Kung-Fu POHATU

He’s still got an inverted torso. He’s the only TOA NUVA who still wields his original weapons, though this time the SuperToes are made out of the new PROTODERMIC plastic. He’s the only TOA NUVA that still has the exact same arms as his original form. He’s also the only TOA NUVA who does not always wear his new weapons, and one of only two that do not wear his new weapons on his feet.

For some reason, POHATU is always the least humanoid looking TOA. The first one looked like a rabbit, and the KODAN Claws can be posed in a rather mantis-like way.

I’m very disappointed in how the arms and armor work together. With the old arm construction, the shoulder armor severely restricts posability of the arms. Admittedly, they aren’t actually used to fight with, so this isn’t nearly as problematic as it is with ONUA NUVA. The torso armor just doesn’t work with him. With the correct construction, it looks like he’s wearing someone else’s armor because it doesn’t match the shape of his torso (and it further restricts the arm movement). With the armor inverted to match the torso…well, it just looks freaky.

The claws are one of the more interesting NUVA weapons, and in his primary form they can be used as climbing claws to help navigate the rocky hills and plateaus of the PO-WAHI desert.

Mark pointed out that the instructions conflict with the various forms of artwork that we’ve seen as to how the KODAN Claws should be attached to his hands. In the image above, you can see the way they’re attached in the artwork on the left. This form tends to make it look like he’s holding the claws in his hands. On the right, you can see how the instructions say to attach them. This version looks more like the claws are his actual hands, rather than tools being held by them.

To build the KODAN Ball, you have to remove the two claw halves as well as the pair of black pins that are attached to his forearms. It’s a bit wobbly shaped, since the thickness of the entire ball is less than the width of the individual claws, which is in turn less than the length of the claws. On top of that, the added bulk of the mount points on one end tend to weigh it down a bit. In short, this thing is not going to roll very well, though it does look pretty nasty, which is probably why he had to get PROTODERMIC toes to kick it with.

In this form, he is able to kick the KODAN Ball hard enough to shatter rocks that get in his way.

This is probably my least favorite KANOHI NUVA. Combined with everything else, it makes POHATU NUVA look old and fat. It’s got deep hanging jowls, the armor gives him a sort of pot-bellied look, the TOA NUVA legs look significantly thicker than the original TOA legs, and he’s a bit stoop-shouldered. While the original POHATU did have a way of suggesting extreme speed, this version looks considerably slower.

This can is interesting in that it’s the only one that shows two images of a TOA NUVA with the exact same construction. For some reason they did not show the KODAN Ball on the main packaging artwork, though they did show it in the little tiny box that shows how to switch to “travel mode” on the other five TOA NUVA cans.

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