Review – Glyos System Custom Corps Wave 1 “Sincroid”

Standard Warning: I’m an admitted fan of this series. What follows is not an objective review of a toy but, instead, me rambling about a cool art toy. Take a look at the photos, follow the links to the Glyos Transmission Web Log, and watch as I slobber all over the most playable designer toy that’s available today.

As I’ve already mentioned a couple of times now, the guys at Onell Design recently ran a Custom Corps wave through their store. Individually crafted, sometimes with hand-painted bodies (and every single one with a hand-cast head), the most playable designer toys on the market embraced the art side of art toy with a bunch of one-offs that fans of the series snatched up.

Mine arrived today. And he’s awesome.

Custom Corps

Packaged in a black bag with a minimalist design header card, the idea behind the Custom Corps series was that all of the figures were bagged (sometimes with art cards by Jesse Moore) and then the bags mixed up; when you placed your order you were taking your chances since each figure shipped out was randomly selected. For those of you familiar with blind box toys, you know exactly how this sort of things works. If you’re new to blind box toys, check out this series at www.toycyte.com. Then come on back to learn all about my new toy.

After tearing the header card off, the bag rustled and out popped my new friend. A stock body with a custom head; not quite as cool as some of the other customs that have been shown online, but it’s an entirely new head (a Sincroid, take a look at this post at the Glyos Transmission Web Log) that I don’t own so he was welcome into the ranks of Glyos System figures that I already own and, after a few minutes, he was up and moving around.

Custom-Cast Head

Matt Doughty, the madman behind these fun toys, wrote in the post announcing that the figures were available for sale:

“All the figures have a hand cast, hand painted head attached to a customized production PVC body.”

I’m not entirely sure what sort of material the heads were cast from, but it’s not the typical resin I’m familiar with. No, this stuff feels almost like the factory-produced Glyos System parts and my one fear — I was worried the custom would be a shelf piece and not a pocket toy — was for no reason. This guy feels as durable and pocket-ready as any of the other Glyos System figures in my collection.

Other than the custom head, the figure’s constructed of stock pieces. Take a look at my other Glyos System reviews (here, here, and here) for my thoughts on the basic body.

Also hiding inside the bag was an original piece of art by Glyos System — and callgrim.com — artist Jesse Moore. Jesse’s got an awesome style — I mentioned this in my Callgrim figure review last month — and owning an original piece of art was a nice surprise. I was under the impression that the art cards would be randomly packed in bags, but the art in the bag perfectly matched the figure so it’s possible that every bag included an associated art card.

Closing Thoughts

At $20/figure, the Custom Corps figures were significantly more expensive than the basic Glyos System figures. Considering the fact that each was custom-built, and the extras included with the pack were amazing, $20 wasn’t a bad price at all. And since it sounds like there’s going to be another wave of Custom Corps figures, we’ll all get another chance at grabbing more of these great works of art.

Next time, I’m buying two customs instead of just one. I made a real amateur mistake in just ordering one figure from the first wave and now I’m already wishing I’d increased my chances of getting a really crazy custom.

Philip Reed is sad that he didn’t get the Beast Man custom, but all of the awesome extras — especially the unexpected variant-colored Buildman — more than made up for the lack of a custom Beast Man. Plus, he now has a Glyos System shirt!