by Taylor Smart
Welcome back to Monday Mini Madness! Today I will be giving a brief introduction to the wonderful world of Glyos figures. I first heard of them on a phenomenal Youtube channel called Toy Break. I also saw mention of them on the October Toys forums and recently decided to make a purchase. While I was anxiously awaiting the arrival of my first Glyos figures I conducted some research on the Glyos-verse, which turns out to be quite extensive. First off I should say that Glyos isn’t one specific line but more of a blanket term for many independently produced toys that all use the Glyos system modular peg.
This peg system allows you to cross parts from all Glyos compatible lines, making these not only great for collectors but also for builders and customizers. Something that needs to be understood about these is that there are quite a few unique figures, but new ones don’t come along for every series. Because they are independently produced they get as much use out of each mold as they can. This means they make the same character multiple times, but in different colors. This may be a turn off to some people but I enjoy that sort of thing and hope that you will consider it. Rather than give more background about these I am going to point you to a very comprehensive introduction to Glyos that I found very helpful.
THE MEAT: My first order consisted of three figures (Operator Gearius Scar Pheyden MK II, Standard Pheyden MK IV, and Glyan Crayhunter Reverse). They all appealed to me based on color and style. When the package showed up not only was there a few extra parts but there was a whole extra figure (Glyan Rig Crew Standard)! This is apparently quite common when ordering from Onell Design, founded by Matt Doughty - the father of all things Glyos. In fact there are parts that can only be obtained as packed-in extras for orders. I love that Matt does this, it shows that he cares about what he is doing with these toys, and that he wants other people to enjoy them like he does.
I was really excited to see all of the pieces that make up one of these figures so I promptly tore apart the standard Glyan Rig Crew. Some of the pieces are pretty small so it was hard to separate them by hand, luckily I remembered reading a suggestion of using a butter knife, flathead screwdriver, or any flat blunt edged device. I pulled out a Lego block separator and it worked like magic. On the Onell site it tells you how many pieces are included with each figure (including: bonus heads, scarves, belts and such) but it is hard to appreciate that number until you see them laid out next to each other.
When I started to put the figure back together I decided to put some of the extra parts to use and make a new character. I don’t have a ton of excess parts right now so I re-used a lot of pieces from the Glyan Rig Crew for this; I had a lot of fun seeing what parts worked well together and those that didn’t (like I pictured in my head). I am happy with the final edition with two exceptions: I want a turret gun pointing over his shoulder, and his torso doesn’t look good right now - so I need to find better pieces for it. Both of these I am sure can be easily solved with another purchase or two. I added a spacer to the torso to give him a little bit more height, shown here next to the standard height Glyan.
A great thing about the customization aspect of Glyos figures is that on the Onell store you can buy different part sets in multiple colors. These part sets come with anywhere between 4 and 17 parts and cost $2-$4.00 depending on which set you get. The figures themselves cost between $6-$12.00 a piece making these very affordable. If you are interested in these figures but want a more educated spot to jump in (unlike my blind jump) you can head over to the forum hosted by October Toys and folks will be more than happy to make some suggestions based on your interest and price point.
NEWS
On November 19, 2014 NECA acquired Kidrobot. Frank Kozik the creator of the Labbit will be creative director. I am curious to see what the direction they will take. I have seen a lot of speculation that they will be focusing on independent art and artists rather than licensed properties, this seems to be the opposite of NECA, so we will just have to wait and see.
NOTES
There are a lot of sites dedicated to Glyos out there, here are some that I have come across so far. These are a good starting point:
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