Thursday 27 May 2010

#147 of 365 NECA Clamp Champ

Welcome back to Bionic week of MotU May, here on TaD.  This is the ultimate week for MotU May before we transition to JL June.  I'm opening Clamp Champ today, and I'd like to dedicate this to MadGearMax, who is a big fan of the millennium series.



Clamp Champ is in Series 2, together with Stinkor and Grizzlor.  I have no idea why he appears so early in the series, perhaps he was going to be part of the cancelled second half of Season 2.  He comes on the Season 2 card, which is orange and yellow.  I actually like that colour scheme, despite the fact that it's not a traditional MotU colour.  The back has a nice drawing of Clamp Champ in a seemingly impossible pose - ouch - his back will hurt madly if he stands like that for long.  It does, however, show off rather well his clamp weapon thing, but that obstructs the Royal Palace in the background.  Oh well.


I expected four pieces out of the bubble, but instead was hugely disappinted when I only got two pieces.  Clamp Champ, and his heroic blue stand.  What about the weapons?  There are two of the weapons, his clamp and a weird clawlike blaster thing.  However, these weapons are attached to Clamp Champ by transparent plastic tubes.


It's a statue.  The paint job is adequate, and the costume is typical of the millennium line - more mechanical than conan.  There's a lot of detail sculpted onto the clamp.  It's a pity that this is a statue and that there are no action features, because it would have been awesome of the clamp actually works.  The clear plastic tubes that the weapons are attached to actually originate from the backpack.  I have no idea why, perhaps it's a pneumatic thing for the action figure that just looks weird on the staction.


This Clamp Champ clearly is an update of the vintage figure, even the colour scheme is the same.  However, the face has morphed from the rounded features that was fashionable in the 80s to the flattop and angular features that was fashionable at the turn of the millennium.  However, the staction, like most everything else in the line looks way too anorexic, and despite the sculpted muscles, look less muscular than the vintage figure.  The clamp is a nice update, and seems to look better than the vintage clamp, perhaps one of the few updates that was better than the original.  However, it's a pity that it doesn't work.

I left Clamp Champ close to one of the last NECA staction to be opened because this version of him just doesn't work for me.  I remember getting the vintage figure and literally ripped into the figure to get the only dark-skinned (obviously he's neither African nor American) MotU figure, which is a huge contrast.  Most of the staction are actually displayed on my action figure shelf, but I think Clamp Champ, the staction will be heading back into the box.

6 comments:

  1. Is.. is that Rio? They actually released him in the Staction line as well? Wow. I wasn't expecting that at all.. Sorry, got distracted.

    I liked Clamp Champ when I was a kid, so it's nice to see he got updated, but it seems like the Staction idea was a really milquetoast compromise, where on one hand you got to get more figures in that style, but on the other hand they lost half of the magic in the transition. =(

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  2. I agree with you regarding the stactions, I guess that's one of the reasons why they stopped the line after Series 6.

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  3. Series 6? Wow, there were more of these than I thought!

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  4. Yup, I've opened 2 out of the 3 from series 6. I'm saving the last one for a rainy day.

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  5. I'm honored! Thank you, Novelty!

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  6. I was never too crazy about the 200X Clamp Champ. I do love detail, but when it comes to Clamp Champ, I find him over-teched out.

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