Review – Power Lords: Ophidian Squad Elite

Hello there, Power Lords: Ophidian Squad Elite action figure (available now at the Four Horsemen’s webstore). A design inspired by the old Revell Adam Power action figure of the early eighties (see the powerlordsreturn.com site), this Ophidian Squad Elite action figure was a great idea on how to get lots of use out of the tooling; soldiers always make for great Army Builder figures for collectors.

Glyos System + Traditional Joints

The big difference between the Power Lords series and the Outer Space Men is that the Four Horsemen have blended traditional action figure joints with the Glyos System joint. This means the Ophidian Squad Elite action figure (available now at the Four Horsemen’s webstore) has all of the parts-swapping capability of standard Glyos toys plus hinge joints, giving the figures articulation similar to G.I. Joe, Marvel Universe, Star Wars, and other 3.75-inch scale toys.

This review at 16bit.com shows one of the earlier colorways of this mold broken down into its individual parts, which goes a long way to showing you just how many parts you can swap around using the Glyos joint. And I agree with Adam’s review when he says:

“There are numerous ball joints on the shoulders, knees, ankles, and elbows with a ball-and-socket head. In many respects, this figure is on par with the bulk of better Hasbro Star Wars figures from 2004-2008.”

Paint

The Ophidian Squad Elite action figure (at the Four Horsemen’s webstore) is cast in red plastic, with only a few black and silver painted details to break up the solid red of the toy. I’m betting the figure would look fantastic with G.I. Joe Crimson Guards, Star Wars Imperial Royal Guards, or even Maximilian from the Black Hole — someone needs to license that film and make some modern toys — because the red is so very striking and strong. The paint apps may be minimal, but they work very well.

Sculpt

The Four Horsemen always do amazing work with action figure sculpts, and the Ophidian Squad Elite action figure (at the Four Horsemen’s webstore) is as nice as ever when it comes to the sculpted details. A dark red wash over the red plastic would have really helped pull out all of the details, but if you look at the white and black versions of this sculpt featured in this review at The Fwoosh you’ll be able to see what my pics don’t show as clearly as I would have liked.

Closing Thoughts

With the Ophidian Squad Elite action figure (at the Four Horsemen’s webstore) the Four Horsemen have released one of the perfect troop builder toys, and the scale means you can use these as soldiers in several different toy lines. If I were better at this I would have taken a shot of the figure in a G.I. Joe vehicle or two, but for now all you can do is curse me for failing to give you all of the pics you really wanted to see.