REVIEW: Gormiti Polypus, The Lord of the Sea

Polypus, The Lord of the Seas | Produced by GP Toys | Released January 2009

He is very sensitive and touchy.

His head's tentacles can reach everywhere but most of all, they can crush everything! If you see him, start running... and run fast!

Iá! Iá! Polypus!

Packaging

Polypus is available as part of a four-pack of figures (also including Mantra the Implacable, The Wise Destroyer and Florus the Poisoner.)

The plastic blister-bubble is glued onto the card and so must be cut/ripped away to access the figures within.

Polypus, The Lord of the Sea

The Sea Tribe Gormiti are always interesting, I think due to the fact that they have a wide range of influences to draw upon, unlike, say, the Forest Tribe, whose members tend to be modeled on trees and plants alone. As a result of these wide-ranging influences, Polypus is certainly an interesting-looking figure.

The sculpt is nicely done, although - as you can imagine - not massively detailed, given he's barely 2'' tall. His humanoid form has well-rounded musculature, with fins and other fish-like features adorning it. His head is particularly good, a mass of writhing tentacles and a crown of fins. He reminds me somewhat of Cthulhu, with his tentacled face, glowering eyes and air of brooding menace.

Paint-wise the work is acceptable, at best. The core blue of his body is accentuated with two tones of blue (a lighter and darker tone) to pick-out the details, with his trunks(!) being a third blue. Unfortunately the darkest blue - used predominantly on his head - is applied very thickly, the result of which is the loss of some sculpt-detail. On the plus-side though, it's a very glossy blue that gives a nice, icky look, as if something slimy had taken-up residence on his head.

Like all Gormiti figures, Polypus is non-articulated. His pose is fine though, with a nicely menacing stance and his clawed (and webbed) hands ready to shred something...

Extras

Polypus comes with his own Gormiti Battle Card. As mentioned in a previous Gormiti Review, there's a Battle Card game involving adding the card number to the ''secret'' number on the figure's foot, but it's hardly Magic: The Gathering. The illustration is cool, though, even if the description of him being ''sensitive and touchy'' makes him sound less like the Lord of the Sea and more like the Queen of PMS.

Final Thoughts

The Gormiti toys aren't for everybody. At release they were too expensive for what they were and I personally think they'd have been more successful had they followed the European allowance-level, blind-bag purchase route. Although that means you wouldn't be able to choose which figures you got, it would at least make them a more mass-market/collectable toy line. 

Polypus is one of the better Gormiti figures, in terms of his sculpt. He's unusual enough to look cool but not so weird that he simply looks odd. It's a good balance between a humanoid figure and some kind of sea monster and it works well.

OK, so his paint is very liberally-applied and is a little messy but if you can find a ''clean'' one, he's certainly a fun desk toy/display piece. And don't worry about transporting him or leaving him lying around - he's robust and molded from a very tough, slightly flexible plastic and is capable of withstanding storage in a box or falling off your desk now and again.

Toys R Us often have the Gormiti multi-packs in their clearance aisle, selling at a much-reduced price. If you can pick them up for under $3 or so, then they're certainly a fun distraction. Just don't fall for the $20 price tag some people will try to charge you for the set.

Scores

Sculpt	B+
Paint	C+
Articulation	N/A
Production Quality	B-
Final Score	B

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