Cosmos

Okay, finally the Speedia 500 race can end! Racers, start your engines! Cosmos is the announcer for the Speedia 500, ready to mark the winner with a wave of the checkered flag. Cosmos was released as part of the 2022 Walmart-exclusive Velocitron Speedia 500 Collection alongside figures like Override and Lord Horror... in theory. He was packed one per case, so while stores were drowning in unsellable Blurrs, Cosmos and Clampdown were nearly impossible to find. Then, while Clampdown got rereleased in Series 2, Cosmos still didn't. Hasbro tried to fix this by putting Cosmos in Legacy United packaging, but that was at the tail end of the line, so again no stores bought it. For cryin' out loud! The original Cosmos had a tall, thin head, but the preferred way to show it is thin and sloped - like a bucket that's been turned upside down. This one has smooth sides, but is very short and wide. The helmet comes down to a point between his two individual eyes, but he's too cute to feel angry. Rather than a nose and mouth, his lower face is an angular plate, which makes him look ready for outer space. One thing the various updates of Cosmos have shied away from is his cartoon physique. The animation made Cosmos look like a barrel on fat legs, even more than his 1985 toy did, but modern... Cosmoses(?) ["Cosmoi" --ed.] do their best to tone that down, to find a way to make him look "better," but this is meant to be a direct G1 update, so we get the big ol' chonky chest. His legs are thick, but not as thick as the cartoon's, and the shapes sculpted on the arms are updates of details on the original figure. The design of the chest is from the cartoon, but the colors are based on one of the ways the toon was miscolored: it's supposed to have yellow outlines on the sides and down the middle, but instead we just get plain blue. Plus, the yellow paint on the arms doesn't come close to matching the yellow plastic on the rest of the toy. Cosmos has giant feet, so he'll stand stably even in some crazy poses. You'd be able to do more if they could flex them forward or back, rather than side-to-side, though. he's got hinged knees, swivel thighs, swivel/hinge hips with hinged flaps over them, a swivel waist, swivel/hinge elbows and shoulders, and a balljointed head. He's a ton of fun to play with! He's armed with a small green pistol, and, to tie in with the "racing" theme of the exclusives, he's also got a white plastic flag that can plug into the side of the gun and features a black checkered pattern. Unfortunately, the pattern is only on one side, so viewed from the other side, he's surrendering. Whoops! Converting Cosmos is fun, too. Rather than retracting into the body, his head is on a panel that flips over, leaving a small red bump to homage the old figure. Fold his hands away, raise the arms to the side, then rotate them back to unclip them from the torso, unfold the back panel and spin it 180° before pushing the entire section in and folding a small butt panel out. Hinge the heels around to the sides, point the feet down, pop the hips down and swing the legs up, tuck the hip panels around them, and bring the arms up to complete the mode. Interestingly, the Walmart exclusive version of Cosmos was sold in his altmode, while the Legacy refresh was in robot mode. Cosmos is, of course, a UFO. He's always a UFO. Unlike the Universe and Thrilling 30 versions, Hasbro's not acting embarrassed about his origins: instead of being flat, possibly with a small bump on top, this is the absolute vintage 1950s-style "a total conman copied this from the top of a commercially available lantern" flying saucer, with a stumpy round base and a big trash can sitting on top. You can understand why some fnas might be upset that it's such a corny design rather than something cool, but anything else wouldn't have been true to the 1985 Cosmos. I wasn't interested enough in Cosmos to preorder him like I did The One True Scourge, Hallowed Be His Name, figuring I might pick it up in stores if I saw him. Then Sprocket asked me to find one for him, so I started looking - and looking, and looking, and looking. Not even looking respectfully, looking hard. Never ever ever had any luck. The original VS5C release of Cosmos somehow found its way to Ross stores in 2023, suggesting Hasbro had perhaps planned a rerelease at some point that never happened, and this was them unloading that stock; I made special stops at every Ross I could find, but was still unable to get him. Then there was the abortive Legacy United release mentioned above. Amazingly, when Walmart got those Black Friday two-packs this year, United Cosmos was among them - meaning I got this figure for $7.50, when previously the only way for most fans to own one was via scalper. Gotta celebrate your wins when you can! -- 12/09/25 What's your favorite UFO hoax? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.