Standing 3-inches tall, Pheytron is an example of extreme non-subtlety. Sold blindly and left unrevealed until he showed up in the mail, this figure was more expensive than a standard Pheyden but that's because he has new paint masks and some pretty spectacular tampograph printing to bring the homage to life. Also, he's got a scarf - that's why he was $4.00 more. Fans speculated if it would be another The Outer Space Men figure or something else, with the price nudging me to believe it had to be something else. My money was on a Traveler with a couple of heads. I was close.
By now you know the score with Onell Design. These are durable articulated action figures for adult collectors. They come in clear unmarked plastic bags, devoid of any copyright or trademark information. Each joint is a Glyos peg and socket, making it as much of a construction system as an action figure - you can swap parts fairly freely between most Glyos-compatible releases from Onell Design, Rawshark Studios, The Godbeast, The Four Horsemen, ToyFinity, and many others. To this day I still wish I could walk in to a toy store and buy these without having to wait for it to come in the mail, but such things don't seem to be in the cards.
Molded in black, Pheyden takes on new personality when given bright yellow eyes. A silver stripe on top of his head recalls the motorcycle helmet's visor on Clawtron, as that Fisher-Price Adventure People figure was basically some dude molded in black with claw arms. The blue markings and belt are very similar to the original Clawtron toy, and the ornate white box on his chest is a remix of the pattern from that classic 1980 action figure.
As the base Pheyden mold lacks claws, his fingers are now silver. So are the soles of his boots - again, a nod to the original Darth Vader knock-off from Fisher-Price. The various blue markings are a remix of what the original Clawtron carried, with a Black Widow-esque pattern being tweaked with two black dots on each appearance and a simple blue dot on the shoulders to break up the sea of onyx plastic. Sure, the original toy offered more color, but this is the Onell Design take on it. I'm dying to see if they give us figures based on X-Ray Man and X-Ray Woman. (Look them up.)
Over the years I've followed Onell Design I've been largely pleased with what I've purchased. I've probably spent too much money on the figures - especially given how many of them are the same figures in new colors - but I'm rarely disappointed with them. I've learned that pretty much every time Matt Doughty sells something blind through his web store, it's going to be good. This time was no exception. Seeing elements of a human motorcycle driver make a transition to a weird sci-fi robot and translated once again to this Pheytron is a fabulously bizarre game of telephone. It's like a weird game of telephone in which we see information passed from one generation to the next, with the end result being a strange design that means something to a limited number of adult action figure collectors. In other words, it's perfect. I assume we'll probably never see these paint masks again, but what do I know? I consider myself lucky to have picked this one up, mostly because it can be a nuisance to track down a figure once you've missed it. If it shows up on eBay cheaply, go ahead and buy it. Cliche as it is to say this, you know you want one.
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