nifty, get this one
I'm a sucker for small, simple toys - especially when they're cheap or weird quasi-artisanal things. Gaamik - Metallic Black Rhino with Grey Paint is the first mass-produced painted version of this mold to go on sale, and it's pretty nice - much like the scorpion, the paint applications are pretty amazing, even for the Glyos factory. It's a small, 60mm-scale toy but it's worth noting that these tiny eyes and the nose horn are tough to paint well. The Glyos factory seems to have paint masks down to a science, while other miniature toys (even the original Battle Beasts could get pretty sloppy here and there. Perhaps it's the smaller runs, or a stricter attention to quality control where the savings are passed along to you.
The Glyos-compatible figure looks sort of like a redesigned version of Rocksteady from the Ninja Turtle cartoons, with more armor and appropriately 1980s ill-sculpted hands and feet. There's no real fingers or toes here, just vague, lumpy masses just like many of the older figures had. The charming, mitten-like hands are sized to fit most 3mm weapons. This means that even though this figure includes no armaments, you can swipe Beast Saga, LEGO, or Cyberverse gear to outfit the Rhino. The Scorpion has larger fist holes and cannot hold the same weaponry.
While it's not cute and squat like the original Battle Beasts, which is my preference, it's quite good. Proportionally it's similar to Masters of the Universe with crazy muscular legs and long arms. The detailing is light in sculpt, and the paint is applied surprisingly well given its size. If you get real close, you can see tiny red dots on the eyes and white on the nose. His teeth are also white, painted in a wonderfully sculpted grimace that feels right at home with many of the toys of the late 1980s.
The shoulders, neck, tail, and waist are articulated which gives it the ability to be dismembered or customized with other Glyos figures. I'm not much of a customizer, but I appreciate that it pops apart and can be reassmebled rather than break.
This is a good one - it looks like something that could have been in the back of a Kay-Bee's bins of the damned that you ignored, next to the Snailiens and other underappreciated little animal warrior lines. I hope this line does really well, mostly because one of the unfortunate realities of Glyos and indie toys in general is a lot of reusage of molds - there might be a dozen or several dozen flavors of the same mold, in different colors, before a new mold comes out. I'm very satisfied with the current batch, and the painted Scorpion and Rhino are really fun, well-made little guys. Sure they aren't cheap, but that's the price of this kind of product - there's no billion dollar manufacturer, there's no real marketing campaign. It's a few guys and a garage and a factory in China - get it if you like it, and if you think you might like it. I can't say I'll be here to buy these when they do clear hot pink or unpainted green ones, if that ever happens, but I'd be game for some with colorful armor akin to the toys of the late 1980s and 1990s. And glow - definitely glow.
--Adam Pawlus
Additional Images
Additional Rise of the Beasts November 2014 Images
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