COLOR CHANGING CRUSADING CHAMELEON

THE TICK (BANDAI)

“Can’t….do….plaid!”

Hey, how ‘bout a little more Tick?  Not, you know, actually the Tick himself, of course, but something I think is just as good, if not perhaps a little better.  I may be slightly biased, though.  Last week, I talked about some of the colorful allies added to the cast by the cartoon.  While some of them were short on appearances, a few were recurring players.  In season 1, Die Fledermaus and Sewer Urchin were the most frequent collaborators, but joining them more than a few times was the Crusading Chameleon (though, he was actually dubbed the “Caped Chameleon” in the show’s pilot).  He’s a fun quirky character who gets some decent use, but was ultimately dropped for practical reasons having nothing to do with the character himself at all.  Between the first and second season of the show, the Monkees went back on tour, which meant that Mickey Dolenz was unavailable to continue voicing Arthur.  Rob Paulsen stepped in to replace him for the rest of the show, which meant that Crusading Chameleon, voiced by Paulsen in the first season, was written out to avoid having Paulsen doubling up.  But, his prominent spot in the show’s first season meant he got in on the merch, so hey, action figure coverage!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Color Changing Crusading Chameleon was released in the second series of Bandai’s The Tick tie-in line.  Amusingly, the series hit during the show’s second season, after he’d been written out, but who am I to complain about a Crusading Chameleon figure.  He may have been off the show, but he can have infinite adventures…in my mind!  The figure is about 4 1/2 inches tall and he has 10 points of articulation.  He gets the basic 5 POA of the others in the line, but also gets swivels on his forearms and lower legs, as well as a moving tail, which is all pretty fun.  His sculpt was unique to him, and remained so.  The first series sculpts were kind of rudimentary, but Series 2 made some definite strides forward.  As such, Crusading Chameleon has a sculpt that’s actually a fair bit nicer than the last two figures I looked at, with a closer match to his animation model, as well as better scaling relative to the other characters.  He’s got a degree of pre-posing, but it’s a pose that works well for the character, and it’s such that he can get some variety out of the articulation despite the pre-posing.  The cape is a separate piece; it’s rather thin, hard plastic, which remains free-floating.  It’s a little stiff and static, but generally, it works well enough.  His color work is generally simple enough, matching his color scheme on the show pretty well.  It ties into the figure’s action feature, which allows him to change colors, much like on the show (provided it’s not plaid he’s trying to do).  Exposing his eyes and hands to cold changes them from their usual green to a reddish brown, and heating them back up changes them up again.  It’s gimmicky and all, but it’s fun, and it works surprisingly welll, even three decades later.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I’ve been a Crusading Chameleon fan since first seeing him in “Tick vs The Idea Men.”  I missed most of the Tick toys when they were new, so it wasn’t until later, towards the end of high school, that I tracked any down.  The internet wasn’t as forgiving on information about the line at the time, which meant I didn’t actually know that this guy existed, so I thought the only Crusading Chameleon was the little figurine, so that was the line I backed.  Years later, I discovered this figure’s existence, and he’s been on my list sort of passively since.  When I got Arthur for Christmas, that reignited my interest, so I finally put in the effort to track one of these down.  I’m really glad I did, because he’s a ton of fun in the best possible way.