Review: ThunderCats Lizard Cannon

I've not spoken too highly of the new ThunderCats toys from Bandai. Certainly they've had potential, but there have been major flaws in most of them which have left me wary. ThunderLynx, especially, has seemed like a completely useless gimmick.

The main reason for buying the Lizard Cannon was to give the ThunderCats something to fight against. Mumm-Ra is fine, but the Cats currently have a great big tank so something with a little fire power to even things up was needed.

Turns out, the Lizard Cannon is possibly the best toy in the line thus far.

I really like the nameless generic lizard the set comes with. He is without a doubt the best figure in the line that I've seen. Maybe it's because of his bulk, making him look completely different to the other characters. Because of the dark green colouration the ugly black joint pegs aren't as obvious as with the others. Considering the figures that came with the Racers were cheaper versions of the main characters, the lizard is as high a quality as the figures 'sold separately'.

The cannon itself isn't as fantastic as the lizard, but it's not bad. It's a little fiddly getting the lizard to sit right as he's hindered by his tail and, unlike the other vehicles, there's no 'clip' to hold his back securely in the right place. You must therefore take a little care doing it or the ThunderLynx won't work.

Unlike my 50-50 success with the Racers, the Lynx on the cannon works very well. Essentially it's another case of 'gun won't fire unless figure is in the cannon' which, as ever, seems pointless. In some ways you've even limited  potential play ideas for children. The missile itself is nice and big and losing it...well, children are always going to lose these things as they shoot them off without bothering to consider the direction it was aimed at the time.

The only real problem is that as a generic vehicle & character and the only baddy vehicle currently available it'd be nice to have a few of these to stand up against the Thundertank. But this may not be enough of a reason to convince my wife of further purchases of exactly the same thing.