Calibos

February 26, 2016 | By More


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calibos_frontI realize the original Clash of the Titans film, may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I love Ray Harryhausen’s stop motion stuff. As a kid I was fascinated but how you animate things like mythological creatures.

Calibos was one of those creatures in the film. Well, sort of. He was a man deformed by Zeus for hunting down all the winged horses (except Pegasus). I have to say, Zeus may have anger issues.

In the film, there are two version of the character. In close ups, he’s portrayed by an actor. In full length shots, he’s a Harryhausen creation. Honestly, I may have bought that as a kid, I don’t remember. They two version are fairly different as you might expect.

It’s no surprise though that Mattel included him in the action figure lineup. He’s the most humanoid of the Mythologicals and would’ve been the cheapest to produce. Honestly, I’m surprised they didn’t go for Medusa wearing a skirt.

This figure, though, really doesn’t pull off either version of the character very well. The body is too athletic for the human version, and too defined for the model version. The toga(?) is a dark brown/black and the one in the film is definitely blue.

We may as well not skirt the elephant in the room. The head. The head of this figure is pretty, well, bad. I’m sure because it wasn’t human they decided they could take it over the top to caricature style. All of the features are way larger than they should be. What doesn’t help is they are all painted to accentuate this. The ear rings, horns and eyes all pop on the dark brown skin and black hair. On mine you can see the eyes are painted outside of the sculpt lines.

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calibos_backAnd then there’s the teeth. I’m not sure what they were thinking here. In the film Calibos is shown with gritted teeth fairly often. There are no fangs. Apparently though, they thought he’d need to look more evil and devil like, so they added fangs painted on his bottom lip.

The remainder of the figure isn’t terrible. It’s pretty much what you would expect back then. The right leg has a hoof and the left is a semi-human foot. I’m surprised they didn’t paint the exposed toenails white. Surprisingly though, he stands pretty well on that hoof.

I know you are asking, “What is that rectangle on his butt?” His tail attached their. I don’t think that tail survived a month. A good portion of the time when you see this figure, he’s missing his tail. The tail was a cool reptilian thing. I may still have the piece tucked away in a box but couldn’t find it. As you can tell from the break, it didn’t move. I think if this had been a removable piece, more of them would have survived.

He also came with the standard sword all the other figures came with. Here I think a whip would have been more appropriate.

The one glaring omission is his hand. Fairly early in the film, Perseus cuts off his hand takes it. He uses a trident type thing in it’s place. Honestly, They were going for monster, why not go all the way? I suspect maybe they only had limited information or pictures to work from for these figures. Maybe they only had the day for night shots and that is why his robe (?) isn’t blue.

Overall:

Poor Calibos is pretty much the bottom end of this line for me. The likeness isn’t as good as the Perseus and he doesn’t have the charm that Charon does. While in the film, he is the baddie that drives everything, Medusa is the one everybody remembers.

Engineernerd Score: 65/100

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Category: Featured, Other Film, Toy Reviews

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  1. Errex says:

    Kinda surprised these were made by Mattel. Even though they did not seem to put much effort to get this guy to be screen accurate, I think it is a really good monster figure.