Review: Highlander The Animated Series

I'm going to do a sweeping generalisation here and say that all of the Highlander sequels are crap.

No one arguing the point? No? Actually, If I'm completely honest I kind of liked the 3rd one. Well, 'liked' is a bit of a strong word. It was okay. The plot was vaguely reasonable and I didn't feel like I'd been robbed of 90 minutes of my life when I got to the end. But that's about the best I can say about it.

The TV series completely passed me by and therefore can't comment on it. I did, however, watch the animated series which, against the odds, was actually good.

It's vaguely set in the same universe as the original film (Connor, lead character in the films, is in a flashback in one episode), but not really. It's set after a world-wide disaster (meteorite/nuclear weapons combo) has wiped out most of everything, allowing Kortan, an Immortal, to take over. The other immortals have given up violence and dedicated themselves to help humanity. 700 years later, Quentin McCloud is born and destined to overthrow Kortan, with Ramirez as his mentor.

Rather than repeat all the details, more about the series can be found here. If you like cartoons, especially ones of the slightly darker variety, it's definitely worth a watch. The complete series has been released on DVD in the USA.

The toyline follows basic 90s figure rules, with basic articulation. Most come with some kind of action feature. E.g. sword-slashing action, or springy legs. As always with these types of things, this makes posing them a bit of a problem. The capes & coats are fabric. Quentin's coat is a little odd-looking since the main part of it is fabric and the arms are moulded plastic.

Only 6 figures were ever released, though due to the travelling nature of the show this actually covers almost all the characters. The only major omission is Quentin's little sister, though being a female character (and a child) there was never any chance of her being released as anything more than a pack-in anyway.

Actually, thinking about it, it would have been nice for her to be included with one of the other figures, even if it was only as a non-articulated lump of plastic. Oh well, too late now.

Two 'vehicles' were released (one was an animal), of which I only have one. The bike is pretty basic, though it comes with nice rubber tyres and a figure sits perfectly on it. There's a 'crash' action with it, which throws the figure from the seat. It requires a reasonable amount of strength to reset, for some reason, so smaller children are likely to have problems.

The line is never going to win any awards, but the figures look exactly as the characters do in the cartoon and it is more than sufficient for those who like the show to play with.