Super7 takes on a specific version of a black-haired, sullen-eyed barbarian. Let’s see how they did!
Conan comes in many visual styles. There are Marvel Conans and Arnold Conans and Momoa Conans and Frazetta Conans and on and on and on. All of them share a very specific genome, easily recognizable as Conan, but vary in many ways depending on the medium. Super7’s first go at Conan is straight out of the very first issue of Marvel Comics’ Conan the Barbarian series.
I’m not quite old enough to have gotten in on the ground floor of Marvel’s Conan series, but I did read a handful of them in the very early ’80s. It was my first exposure to the character, and gave me an appreciation for the sword-slashing barbarian aesthetic of which Conan is the preeminent poster child.
That being said, thanks to some swanky Omnibus collections that Marvel has been putting out over the past couple of years, I have gone back and read those early years of Conan’s Marvel comics reign, and have loved them. So that put me in just the right mindset for this figure. While it’s not necessarily my favorite overall appearance for Conan, it is evocative of those early stories and therefore scratched an itch I didn’t know I had.
The packaging, which is usually stuff that gets trashed, looks very nice, with a slipcover that has the initial art the figure is based on.
This is, for all intents, a Masters of the Universe Conan. It’s built off of the version of the MotUC body that Super7 has been using, so anybody that has been collecting their continuation of Mattel’s MotUC line knows what to expect. It’s big, broad and beefy, with single-jointed elbows and knees, a ball-jointed neckpeg and the improved wrist and ankle joints that give you more of a Marvel Legends style motion than previous Mattel MotUC figures. It’s not a perfect system of articulation, but it’s a decent one. One could say that it is quickly becoming antiquated with all of the recent developments in articulation that Hasbro has been implementing, but serviceable is serviceable. Devoid of much in the way of clothing, there’s nothing that impedes the working components of the articulation, outside of his furry peepee covering.
One area I would like to have seen a different articulation point would be the wrists. This would have been a great place to have some type of ball-jointed system for better sword and spear handling poses. The side to side works okay, but a broader range of options there would make it feel more premium.
Conan comes with two heads: stoic and screaming. Both heads represent the initial comic art very well. The eyes on the screaming face don’t seem to have much life to them; they have the same amount of emotion as the closed mouth, which makes him look a little like his accountant just told him how much he owes the IRS in taxes and not like he’s bellowing the triumphs of bloodletting and eviscerating. The heads took a little effort but popped on and off without it feeling like it would rip. Previous swappable Super7 heads have needed heat to remove, so this is better.
His necklace might have been a floating pain in the ass, but it stays in place pretty well with the hair holding it down. If you turn his head slightly the necklace will turn a little as well, but I don’t mind. A little twist and it’s fixed.
I’ve read complaints about the shadowing around the eyes, but I like the…I guess you could say the drama of it. I don’t know if it’s supposed to represent shading, or some kind of facepaint, or if he’s just really tired, but it gives him more of a personality. If the same open-mouthed head didn’t have that dramatic shadowing around his eyes, he’d look like he was even more bored.
In addition to the two heads, Conan comes with two sets of the same sword and spear combo. One set is clean, one is bloody. The bloody set came in a separate package, so the default version is the clean set. Despite the fact that Conan doesn’t strike me as a neat freak.
There’s also a dagger that pegs onto his belt, but after a few pictures and after picking it up a few times I removed it permanently. It didn’t want to stay on no matter how often I threatened its tiny little plastic life.
Of the spear and sword, I like the sword the most. It’s simple, without a bunch of excessive ornamentation, like it’s just some sword he picked up and started whacking heads with. The sword feels like a good size relative to him, and he looks intimidating while holding it. At least as intimidating as I need him to look. I like the spear well enough but the sword feels more like his weapon to me. He’s not holding it with two hands, though. This body just isn’t built for that.
Overall, I like this figure a lot. It’s nothing that’s completely blown my mind in terms of redefining action figuring as you know it, but if you’re in the market for a more overt Masters of the Universe Conan, or a Conan to go with your Mythic Legions, or a 7-inch scale Conan to fight whatever you have that will look good doing so, it does a good job at that. I do still want several varieties of Conans to go with my Marvel Legends figures, but as a separate thing, I’m cool with it.
