I picked this up at the Brum Toyfair in complete ignorance of what it was. All I knew was that it looked cool, and it was a tenner. As it turns out, I've made far worse buying decisions, with far more information.
So what's this actually from then? Well, the C.L.O.D. (Combat Land Operator Defender) is from a very obscure Saban series circa 1999. While it obviously had a toyline, it seems the whole affair was very short lived, with its tie-in cartoon being shelved. The overall vibe seems been a lost technology on a regressed feudal space colony sort of affair. Something Star Wars adjacent in concept, with a lot of 80's action figure DNA. The series is viewable on YouTube, and sees Tim Curry cast as the villain, and so may be worth a punt. The C.L.O.D. is but one vehicle among a selection thereof, but seems to have been important enough to appear in two size classes. I'm not gonna say anything too definite here, I restate my ignorance, but I'm pretty sure that this series would have floated my proverbial boat had I heard about it at the time.
The C.L.O.D. is an immediately compelling mecha with a gorillas' proportions, tracks in its feet, and coloured in blues and metallic tones. Its a chunky toy, putting me in mind of a Pacific Rim action figure, as well as a company attempting the G.I Joe vehicle thing at a different scale. In modern Transformers terms its splitting the difference between voyager and leader pricepoints in terms of size, but this was contemporary to Beast Wars, so maybe look to that for a comparison. The overall presentation is of almost dieselpunk details built around a super robot frame. It's towards the Tetsujin 28 end of the big robot spectrum, and would not have looked out of place in The Big O. It's not too heavy on the technical detail but what is there suggests a military industrial product rather than super science, perhaps with a battleship influence given those shoulder turrets. This enhanced by the opening cockpit and tiny figures that can sit there. It adds sense of scale and verisimilitude. I'm also fond of the basic but effective weathering techniques used here. You can tell that this guy is an actual knuckle-dragger with the beige paint apps to suggest dirt on its feet and tracks being repeated on its claws. The exposed screws are less appealing, but it happens.
So, what does this do? A few things. Basic posability is there, but not in the humanoid sense. It's a lot of big ratchets, with little outwards motion or modern innovations like ankle tilts. I'd imagine this moving and walking like a wind-up toy, but that doesn’t hurt the vibe. The claws do open though, and the shoulder turrets have two axis of motion. It also features four concealed weapons of varying complexity. Most obvious are the shoulder pylons that flip to reveal a missile pod and blaster(?), closely followed by a rising faceplate that reveals laser eyes. The one I didn't immediately recognise is how the torso splits and extends to unveil two cannons and an actual waist joint.
So, is this worth tracking down? Uhhhh, yeah? I’m predisposed to like giant robots anyway but this is a nice one. I dunno if I’d get more, but I wouldn’t rule it out.
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