Modo

Ralph S. Mouse is back, and this time he's looking for revenge! Modo may not be the fastest thinker on the planet, but his heart is in the right place. He loves baseball and rock and roll and listens to his favorite tunes by zeroing in on radio frequencies with his antennae. An earlier encounter with Dr. Karbunkle left Modo with a bionic arm and cost him an eye. In spite of this, he's a one-mouse army! Nostalgia generally runs in a 20-ish-year cycle, but the '80s hung around longer than expected, and that's why we're only really starting to get '90s nostalgia bait now, a decade later than it "should" have been here. Biker Mice from Mars was a 1993 cartoon created by Rick Ungar, a bigwig at Marvel Productions. The story featured the three titular rodents crash-landing in Chicago (during a Nubs game at Quigley Field) and deciding to defend Earth from the evil aliens who destroyed their homeworld. Modo is the team muscle. He's the tallest of the three, which wouldn't normally mean much for mice, but these guys are roughly human-sized, so he's probably like seven feet tall. He has grey fur and, because these are Martians, a pair of red antennae growing from his forehead. Naturally, he shows he's a 1990s tough-guy by having not one but two earrings in his ear (just on the left side, but there's a notch missing in his right ear, so maybe any piercing on that side got ripped out in a fight?), and wears a black patch to cover his missing eye. His remaining iris is painted red; whenever he got mad on the show, it would glow angrily, but this toy will just have to settle for paint. Even just looking at the figure in the package, you'll be able to tell the proportions are weird. The legs are overly long, and the torso is strangely short. I thought maybe it was just that he had a high belt, but that's over pants, not stomach. The extra length in the legs may contribute to making them look surprisingly thin, as well: as this is a retro cartoon property being done in a sort of 6.75" scale, mental comparisons are unavoidably going to be drawn to MotU Classics and Super7's various Ultimates, and Modo may be muscular, but he's not He-Man or Thundercats muscular, you know? He's not even Silverhawks muscular. He could really use some bulk to really look right. Modo has black boots with purple padding on the front, purple kneepads with red straps, and blue pants. He doesn't wear a shirt, just a piece of armor that covers his upper chest and back and features rounded pads over the shoulders. His right arm is the bionic one, with a rough, blocky design that makes it clear it's mechanical, not organic. How best to describe it? If you look at a Terminator Endoskeleton, its limbs are constructed from pistons to duplicate the kind of movement normal muscles are capable of; however, if you look at any pop culture references to a Terminator Endoskeleton, they'll usually be drawn with solid blocks and simple hinges. Modo's arm looks like that kind of pseudo-Terminator design. The toy's articulation is pretty good. These toys are being made by a company called "Nacelle," who we haven't heard of before, but the quality of these joints is above expectations. The figure has swivel/hinge ankles, swivel boots, double-hinged knees, swivel thighs, balljointed hips, balljointed tail, a swivel waist, balljointed chest, swivel/hinge/swivel wrists(!), a double-hinged left elbow and a single hinged right elbow that can bend either direction (because it's robotic), swivel biceps, swivel/hinge shoulders, and a barbell head. The joints may not be integrated with the sculpt as smoothly as we may see on more established companies, but the fact these are all here and all work really smoothly right out of the box is an accomplishment. In the cartoon, Modo could pop a laser blaster out of his robotic arm, rather like the Steel Clan Robots from Gargoyles. Sadly, this toy doesn't have any such feature, not even as swappable parts. So it goes. The accessories we do get include a huge rocket gun, a handheld blaster, and a hot dog. Because, after TMNT, every character with attitude needed a signature food, and the Mice didn't like cheese. Also, they landed in a baseball stadium, so that was the first Earth food they tried. Thankfully, this is just a normal hotdog, not that horrifying abomination known as a "Chicago-style" dog. The blaster is red and purple and yellow, an utterly garrish combo, while the rocket gun is a simpler gold with silver accents. There are swappable bodyparts, too. You can give him fists, open hands, or gripping hands, and one of two alternate heads: the head he has on in the package has the mouth (mostly) closed, but you can trade it for one with the mouth more open, or one wearing his full helmet. All the parts pop on and off easily, and the helmet features a translucent purple visor covering the fully sculpted and painted face within. The thing that's missing, however, is right there in the name: these aren't the Walking Mice from Mars, they're the Biker Mice from Mars, so getting a Mouse without a bike feels weird. And no, we're not just picking on a small company for this, it's the same thing we always say about Hasbro doing a Ghost Rider without a bike. It seems Nacelle may be making bikes separately, soon, and at a surprisingly reasonable price, but we'd still prefer to get both bike and rider at once. But we still give them credit for at least having a plan for it. Like we've said a lot lately, getting your toys into retail spaces matters. I never watched Biker Mice from Mars back in the day (it was often paired with the Iron Man and Fantastic Four cartoons, and I didn't watch those, either), so I have no connection to the characters or the property as a whole, and it's so small it's not like it's a show anybody ever talks about in 2024, and certainly not something I would ever think to look up toys for. But this figure, Modo, was right there in Walmart when I was checking the collector toys area, and so I bought it the first day I ever knew it existed. It turned out to be a decent action figure, and now The Nacelle Company is someone I'm aware of and will try to keep an eye on. Looking them up, they're apparently doing Ryan Brown's COW-Boys of Moo Mesa, which is kind of exciting, and it's not something we'd even be aware of if not for this toy being on an actual store shelf. -- 08/28/24/a>