Tag Archives: Quest For Camelot

#3352: Ruber

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , ,

RUBER

QUEST FOR CAMELOT (HASBRO)

“A fallen knight who had been kicked out of Camelot, Ruber believes his destiny is to become the King of England at any cost. Vicious and mean to the core, Ruber sends his Griffin to steal Excalibur, King Arthur’s enchanted sword. Ruber then uses Black Magic to create an unstoppable army of mutant weapons to invade Camelot and destroy the king.  Before Ruber can carry out his wicked plans, his Griffin loses Excalibur somewhere in the Forbidden Forest. It’s a race for Excalibur and the power to rule the kingdom of Camelot!”

Warner Brothers’ failed attempt at getting in on the Disney animated feature market, 1998’s Quest For Camelot, may not have been a smash success, but it sure did put in the effort.  One of Disney’s biggest selling points for their fantasy genre films was how impressively charismatic and over the top their villains were, and Gary Oldman’s Ruber is certainly well-suited to that group.  He’s just so hammy and fun, and, thanks to Oldman being one of the few cast members to perform both the voice acting and the singing, he’s perhaps the one character in the movie who doesn’t feel like he’s in two different films depending on whether he’s singing or not.  As the film’s main antagonist (as well as its most memorable part), he found himself amongst the modest tie-in toy offerings, with an action figure I’m taking a look at today!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Ruber was released in the six-figure assortment that made up the basic figure portion of Hasbro’s Quest For Camelot tie-in line.  Ruber is based on his fully armored appearance from after the film’s time skip, which is his primary look, so that makes a lot of sense.  The figure stands about 6 1/2 inches tall and he has 6 points of articulation.  He lacks the neck joint that Garrett and Arthur both had, and also gets no extra joints at the waist or wrist like they did, making him a rather stiff figure.  It’s more a design thing, though, so it’s not awful.  The sculpt is more faithful to the source material than the other two, keeping his more cartoony proportions and exaggerated features.  That said, he still gets a lot more added texturing, keeping him consistent with the rest of the line’s stylings.  I continue to be impressed by how much detailing Hasbro put into the sculpts, given how streamlined the movie’s animation models were.  Ruber’s paint work is rather basic, as is expected.  All the standard colors are there, but there’s not really much accenting.  They did at least do the shadowing on his eyes, which keeps him truer to his movie look, and the rest of the application is pretty cleanly handled.  Ruber got perhaps the most film accurate selection of extras for his figure, with his helmet, shield, and “Armor Crushing Battle Mace.”  In a perfect world, I’d love to get his cloak, or maybe an alternate right arm with Excalibur affixed to it, but that wasn’t really how things went at the time.  What we got is pretty awesome.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I got Arthur and Garrett both before the movie, but Ruber I got after seeing it in theaters.  I wasn’t a big villains kid growing up, but I really dug Ruber.  His look was just very imposing, and this figure wound up being my go-to villain for a *lot* of my other heroes.  He’s another rather solidly done figure from a surprisingly good, and unfortunately overlooked toyline.  He’s the last of the three I got as a kid, and I kinda want to actually finish out the set at some point.

#3347: King Arthur

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , ,

KING ARTHUR

QUEST FOR CAMELOT (HASBRO)

“Several years before the Quest for Camelot began, an unexpected hero stepped forward to pull the magical sword Excalibur from its stone to become the rightful King of England. That hero was Arthur, who grew into a brave and noble king, commanding the respect and loyalty of the Knights of the Round Table. With the magic of Excalibur and the wisdom of his chief advisor, Merlin, Arthur built Camelot into a peaceful, wealthy kingdom. Now he must give his all to protect his people from the evil of Ruber.”

In 1998, Warner Brothers tried to more directly compete with Disney’s resurgence in popularity of their animated features.  The resulting creation, Quest for Camelot, was something of a mixed product.  Originally beginning as a rather straight forward animated feature based on Arthurian mythology, in order to push the Disney competition a bit further, Warner took the finished film, and decided it needed to be a musical…so they added a bunch of songs to it.  Both parts of the movie are quite well done, but they don’t exactly mesh so well, and the movie didn’t really find an audience during its theatrical run.  It’s gained something of a cult following in the years since its release.  Amongst other things, it’s got a pretty impressive voice cast, which included Pierce Brosnan as an older King Arthur.  Arthur isn’t the main character of the piece, but he’s prominent enough that he got himself a figure in the brief tie-in line that Hasbro put out for the movie, and I’m taking a look at that figure today!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

King Arthur is part of the six figure line-up for Hasbro’s Quest for Camelot tie-in toyline.  He’s based on his standard kingly attire from the film, which makes sense, since I do believe it’s all he actually wears (well, ignoring the flashback to him pulling the sword from the stone).  It’s rather unassuming for a king, but that’s kind of Arthur’s beat, I suppose.  The figure stands just shy of 6 inches tall and he has 8 points of articulation.  As I discussed when I reviewed Garrett, the height on this line is fairly standard these days, but was curiously large for a ’90s line, since they tended to skew a bit smaller.  He’s decently articulated for the era, though nothing to write home about these days.  Honestly, the only things that are notably absent are elbow joints, and he does at least slightly cheat those with that partial bend that’s sculpted in.  In my review of Garrett, I remarked that the actual Quest animation models were quite streamlined and basic, but that the figures added a lot more detailing, to take advantage of the larger scale.  While Arthur doesn’t go quite as in depth as Garrett, he’s still got a fair bit going on, while still matching up pretty well to the animated design for the character.  His color work is largely fairly basic.  It’s clean, and pretty sharp, and I do quite like the metallic finish for the arms and legs.  Arthur was packed with his sword Excalibur, as well as five different add-on armor pieces.  The armor’s not anything he actually had in the movie, but it’s never the less pretty fun, and has a lot of nifty details.  My figure is missing Excalibur and one of the shin guards, but is otherwise still quite well armored.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

King Arthur was the first of the Quest For Camelot figures I got.  I was on a big Arthurian kick at the time, and he was a King Arthur figure, so, you know, it’s hard to not get on board with that.  I believe that I got him while I was out with my Dad, presumably during an errand or something.  He’s fun.  I mean, the whole line is, really.  It’s kind of crazy the effort that went into these figures, given how the movie ultimately panned out, performance wise.  I certainly don’t mind cool figures, though.

#1826: Garrett

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , ,

GARRETT

QUEST FOR CAMELOT (HASBRO)

“Garrett dreamed of becoming a knight in King Arthur’s court when he suffered a terrible accident that robbed him of his eyesight. Angry and ashamed, he retreated to the Forbidden Forest to live the isolated life of a hermit. In his dark world, Garrett has become a fierce fighter and is ever resourceful in transforming nature’s work into booby traps for survival. His constant companion is Ayden the Falcon who serves as a set of eyes for him.  After rescuing Kayley from Ruber’s evil cohorts, Garrett is persuaded to join the race to find the enchanted sword Excalibur and return it to King Arthur”

Check it out!  As my faithful readers are undoubtedly aware, today marks five years of me running this humble little site.  In honor of such a milestone, I’ll be spending today taking a look at a figure of some significance to me.

Today’s figure hails from the 1998 animated film Quest For Camelot, an attempt on Warner Bros. part to provide some competition to Disney’s resurgence in popularity during the mid-90s.  It was…less than successful, and it’s largely forgotten by most people, but the film, to this day, remains a favorite of mine.  The movie boasted a rather star-studded cast, which included one Cary Elwes in the role of the male lead, Garrett, whose figure I’ll be taking a look at today!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Garrett was one of six figures in Hasbro’s basic Quest For Camelot line from 1998.  Garrett had a few looks over the course of the film, but one was definitely his “main” one, and that’s the one this figure goes with.  He stands 6 inches tall and he has 8 points of articulation.  The height on these figures is kind of interesting.  At 6 inches tall, he actually fits in pretty well with a lot of modern lines, but at the time of the release, Garrett was out of place with pretty much anything else available at the time.  Its especially interesting, since these figures were produced by Hasbro, who were running Kenner at the time, and Kenner were the masters of the 5-inch tie-in line.  The larger scale also gives him a slightly higher than average articulation count, though he’s still a little low by modern standards.  The animation models in the movie were rather streamlined and basic, and perhaps not the most conducive to actual three dimensional objects, so Garrett’s sculpt takes the basic design elements from the movie, and injects a bit more reality into him.  There’s some decent texture work all throughout the figure, with the best of it being on his vest and pants.  It actually looks like its made from a rougher material, as it would be in real life.  It definitely makes for a more visually interesting figure, and its impressive that they put this level of detail into him.  The paint work is definitely more on the basic side, letting the sculpted work do most of the heavy lifting.  As is the case with a number of my older figures, this one’s taken a bit of a beating, but he was pretty solid when he was new.  Garret includes his seeing-eye-falcon Ayden, his staff, a couple pieces of made-up armor, and a knife.  The armor’s goofy and totally made-up, but its otherwise a quite nifty selection.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

So, it’s the summer of 1998.  Your boy Ethan has just finished his first year of school, and is about to enjoy his very first summer break.  And then he takes a tumble down a flight of stairs, breaking his collarbone, and getting saddled with an uncomfortable brace that can’t get wet.  Looks like no summer pool fun for this guy.  This, it should be noted, gets him all the sympathy points, which, if you’re Ethan, translates to all the action figures.

Garret here was one of the first of a number of action figures I received to help cheer me up after I broke my collarbone when I was 5.  I got him from my Nana, just a day or two after my fall.  I’d hasten a guess that he might have been a quickly repurposed “congrats on finishing kindergarten” gift, but hey, I’m not going to complain, right?  He was accompanied by a promise that once I felt up to it, Nana would take me to see Quest For Camelot in the theatre, which she did not too long afterwards.  Garrett, like a lot of Quest For Camelot-related things, accompanied me throughout a lot of notable events, and fills me with all sorts of nostalgic fervor.  He’s actually a pretty solid figure to boot, which is always a big plus when looking back on these older figures.