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Zarak

November 23, 2012 | By Errex More

One of the cartoons I used to watch , back in the 80’s, was Dungeons & Dragons. The show was rather formulaic, following the adventures of a bunch of kids trying to get back home from D&D land.

The company with the right s to produce toys based on the show was LJN, and even though they never made action figures of the protagonists, they did produce several other ancillary characters, some of which did make an appearance in the series, although the character whose figure I’m reviewing today did not appear in the show.

I found Zarak, the Half-orc Assassin in a gift shop in the mid 80’s. At the time I was heavily into heroic fantasy and probably reading Lord of the Rings for the first time. For a long time, I imagined Grima Wormtongue to look just like Zarak did.

Zarak looks basically like a beardless, evil dwarf. He seems to have some sort of orthopedic issues, since one of his shoulders is higher than the other and his overall appearance seems to follow the idea of physical ugliness as a reflection of his evil nature.

The character design has held up remarkably well over the years, despite his simplistic, four color approach. Zarak has limited articulation compared to today’s standards, with just:

• Swivel neck

• Pegged hinge shoulders.

• T-Bar hips.

And he doesn’t need a lot more than that. I always found the combination of G.I. Joe-like hips with the more stolid hinges at the shoulders to be a little odd,

The one thing that haunts me to this day is the eventual degradation of the rubber band that holds his legs in place, because Zarak doesn’t look to have been designed thinking in the eventual replacement of said band. However, for a 20+ year old action figure, Zarak still holds himself admirably well.

Zarak has a very simple paint application. The body was molded in solid black plastic, with all of the details painted in crimson, while the head was molded in blue plastic and the whole face was painted green, with the black pupils and eyebrows, a couple of red sores and white teeth painted over.

It seems that the type of paint used was enamel, and to this day it still looks like it did the day I bought the figure.

Zarak’s only accessory is a dagger molded in bright golden yellow plastic. I don’t remember if they mention it on the cardback, but I always thought that Zarak’s blade was poisoned, so at play my other figures always gave him a wide berth.

Over the years, I did pick up a few other characters from this line, but I must say that Zarak is still among my favorites.