Bandai Thundercats Classics 6-Inch Lion-O and Mumm-Ra

Ahhh, a new year means new toys! New Thundercats? What, is it 1986 all over again?!

That’s right, we’ve got a new batch of Thundercats Classics coming at us this New Year with a new Lion-O and a classic Mumm-Ra, but not as some had expected or even hoped. Bandai took the feedback they got from the wide masses and downscaled the Thundercats Classics figures to the standard 6″ scale. How do these stack up to their bigger brothers of the last wave? Let’s take a look…

The packaging this time around is nearly identical, save for some cartoon inspired art instead of the stylized art of the previous release. The character names are also printed in silver along the right side of each bubble. Interesting enough as well, the box is nearly the same size as the 8″ figures boxes, just less crammed inside. I still love the classic vintage feel of this packaging, and how easily it opens up with cutting one piece of tape. These look great displayed as is. But we all know the real fun is inside…

Let’s start with the redo of the bunch, Lion-O.

Right off the bat the biggest glaring difference is the face sculpt. I’m still not quite sure why Bandai went this route, either to make the release unique from the first, or to be more marketable to kids, but it’s just odd. Not once can I think of a time Lion-O, our calm collected Thundercat, has went ‘roid-ragged insane as this expression depicts. But despite that, I still somehow like it. There are some poses that it really fits well with, and others it doesn’t. It would have been nice to get an alternate head in the box, but I can see Bandai saving that for a minor repaint down the line.

This new version of Lion-O is obviously scaled down a bit, but he has a few other subtle and not so subtle changes as well. Gone are the hinge-ball wrists in favor of a plain ball joint. These work fine, but takes away some of the great wrist movement and sword poses you can get with the 8″.  Also gone is the odd neck joint of the 8″, this is a welcome change, but the new head joint is almost as useless, not giving much of a range of movement due to the sculpted hair and protruding chin from the new sculpt. The rest of the articulation and accessories are nearly identical, though the ab joint may be bit better. The claw glove is now cast in metallic gold plastic which I think works better. And yes, his ankles are still orange…

Onto Mumm-Ra, the completely new figure of the set. There isnt much to compare this figure to, other than the 6″ Modern Mumm-Ra which I dont have, but they seem like similar builds.  Mumm-Ra’s only accessories are an extra set of closed hands and a set of wavy bandages. Once you figure out how they are supposed to go on (they plug particularly into a few screw holes in his back, which is a nice way to cover them), it really gives the figure a dynamic look.

One pretty large omission on this figure is Mumm-Ra’s cape. The worst part is, it appears he was planned with one in mind. There is a large hexagonal screw hole in his back, much larger than the screw inside it, and it would be a great place for a cape to have pegged into, a last minute budget cut I would assume. But putting that aside, Mumm-Ra still has a few small issues. His neck joint, much like Lion-O’s, really only gives side to side rotation. His head-dress and large protruding chin make up and down movement nearly impossible. Also his skirt is made of hard plastic, and does not have slits cut into the sides, so although he has the exact same leg articulation as Lion-O, he cannot use most of it. He is pretty much stuck standing straight or bend legged. It’s a great LOOKING figure, but he can really only pull off one or two good poses convincingly.

So in the end would I recommend picking these up? If you like Thundercats: YES. If you like 6″ figures: YES. If you whined that you needed your Thundercats to fit on your MOTUC shelf: YOU DAMN BETTER!. You can hate on Bandai all you want for using screws, mis-colored pegs and joints, and screwing up on the scale the first time around. But in the end, these are fun, pleasing to look at action figures, and based on the amount of photos I took of these two, I can tell I am getting my money’s worth out of them. If you get one, you really need to get the other, as they look great together, and Lion-O needs someone to fight… unless it’s He-Man.