“We will only be inside for a few seconds”
The first product on the shelves for Hasbro’s new Dungeons & Dragons Golden Archive series in 2023 was the Gelatinous Cube. This was a precursor and a compatible item to the wider figure releases that were to come from the new movie Honor Among Thieves. It arrives packed into a closed box ‘plastic free’ package with the cut down corner at one side to pay homage to D&D’s D6 dice.
Inside we find our cube unassembled and laid out into 6 square pieces and a couple additional items that form an internal stand/display. Assembly instructions are provided, but there are a few slightly ill-fitting parts that makes construction far from simple.
The cube replicates its role in the finale of Honor Among Thieves and its role in the games being held at Neverwinter. It measures a touch under 7.5 inches on each side and is cast in a textured translucent blue plastic that allows the interior contents to be seen. This is actually too big vs the cube we see in Honor Among Thieves which is no taller than the main character.
Around five of the sides - the base is excluded - are a number of inserted items. These vary from parts of a skeleton to a book, potion bottle, coin purse, bag, scroll, and even some axes and a bow. These are all removable from their molded slot on the cube and I would assume the thinking is that these would enhance the accessories included with the Golden Archive figures themselves. The trouble is many of these are very cartoonish in their design as though sculpted to go with the animated figures and not those from Honor Among Thieves. Most are also unusable as an accessory, with only the bow, one of the axes, the shoulder bag, and a book being of real use.
Of course, none of these accessories are present in the Honor Among Thieves sequence, and while you can remove them from the cube they do leave the shaped sections behind that are quite unsightly on the surface of the cube. I’d have preferred a standard cube with the accessories thrown within or held internally rather than externally so you could go with the plain cube look if you wanted. There is also a miss in the accessory choices by not including the snake that plays a key part of the scenes. they could have also expanded the scene-building options provided by the set by including a Mimic - both of these would have been preferable to the variety of pieces we actually got.
The cube, once assembled, is accessed through the top which should clip on and off with ease. Again the illfitting and warping of the plastic makes this much more difficult than it needs to be. Once you have access to the interior you can use it to display your D&D figures with both foot pegs built into the base, but also the central arm which allows the figures to be held horizontally at the waist as though trapped in the cube. There is even a hole hidden under a shield accessory that allows the hand of the figure to protrude outward.
The Gelatinous Cube feels like a confused release as though developed for one style of D&D figures and then rapidly converted into a movie release. It is a big piece for display - too big really from what we see on screen - taking up a lot of room. And it lacks any real aesthetic quality with the simplistic almost childish accessories around its sides not even consistent with the scenes and with very few of them adding any extra value to the figure.
Without a figure included in the set, the initial RRP of $35/£35 was difficult to justify, particularly when the quality is not great. You can see why this has dropped as low as £7 at some UK retailers and is still not selling. For die-hard D&D fans there is some inherent value here, particularly at the much-reduced prices, and with a bit of work and say some LED lights this may be a pretty cool central display piece for a D&D collector.
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About Me : As a child of the 70's and 80's I grew up in a golden age for action figures and in my youth bought and sold myself through collections of Star Wars, G.I. Joe (Action Force) and M.A.S.K. while also dabbling in He-Man, Transformers and Ghostbusters. Roll forward and I am now reliving that Youth with the action figures of today and am a collector and fan of the larger 6-8 inch figures from my favourite movie and TV licences - including the ones mentioned above, but also the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Doctor Who and the Aliens. I launched The Mephitsu Archives in 2015 with a view of creating a UK focused site or these figures where fans can pick up the latest action figure news, read reviews and get information on where to buy their figures and what is currently on store shelves. I hope I am delivering that to you guys...
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