Back when arcades were a thing, Sega had many wonderful creations, including one of the most iconic side scrolling brawlers ever, Golden Axe. I've played several iterations over the years (though admittedly, nothing in the 3D era) and was always saddened that The Revenge of Death Adder was never made for home play until relatively recently.
The original Arcade game introduced players to the three main characters (as opposed to the one you lived with on the Master System), including one Tyris Flare, resident female badass. As luck would have it, during the 2021 lockdown, Storm Collectibles announced that they would be making a Tyris as part of their 1/12 Golden Axe line up (not exactly rocket science as I think she was the last one), but it was welcome and a I preordered one.
Her box art features a lovely portrait of Tyris in all her 80's Glam Rock glory. Pretty typical packaging for a Storm release, I suppose.
Like Ax Battler and Gilius Thunderhead, Tyris comes with the main figure as well the mount that is most associated with the character. Luckily, Tyris is affiliated with the Blue Dragon, which is definitely better than the Chickenleg.
Specifically, the set includes:
- 1 x Main Figure
- 1 x Alternate Head w/Alternate Hair
- 8 x Posing/Gripping Hands
- 1 x Sword
- 1 x Blue Dragon
- 1 x Flame Effect
It's a pretty decent set, with Blue Dragon itself a very solid figure on its own, somewhat justifying the $40 or so above the price of a typical 1/12 Storm figure.. Full Power magic effect would have been nice... or at least a paper background of it.
Sadly, it's just the character select screen.
OK.. so. Female? Check. Signature Battle Bikini? Check..
We're off to a great start.
Like with their other figures, Tyris has been sculpted with some semblance of accuracy to their source materials. Excellent musculature and about the right body proportions I'd expect from a character that would be right at home in an 80s Conan movie. The only unfortunate thing is that I wish they had actually kept the sculpt more accurate to the box art, which lets be honest, has never really been Storm's strong suit.
Like with all of Storm's other 1/12 creations, Tyris herself is mostly hard plastic parts, with soft rubber used for the waist and chest sections., with the intent of maximizing the range of motion of those sections. Back in the day (I make it sound like a lifetime ago, but it really wasn't) Storm figures featured articulated necks, but I guess that pretty much went away when they stopped including stands with their Street Fighter V figures (remember those?).
The Blue Dragon, on the other hand, is pretty much what I had hoped for. Now mind you, Blue Dragon doesn't have female features, so the bar was set a bit lower. It's appropriately sized, so fairly large and bulky. Excellent sculpted details. Includes stirrups and a saddle, so actually getting Tyris to sit on Blue Dragon is not a test of patience.
Paint Work is the Storm standard... generally not bad, but there are obvious places where improvements can be made. As always, the finished product is a combination of painted sections and use of base plastic colours, though admittedly it does seem like at the very least that Tyris herself has more paint than usual due to the overwhelming amount of matching flesh tone across the body. Finer details are hit and miss, such as the fine red lines on Tyris, or masking on the whole. Quality of the paint applications itself can be higt and miss, with some lumpy applications or uneven sheen.
Overall, it's like a better NECA, which is pretty much what one should expect from Storm.
Yeah, I know. Not exactly on my "A Game" posing wise, but this was the kind of mood I was in. The short story of the posing game is that you have quite a few tools to get the job done, really missing just the ab crunch and the tiling neck joint Storm used to provide. Double jointed elbows would have been nice, but at least she's got that ball jointed shoulder connection, allowing you to bring the arms together. It's also too bad that Storm never implemented a pull down hip joint that would really take advantage of the rubber waist pieces, as well as improve range of motion of the hips themselves.
Articulation on Blue Dragon is pretty good, though again for the price bump it's somewhat expected. You get tail, hip, knee, ankle, toe, shoulder, elbows, wrists, neck, head, and jaw movement. You should be able to get some nice poses out of Blue Dragon, though to be honest it wasn't like Blue Dragon did much in the game other than pace around up right and roast a few bitches here and there. Due to the nature of the sculpting, or more accurately the joint cuts, you don't really maximize the potential of the neck and tail joints, though I can understand they probably wanted to keep it looking good.
Regarding Build Quality, my experience with Storm is that they're generally not bad, like a much better NECA. Expect a decent mix of material quality and design, though fortunately with much better joints and no need to give you figures a hot water bath to make sure they don't break the first time you decide to play with them. Sometimes the ball joints can be shit quality (happened to my Zangief and my Cammy) but luckily that isn't the case here. I can't say if this is a QC improvement or just random luck as I really don't get enough of these figures to compare. Parts finish wise, again, some rough spots but I've seen worse and overall is fairly good considering the "this is what you get for this price" aspect of things.
Tyris Flare is very much a random purchase borne out of boredom, but it's good to know that the product itself is still very much what I've come to expect from Storm Collectibles. Not exactly top shelf, but still well above average and looks nice on your shelf. An excellent overall sculpt, and more importantly, generally strong adherence to source material rounds out the strengths of this release.
Now if Storm would only get their act together and actually get around to making stuff that I want... I'm still waiting for their take on Mai Shiranui, as well as the multitude of Street Fighter characters that need-a-makin'.
Back to the backlog!
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