Grune ULTIMATES! First Look with Toy Bro
We’ve back at our virtual meeting space with fellow ThunderCats fan ToyBro, aka Jared Elswick, to talk about the new Super7 ULTIMATES Wave 2 figures. This time, we’re chatting about the Ghost Warrior himself – Grune!!!!! Like Jaga, Grune was part of Mattel’s original Club Third Earth Year 1, but never saw it to production; popping up a few years later at Power Con, and now, finally, is shipping from the Super7 warehouse to join our shelves. Without further delay, let’s pick up following our Mumm-Ra the Ever-Living and Tygra discussions.
TC.org: After all these years, the long discussed Grune is here at last. We first learned of him back when Mattel announced Year 1 of Club Third Earth. He popped up in prototype form in 2018 at Power Con. And now he is here at last. Are you happy with him?
TB: Overall, I’m happy with him. He’s got some oddities in the hip area, but he looks great and of course comes with the parts to make good and evil Grune, which I always like to see.
TC.org: Super7 was very clever to introduce the good version of Grune in here by adding his two teethed head and chest plate with ThunderCats insignia on it. This is the perfect way to get die hard collectors to buy two figures to create both versions of Grune. Will you be getting a second one to display as the pre-evil version?
TB: I’m considering it, I haven’t pulled the trigger on it just yet, but it certainly seems like something I’d do.
TC.org: What do you think of the accessories? Any favorites? Anything unexpectedly impressive?
TB: He’s got a lot of stuff, honestly. Cartoon weapon, toy weapon, somewhat deep cut items like the seals and then of course all the parts to make good and bad Grune, I’m pretty happy with what we got. I really just like that they went the extra step to get us both sets of armor so that it’s not a situation where a “good Grune” takes up a spot in the line later.
TC.org: He has his fist knuckle busters in here as well, which is an homage to the LJN toy. Do you like that it is included here? Would you have missed it if it wasn’t?
TB: I don’t know if I’d have missed them, but I’m really glad they’re included. A lot of the toy specific weapons are cool on their own, and his are no exception.
TC.org: A while back Nate Baertsch shared with us a drawing he made of an LJN version of Grune. Would you like to see that in toy form as a variant one day?
TB: Absolutely. Once we get further down the line though. I’m all for LJN specific variants especially when they’re so different from the cartoon.
TC.org: Is Grune taller than you expected and is he scaled correctly?
TB: He’s about as tall as I expected. Taller but not huge. His size of course changes a lot, but I think he’s tall enough. He’s taller than Lion-O and Jaga which is what I was hoping for.
TC.org: What is missing from this figure for you, if anything?
TB: I wish he had his sword also, just to make him more complete. He and Jaga both have swords that are missing to recreate a specific battle. I’m not hung up on it, but it would have been a nice bonus.
TC.org: Does the chest plate swap easily? Is the engineering behind it the best version we could’ve gotten?
TB: It’s a very MOTU Classics piece of armor. It’s not difficult at all to remove, gave me some trouble at first but it’s fine. Very easy to put on though.
TC.org: His upper leg shields, for use of a better word choice, seems to be much lower on his legs, and the ball joints at his hip stand out. Is it because of the belt / chest plate section not going low enough?
TB: I’m still not sure what’s going on at the hips. My first though is that the legs simply aren’t seated correctly around the hip joints. There’s extra space between the leg cavity and the joint itself. You can look at any other figure in this line and see they have the same joints, but none of them are exposed like this. And you can see with all the prototype shots and video, they don’t look like this either.
TC.org: Some collectors pointed out that his heels were the “wrong” colors. Are they?
TB: They seem to be correct to me now. Silver tip of the boot, blue on top with the silver armor and then a brown heel. You can see that when he stomps the Wollo village. The prototype was definitely different though.
TC.org: What is your favorite appearance of Grune in the cartoon?
TB: My favorite is just the scenes with him and Jaga when they were partners as ThunderCats.
TC.org: Would you like to see the two Bolkins in figure form to hold that broken seal as well? Let’s see if you can recall their names.
TB: I’d love to get them. Eventually. Stuff like that is definitely what I want to see to flesh out the line, but they’re WAY down on the priority list. Ha, I did have to look up their names. Hurrick and Bundun, that one escaped me.
Jared “Toy Bro” Elswick is a longtime toy collector and hobbyist. In 2017 he turned his passion for action figures into a YouTube channel in order to have an outlet for expressing his views on the properties he collects. It has since become a huge part of his daily routine to review, discuss and promote action figures on YouTube and across social media.
