“THUNDER...THUNDER...THUNDERCATS WHOAAAAAA!
Hi Everyone and welcome to SpeekyGeeky, I as always am Mr. Geek-E. With the reveal from Super7 that they are expanding into additional iterations of Thundercats with their most recent LJN-themed wave, it became fairly clear that the doors had now been firmly blown right off the Hall of Omens hinges toward exciting new directions this line could take us.
To cast out any lingering doubts about that, our recent interview with Super7's Thundercats Brand Manager Mondo (we'll plop the link for that right here by the way), let us know that YES INDEED any and all iterations of Thundercats could theoretically be on the table...and this has us as excited as a Thunderkitten on a hoverboard. Wait Wait Wait, "what do you mean EVERY iteration Geek-e? Super7 has already done Six waves of figures, covering some major heavy hitters, How much more could there ACTUALLY be that we haven't already had in plastic?"
Well, what an absolutely PURRRR-fect question "devil's advocate" Mr. Geek-E, how considerate of you to bring that up (in fact, it's almost as if your question specifically helps to advance the episode, it's uncanny how that always seems to work), because as it turns out, there are a TON of great Thundercats options, sooooo many in fact that just like we've been doing with TMNT, Silverhawks, Sesame Street, Power Rangers, and Gargoyles, we're going to need a full-on series to cover all these spectacular choices.
So bear with me, as eventually, we're probably going to need some type of multiple Santa's from The Tick or (for those Invincible fans in the audience), a Dupli-Kate scenario here if we're able to cover ALL the great deep dives we are hoping to tackle on the channel...because, spoiler alert, there is still only ONE of me, but so many wonderful franchises to deep dive into. Y'know...like those two we just mentioned right off the top of our heads.
While it's true we have indeed been treated to some of the core characters from the cartoon series, including four incredible brand new options revealed for wave 7 in the form of Snarf, Mongor, Rataro, and Willa, in the larger scope of Thundercats rich history on screen, in comics, in concepts, and in unproduced characters, it doesn't take a character like Driller to realize we have only just begun to scratch the surface...THAT SAID, now that we've mentioned Driller, it's worth pointing out that, y'know...we clearly still ALSO need a driller.
Alright straight to the point with this series, we KNOW many folks out there have their favorite characters from the series, and we have been getting some incredible responses from our Thundercats polls we've been conducting through our SpeekyGeeky Youtube community, Reddit, Instagram, and Facebook pages, so the best ways to see your favorites in this continuing deep dive series are to Subscribe to all of the above and sound off often with your votes.
We at SpeekyGeeky are first and foremost Uber fans (or perhaps here it might be more appropriate to say we think the franchise is the cat's meow...insert head shake or eye roll HERE) and we value the insights and opinions that our wonderfully Geeky community has to share with us.
We're all passionate and it's a beautiful thing to witness that excitement translate to the realm of the real, and with companies like Super 7, we can rest easy knowing that potentially for the very first time, characters we have always wanted to see in plastic now stand a better chance than ever toward making it onto our shelves. For further proof of that, we'll point you not JUST to Mandora and her Electro-Charger, but now, yet another first time in plastic character-- WILLA!!
So where were we going with this? Oh right! As Passionate collectors Your voices matter, we can't stress this enough, and we are in a unique place in being able to imagine our PRIDE of cats on our shelf as something expansive that we can ALL be PROUD to show off.
Even though NYCC had quite a few new reveals on the Thundercats front, we are certain even more reveals from Super7 will be dropping right around the corner, and we thought folks might appreciate having a handful of new character deep dives options to discover and chat about before this FLURRY of FURRY new figures that Mondo teased in our last interview start presenting themselves.
Before we call on the sword of omens to give us a nice helping of "Sight Beyond Sight" toward peering into our first sampling of episode choices, we want to very quickly take this opportunity to point out that we operate this channel independently and your SUBS, LIKES, and SHARES help ensure we can spread our Geeky vision throughout the realm of Thundara and beyond. So, if you haven't already, please make sure to throw some Thundercats love toward those support buttons, and pass this video along to others who you think will appreciate joining us in this deliciously dorky Cats Lair for a spell.
All that said, Super 7 has been absolutely knocking their Thundercats waves out of the park by way of both articulation and selection depth, and we know whoever they carve out to be included in upcoming waves we'll be (ahem) ROARING with delight about them, BUUUUT just the same, we can't help ourselves, so... here we go!
Let's Leap right into our first option for Episode 1 of Which Super7 Thundercats Ultimates Action Figures We'd Like To See...
#6 SNARF-RA
So here's the thing, this option was originally going to be for both Snarf AND Snarf-Ra (in case the art didn't make that abundantly clear), but, well, as we mentioned a little earlier with the New York Comic Con Reveals, Super 7 beat us to the punch on one of those options and what a SPECTACULAR punch they packed.
Clearly the Snarf...Or to be more precise, Osbert Snarf and Snarf-Ra are BOTH deeply desired characters, but seeing as our wish has now come true with our favorite neurotic feline in smaller form, we figured we would dream a little bit ahem...BIGGER to a version of Snarf that has NEVER been in plastic, was an incredibly cool incarnation of the character, AND plays right into Super7's love for Kaiju-sized characters. All of which feels like some fairly good arguments for WHAT makes Snarf-Ra a likely contender for our shelves. (In "best" Snarf voice) Well I don't know Geek-E, are you sure? I don't have a great feeling about this.
So what's the deal with Snarf-Ra you might ask, what makes him such a cool character? Isn't he just Snarf, but Supersized? Well, maybe before we get too far ahead of ourselves we'll back up for a second and explain who REGULAR old Snarf is, yeah?
Hailing from the Planet of the Snarf's, he was a young Lion-O's cub-sitter back on Thundera. Despite Lion-O clearly now being a grown-up leader of the Thundercats, Snarf could never really ease up on his protector role and sort of continued to act as Lion-O's Jimminy Cricket, being the voice of overly neurotic and much-needed (though not always heeded) logic...which, to be fair, if Lion-O ALWAYS listened to Snarf's logic, that would have removed a great deal of the problems that arose from impetuousness and instigated many of their adventures, so y'know, "Thundercats...D'ohhh!"
So how did Snarf-Ra come about? it all started when Mumm-ra, up to his classic Mumm-ra antics of disguise and infiltration, saw Snarf as a weak link, captured him, and disguised his dog Ma-Mutt as Snarf to do said infiltrating. Now, here is where things get a bit interesting with the whole Snarf-Ra angle. Inside the Black Pyramid, an underestimated Snarf is able to Summon the Ancient Spirits of Evil (which in retrospect, was a fairly risky move) to not only restore his ORIGINAL appearance but also having them turbocharge him into "Snarf-Ra the ever living."
For those who didn't get to see this episode, we'll paint a quick picture, Snarf-Ra was arguably somehow stronger than Mumm-ra in his ever-living state, similar to that Mumm-ra however, he was able to hulk out and cut loose on the scrapping dance floor like no cat's were watching. For a shining moment, he wasn't innocent bystander Snarf, he wasn't "getting cat-napped and used as bait" Snarf, NOPE, he was badass protector Snarf, who sidenote, COULD ALSO FLY! What the What?!!
So do we NEED this figure? Probably the better question here would be...why has it taken over thirty years to HAVE this conversation?
#5 LYNXANA
Surely you know all about the awesomeness that is Lynxana, so we can probably just skip the whole descriptions part of this option and move along to the--, OH...YOU DON"T KNOW LYNXANA? Well then, buckle up because you're in for a treat.
While most kids of the 80s probably remember or at least can identify in a lineup the core members of the Thundercats, quite a few less might be able to do so with the Thundercats that made their debut appearance in the Marvel Star or UK comic series, which is a HUGE shame because there were some absolutely FANTASTIC characters that originated within those incarnations.
And Lynxana was no exception. She had a dystopian punk aesthetic, an interesting back story, and kicked major tail. A good way to think of Lynxana, is that if this were star wars, she's Boba Fett (WE KNOW WE KNOW, that is a BOLD statement considering that we literally have another character named MANDORA who is no bones about it, meant to be based on an all too familiar Mandalorian, but no one said there only had to be ONE) but just calling her the Thundercats version of Fett really doesn't do her level of cool justice. Let's paint a slightly more detailed picture here. She was a former Thundercat, who, after starting a rebellion against the Thundercat council on Thundara, was exiled and turned to a life of Bounty Hunting, which Spoiler Alert, she turned out to be REALLLLY good at.
She re-entered the Thundercats life on Third Earth first as a villain, tricked by Mumm-ra, who naturally was in disguise (it was kind of his thing, real talk here, there could probably be an ENTIRE toyline JUST on Mumm-ra's various disguises. He changed disguises potentially even more than we ACTUALLY saw him in his MUMM-RA form...but we digress).
Remember how we said she was a dang good bounty hunter? Well, to prove our point, one by one, she captured each and EVERY ONE of the Thundercats...all BUT Lion-O that is. Lion-O was able to show Lynxana through the Sword of Omens that she was being majorly played by Mumm-ra, so the duo instead un-capture their teammates (no hard feelings, yeah?) and BOOM take down Mumm-ra until his inevitable next scheme.
Ok so, if anyone at home is keeping track, let's quickly run through the bullet points here for what Lynxana has got working in her favor: She's a Kickass bounty hunter with fighting skills and ingenuity riveling Lion-O. She appeared in multiple issues and had an anti-hero charm comparable to Wolverine with the tenacity and charm to boot, AND had an aesthetic that would fit in perfectly with all the other stunning Thundercats pride of figures that Super7 has been cranking out so far.
Plus, with the reveal that both Mandora AND now Willa are soon to be gracing our shelves, it illustrates that Super7 also have been keenly aware of all the incredible female figures the Thundercats line has to offer, many of which, up until now, had never seen in plastic before and are they seem more than up to the task of making up for lost time to FINALLY give them the action figure justice they deserve!
#4 CHILLA
Ok, so let's take a moment to wrap our brains around this and make sure we understand it correctly... there were a group of characters named the Lunataks that were in over a dozen episodes of the Thundercats series and not ONE of them got toy representation? So Surely there was nothing remotely COOL about them or striking in appearance that would warrant an action figure then, right? "NO?" You Say? In fact ALL of them were unique looking and essentially were the Thundercats version of Masters of the universe's Horde? Ohhhh cool...coool cool cool, why would we be bitter about NEVER having any of these characters in toy form? Wha--What's that? There is actually a TON of folks that are beyond frustrated by EXACTLY these points and want the entirety of the Lunataks faster than Cheetara can run from the Cats Lair to...Oh I don't know, let's say OUTSIDE the cats lair.
Well, we figured since we were already on the subject of COOL, why not make a case for one of our favorite of the bunch (and we don't say this lightly, as literally each and every one of the Lunataks IS our favorite of the bunch), but Chilla with her... well... CHILLING powers, along with her heat based powers makes her an incredibly fun candidate to start with.
From an accessories perspective, we could see this being pretty inventive, being able to have an extra head with a blizzard forming from her lips and heat vision protruding from her eyes, she's all the threat of 80's era Supergirl without any of that pesky moral compass to get in the way...sorry, what was that? Berbils got a figure you say? NO? Not A figure, THREE figures in the classic line? What about Stinger? He was never in an episode, and JUST the comic, so guessing he never--- OHHHH HE DID! But just to clarify, that is still a big ol' nope on Lunataks though, huh? Ooof this is hurting my brain
Chilla can LITERALLY flash freeze and simultaneously deep fry an opponent but Berbil FREAKING Bill...nope, nope, don't go negative Geek-E, gotta stay on track, but also, c'mon man, don't act like you wouldn't ALSO want a Berbil Bill figure from Super7 as well...FINE...you know me too dang well, devil's advocate me, way to save me from going over to the Black Pyramid once again.
Now where were we?
Ohhhh right, why Chilla is absolutely needed in the line.
In addition to having a power set that is absurdly neat and unique, a wardrobe that matches her icy heart, and an aesthetic that screams "why am I not a toy yet?" Chilla also appeared in a ton of episodes AND was also pretty regularly making cameos in both the Star AND UK Marvel comic books.
Here's the deal, deep down we ABSOLUTELY know we won't feel satisfied until each and every one of the Lunataks (including the shortlived transformed Luna and even Queen Luna) are looking down from their shelf that we've been keeping pristinely bare, simply waiting for their arrival for the past 30 years to grace us with their presence.
Which, yup we KNOW! In retrospect, we totally COULD have used that shelf in all sorts of ways, and mayyyybe considering the series officially ended over 30 years ago, it was slightly irresponsible to hold onto that hope in perpetuity that the figures would SOMEDAY be made, and fine, MAYBE it's on us to have been more flexible when our kids asked us if I could let them use the space to display their art and pictures of some of their achievements instead of keeping the space needlessly bare while never breaking eye contact as we hoisted their handmade volcano into the dumpster, but with Super7's Thundercats line now in full swing and appearing to tackle quite a few options we never thought we'd see in plastic, we ask you, who's looking foolish NOW?
Oh... STILL MR. GEEK-E? Because we STILL don't have the Lunataks nor have they been announced? Well FIIIINE, we'll give you THAT, but if the last thirty-some years have proven anything, it's that we remain hopeful, and considering we are now closer than we've ever been to having the Lunataks as a reality, our hope remains as strong as ever. Your move Super7...your...move.
#3 CLAUDUS & KANO
Don't we mean Claudius? Well, sure, that name is acceptable too, he was referred to as BOTH names, so y'know...it's a bit murky, but if you happened to have pulled this card at your local trivia game, both answers will get you the win. Whatever you do though, don't make the assumption that it's ok to make a Claudus figure without his loyal companion Kano. Kano is to Claudus as Ma-Mutt is to Mumm-ra, what the Sword of Omens is to Lion-O, what the hoverboard is to the Thunderkittens, what a slimy sheen is to Ssslythe, what the----well you get the picture, these two are a package deal. But WHO is Claudus?
Well, the short answer is that he's Lion-O pop pop don'cha know? And Kano used to be Lion-O's faithful pet sabretooth tiger...but HOW that worked exactly seemed very similar to a Pluto/Goofy situation where the more we think about it, the more it just makes less and less sense, but sometimes it's best to just roll with it...we're talking anthropomorphic cats from a future Earth where Mumm-ra, the only living member of original Earth is the villain and that means he must have been a mummy from ancient Egypt during OUR era of Earth too? But now that my head feels like it's about to explode in a similar fashion to Thundara, we guess we should pivot back to Claudus and why he's so important.
Claudus, (along with Jaga, who folks might remember better in his astral form, acting in a thinly veiled Obi-wan Kenobi-type role to Lion-O) was the original owner of the sword of omens, and king of the Thundercats doomed homeworld of Thundara.
Similar to Superman's dad Jor-El, Lion-O's daddy dearest Claudus ruled over the old planet right up until its destruction. ALSO similar to Superman's origin is that Claudus ensured his young son was whisked off to another planet just in the nick of time.
A quick sidenote for folks who haven't watched an episode of Thundercats in some time, at the beginning of the series, Lion-O is in fact very young and was flash-aged en route to 3rd earth after escaping Thundara. Many folks tend to forget he is similar in age to the Thunderkitten's, even though he doesn't outwardly appear as such.
Though Claudus doesn't appear in too many episodes, certainly not as many as any of the Lunataks (again hint hint), the moments we DO see of Claudus are pivotal toward shaping Lion-O's journey. We learn the most about Claudus in an incredibly fun episode called "Return to Thundera" which sees present-day Lion-O transported back to his homeworld before it goes all kablooey.
We might have accepted the scenario on its face as kids, but one enormously humorous aspect in retrospect is that we are expected to believe that no one would recognize Lion-O in the past because he is an adult in that setting when they VERY MUCH knew him as a child...when, if we took two seconds to think critically on this, we'd realize A) He looks EXACTLY as he did as a kid, down to the same very unique outfit, and B) The similarities between the appearance of adult Lion-O and young Claudus are so distinct you would have to be actively oblivious. Adult Lion-O is basically the spitting image of Claudus's younger self, but in different clothing. Despite looking different, Lion-o's older appearance didn't fool his trusted pet, who upon seeing him knew to bring him to his father...good boy, good Pluto...errr, we mean Kano.
Ok, so besides playing an enormous catalyst role in Lion-O's odyssey, Claudus was also pivotal in acting as the glue between the past and the Thundercats. We'd argue that without Claudus there is no Lion-O, and Thundercats might have looked starkly different than how we remember it, with Jaga in the role of protector of the sword of omens, and following that butterfly effect theory a little further down the lion's den, we realize events could have shifted where no Thundercats managed to escape Thundera before it exploded, and then guess what? Now we don't have a show AT ALL! Does this alternate version of events make anybody happy? No, if you are watching this it's because you enjoy or at least want to learn about Thundercats, so y'know just saying Claudus is crucial to the story we know and love, so yeah, that's pretty solid logic toward getting us a Claudus and Kano sooner than later, yeah?
We never had a Claudus or Kano in the original toy line, but to that, Panthro probably said it best when he noted "No one can change history. We can only learn from it." So let's show history we learned something, starting with the correction of that omission this go round eh?
#2 BOBCAT
Lion-O? Check! Panthro? Absolutely! Cheetara? You know it! Jaga? Total Cat Person! Bobcat? Wait?... What? If you grew up ONLY watching the original cartoon series, there is a fairly good chance this is a character you might not be as familiar with, which is an enormous shame, because Bobcat. WAS. PURRRRFECT! To answer some of your immediate questions, yes, he very much was an important character to Thundercats Lore, and despite him not being as common a name to casual Thundercats fans the way that Lion-O or Jaga or Panthro or Cheetara are, he is still very much an important character to the Thundercats mythos.
First appearing in Wildstorm Comics Thundercats series, which, somewhat confusingly, followed the adventures of the original animated series versus the 2011 series which didn't air until a few years later, but despite the popularity of the Thundercats comic as well as the lasting fan love for the 2011 series, a comic continuing THE 2011 series has still surprisingly, to this day, NEVER been created. But, y'know...sound off in the comments if that's something you'd be interested in reading and we'll see if we can't do something to fix that.
Bobcat was a first officer of the Thundarian Royal Guard under King Lion-O in the mini-series "Dogs of War" which is set in the Thundercats relative future where an army of Militaristic Dog soldiers have invaded and threaten Thundarian rule. The story itself, written by John Layman was pretty dang interesting and introduced a smorgasbord of wonderful new characters into the Thundercats mythos. While we are VERY MUCH chomping at the bit to tackle some of these ADDITIONAL thunder-ific characters in future installments of this series, right now we've set our sword of omens sight squarely on the coolness that is Bobcat.
Not only was he a character that had a looming mystique surrounding him, but he was also the first Thundarian that we had seen that had been given an ACTUAL name in quite some time, and, as a love interest to a now-grown Wilykit, the series seemed to be laying the seeds for the next generation of cats, and it certainly felt that Bobcat would have played a fairly large role in whatever that story WAS that has sadly yet to have been expanded on.
Bobcat had an incredibly cool and distinctive aesthetic, that exuded a fun co-mingling of agile warrior infused with swash-buckling pirate that both piqued the interest of his as-of-yet unexplored background in addition to helping to set him apart visually from the other cats if his figure were ever to delightfully pounce onto our shelves.
With Bobcat being an integral character for many of this series' issues, and an important character toward representing an expanded mythos on our shelves, we figured that shining a proper spotlight on this character could help to prompt us Thundercats fans to roar loudly enough with excitement that Super7 might heed our mighty call toward bringing all of Thundara and BEYOND to our shelves!
#1 THE DUELIST
Hailing from the short-lived, but nevertheless astoundingly awesome 2011 Thundercats series, The Duelist was one of a myriad of colorful new characters that made us sit up from our catnap and take notice. Making his debut in the episode "the duelist and the drifter", he was a unique and attention-grabbing villain that posed a serious threat to Lion-O, going toe to toe and even outmatching him in swordsmanship in a way that Mumm-Ra never could, and in the process helping Lion-O to learn some crucial lessons toward becoming a more versatile fighter. We don't want to spoil the episode for folks who have never seen it, as we sincerely believe if you somehow haven't had a chance to take a look at this iteration, this episode might be a decent stand-alone to start with. It had epic fight scenes, expanded layers of lore exploration, an emotionally grabbing story, sly humor, and managed to find a way to introduce folks to a heck of a lot of new characters all within a very short time.
In a nutshell, the premise was this: Lion-O finds himself entering a new town where he is challenged into a duel with the resident swordsman with an impressive array of swords attached to his back that PROBABLY should have been Lion-O's first clue that maybe "It's a Trap!"
Again, if we say too much here, we risk giving away the plot and even though we're talking about a show from over a decade ago now, there may be some folks that are just learning to Feel the magic and hear the roar of ANOTHER Thundercats series. And for those lucky folks, we absolutely want them to be able to discover the same joy we discovered on our own eleven long years ago (or 86 cat years) because it is indeed quite a treat.
Though the series only lasted one season, we are quite certain if it HAD continued we would've undoubtedly seen a bit more of this character (an episode we could easily envision toward progressing the overarching plot might have followed where the swords came from and opening up some doors to introduce us to even more awesome characters) and we are fairly certain we most likely would have had an accompanying figure on the shelves as well.
Though... WHY he DIDN'T have a toy is beyond us. He seemed to meet all the criteria for what WOULD have made it in as a Bandai figure. He had a cool look, he provided some ready-to-rock pack-in accessories with his Game Of Thrones-esque wheel-o-swords holstered to his back, and he was designed in a way that would transfer incredibly well from screen to figure, but sadly, like many of the newly created 2011 characters, The Duelist NEVER saw plastic.
So not that we needed even MORE reasons to get frustrated by this series' untimely cancellation, but, will you look at that? There's now one more cat scratch mark to our list of reasons.
We see the duelist coming with a host of detachable and usable swords from all his dueling conquests, including (can't help the mild spoiler here) the sword of omens and the sword of hattanzo. Anime-style attachable sword swipes to the swords themselves for action shots seem entirely applicable here, and as a fun bonus, it might be neat to include a less articulated, almost rubbery modern version of the drifter that we could coil around items to get caught on.
SPEEKYGEEKY'S THUNDERCATS POLLS
Since we're already talking about wholly new characters in plastic, we figured we would take a moment to ask those watching this episode right now who YOU would like to see in one of our upcoming videos. We have been running polls on our youtube community page, as well as our SpeekyGeeky Instagram, Facebook, and Reddit pages as to which THUNDERCATS characters from various iterations we might want to see as Toys.
Here are some options from our latest polls, which you can weigh on here in the comments or head on over to any of our socials for the full list of option names to weigh in over there as well, and stay tuned because these winning options and more may very well appear in an upcoming THUNDERCATS deep dive or two, or three, or...well you get the idea, there are a ton of great options.
There are also some incredibly talented THUNDERCATS customizers who are already creating wonderfully cool customs of some of the characters who appear on our polls, and it is a beautiful thing to see, here (in our video) are just a few of those absolutely creative folks that you are definitely going to want to keep up with so make sure to follow them on THEIR socials as well.
Alright, Fellow Third Earthers, that's it for this episode, but don't stray too far from the Cat's Lair, because episode 2 is right around the corner.
We have no doubt you'll have some characters that top your list as well, so be sure to make your hopes known and join the discussion in the comments below.
We realize you could have gone anywhere and you chose to nerd out with us... and we appreciate that, so…
As always, I am Mr. Geek-E and Until Next We SUPER 7 Thundercats Speeky, Keep it Geeky Folks!
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