197?
THROW that spear, baby! With his thick 'n chunky beard, his brown-and-green coloration, and his generally stubby appearance, Spartan K5 looks more like an evil cousin of Santa Claus than a fierce robotic warrior. Spartan K5 was an incredibly lucky score for me, and a watershed moment to boot: this marks my first Jumbo Villian. I felt like smoking a cigarette after the purchase. Lord, these suckers are tough to find -- this is only the second one I've seen in person in the last five years.

Anyway, enough whining: on to the toy. Besides the huge shield, Spartan's most distinguishing characteristic is his right arm, which is perpetually frozen in mid-throw. This is kind of a shame, since his trademark spear is missing from most surviving specimens of the toy. It's not particularly surprising, though. The shooting mechanism is nothing more than a simple pinball-machine style device, incapable of even locking in place. And the "plunger" rests near the end of the launch tube when it's not physically held back, meaning that I couldn't, near as I can tell, actually retain a spear in there even if I had one. Damned if I do, damned if I don't... [ Recently there was an earth shattering discovery, if you twist the pin back when you pull it, it locks into place, so storing the spear is no problem! -s]

The launch tube can be physically slid forward and backwards through the hole in the fist. Most pics I've seen of K5 show it in a rearward orientation, but since I don't have a spear, I think it looks better jacked forward. Your mileage, as they say, may vary.

Speaking of his shield, it's pretty damn funny: it's physically attached directly to the stump of K5's left wrist. The poor bastard doesn't even have a hand. And what with the OTHER arm perpetually locked in a 45-degree-angle bend, he's got to have a pretty frustrating life when he's not menacing Mazinger. (Which must be kind of difficult, anyway, seeing as he's really short -- a good four inches shorter than his foe.) Then again, he's just a piece of vinyl and I'm probably thinking about this far, far too much.

Matt Alt