I was pretty surprised to see Terra Firma
at a New York event for The Four Horsemen a few years ago - not only
was she the first new member of this group in decades, but she was
rather shapely. Having a fairly limited background in such things I
thought her form looked a lot like Little Annie Fanny character I saw in
a Hake's Auction catalog that got mailed to me, which I later found out
was a Playboy cartoon character, which I wasn't interesting enough to
know already because... when you meet my parents, it'll all make sense
to you then. This nifty new figure draws heavily on real-world space
program elements like her orange suit and the overall coloring on the
figure, plus builds on the 1962 cartoon character's built-in 1960s-ness
from Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder. Borrowing from that which came
before is smart - the original Outer Space Men aliens were
derived from the back pages of films showcased in the likes of Famous
Monsters of Filmland, so it's only appropriate to have Terra's origin
come from contemporary magazines.
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Back in May of 2010, I was blown away when I saw the announcement that not only would I be getting some Outer Space Men
figures, but they'd be 3 3/4-inch scale, Glyos compatible,
fully-poseable, and made by the Four Horsemen. That first batch was
glorious - each figure was well made, freely able to stand or sit and
everything just plain worked. Figures could sit in vehicles, the
glow-in-the-dark figure glowed quite well, and they were a very
reasonable $10 each - despite being super-low-run figures. A few years
on, edition sizes of 200 struggled to sell out and by the time we got to
Gamma X, it feels we just limped over the finish line to update the classic Mel Birnkrant action figure property. Some were good - Colossus Rex,
for example, was an exceptional figure and arguably the apex of what
Glyos compatibility has given us - but as the line went on, each year we
saw new problems. Figures may tumble off your desk due to weak hip
joints, or they couldn't quite sit, or in the case of Gamma X... I've
got a lot of complaints.
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The inspiration for Horroscope
started as one of many original designs over the years, the name of
which came from an old movie monster projector toy. (It's true, I
asked!) Sketches of the character originally started out as an
alternate head for Xodiac, but instead ended up has his daughter.
Building on Terra Firma's parts, Horroscope has a unique chest not yet
used on any other figure - note the lack of the flat surface used to
mount a helmet. Her accessories are cleverly repurposed from Xodiac,
and her new 2-part head was designed quite nicely. This is a keeper.
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