TFC Toys Ares: Aethon

 

The fourth member of the Ares squad is Aethon, a third party Tantrum, again named for one of the fire breathing horses that pull the chariot of Ares in Greek mythology. Aethon is a general reuse of the Conabus mold, with some slight differences.

(Apologies for blurry picture. I only realized now that after I wiped the lens, I never retook a picture of Aethon as the ‘cover’ photo. I am sorry. – mr)

The first real, although to call it major is an overstatement, difference between Aethon and Conabus is that Aethon appears to be Conabus backwards. At least the shoulder pads are, as the moving parts on those face forwards on Aethon. Obviously the chest is different, yet still unconventional, just like Conabus’. The bull head folds down into the chest, the panel of which does not close against the body once the head is folded down. At first this seems like something that just hasn’t lined up properly, but it is not intended to close all the way, as the panel is flat so there is no way to compensate for the rises and runs of the animal head. The horns then stick out as loops on each side of the chest, and they kind of look like tubes, which is fairly neat: as a member of the G1 Predacons, Tantrum was designated as the fueler, and so these horn-tubes sort of look like they could be fuel tubes or something. In your imagination.

Aethon is a little bland looking in the headsculpt but that’s ok, as it has been established that he, along with Conabus and Phobos, can use their animal heads to embellish their robot mode appearances, and Aethon does this the best of the three. The bull head can sit behind the robot head to give more of that G1 appearance, which looks excellent, or it can be flipped down over the robot head like a helmet, making Aethon a robot minotaur, which is frankly the best configuration for this figure. The only drawback from this is that Conabus does look a bit goofy with the large rhino head, and Phobos can’t really pull this look off at all. As a result, if your TFC Predacons were all similarly configured, one would look good, one would look cartoonish, and one would have too small a head, to go along with the other two, who would just have regular robot heads. All by himself, bull headed Aethon looks great, so if you’re in the market for a robotic minotaur action figure, there’s another selling point for Aethon.

For accessories, Aethon comes with the same stuff that Conabus does, so, large dual blaster/foot part that is difficult to wield, and the best of the individual sword parts. This figure has the same difficulties posing with the large blaster parts that Conabus has, and it is again a shame. The smaller blasters that come with Phlogeus and Phobos work well with Aethon, so it’s not like this figure is totally committed to the larger versions. The sword looks cool with the figure, especially when the figure has the bull head deployed. Again, it is too bad that the small combiner pegs on the shoulders can’t be used to mount the halves of the foot blasters, and again too bad that, in order to wield the blaster halves as hand held weapons, the forearm needs to be popped open, like the hand was being folded away for transformation.

Animal mode is a bull, and while the first impulse is to say there isn’t much to say about it, it looks excellent. It is a better looking animal mode than that of Conabus, despite being the exact same animal mode with a different head. Maybe it’s something as simple as the color scheme? The bull nose has a ring in it, and the face has these grey parts which are possibly intended to be eyebrows, but even if they aren’t, they look like eyebrows, giving bull Aethon a cute, angry looking expression. The blaster foot arrangement plugs onto a pair of pegs on the back, more solidly than they did on Conabus, allowing armored bull mode to look more sturdy and useful. Not sure that “useful” is really the best word for it, but with the blasters more stable and solidly connected, Aethon seems like he would be more effective on the battlefield than Conabus, who would always have to be aware of and compensate for the flopping around of his weapons. (I know that they are just toys. – mr)   

Considering that this figure is a very minor alteration on Conabus, it is interesting to note that Aethon seems to be much, much better of a figure than Conabus. Not really sure why, it may be simply a personal preference, but Aethon just seems to be so much better. It could be the added value of the animal head working better as an alternate head for the figure, that robo-minotaur mode being an option that pushes this toy over the top of the other one. Conabus does a much better job of storing the animal head in robot mode though, and even though the chest on Conabus does not completely close around the rhino head, it makes for a better profile than the chest panel hanging open look of Aethon. Viewed from certain angles, one can see the that chest flap does not have cuts in it to accommodate the bull horns, rather employing two small tabs that flip out from the inside of the chest panel to sit over top of the horns to give the impression of the horns being enclosed by the chest. It’s a cheat, and not one that works very well, honestly. For the first few transformations, the general idea was that somehow, a step was missing (you know how third party instructions are….. – mr) or that the animal head wasn’t being pushed inwards enough or something simple, something simply being overlooked, as it couldn’t be the case that the animal head was so halfheartedly hidden away. As with Conabus, the larger chest holding the animal head looks good from some angles, better on the rhino than the bull no doubt, but that that transformation step was authored in an effort to distance these animal to robot converting figures from their official produce inspirations. You know, that whole Vanilla Ice-didn’t-steal-from-Queen gambit: “The G1 Predacons are orange animals that turn into robots with animal heads like this, but the TFC Toys figures are orange animals that turn into robots with animal heads like this, so they’re totally different.”

This was something of a trend in the early days of the third party combiner scene, as companies were clearly trying to make G1 characters with subtle differences so that they could appeal to the G1 market while maintaining the ability to act like similarities were simple coincidence in the event of some legal action. Today, it would appear that this cautionary approach is totally gone, as TFC Toys’ own Hades figures look like they stepped right out of the Victory cartoon, and their Poseidon figures are closer to any representation of the Seacons than anything Hasbro could churn out. Being a more recent member of the third party club, I can’t say when this attempt at being real different ended, but it certainly seems to have passed by now.

Anyway, maybe because of nothing more than personal preference, but Aethon is a better figure than his mold mate Conabus, and is a real nice addition to the Ares team.