The Most Secret of Saturdays: Part 1

Greetings and Bien Venue everyone, and welcome to Weird World. Actually, its "Mostly Mini Dinos". I am your host, Phillip Campana. Today's episode we take a look at some of the strange, and wondrous things our world has to offer. Science refuses to recognize their existence, but the proof we have here, shows otherwise. Sit tight and enjoy our first look into the world of Secret Saturdays minis!

First off, let us talk about the show these figures are based off of. Secret Saturdays was a cartoon by Jay Stephens broadcast on Cartoon Network for two seasons, telling the story of a family of paranormal scientists who study mysterious animals known as Cryptids. This ranges from everything to Bigfoot, Nessie, and more obscure "unknown" creatures such as Rods and Flashlight frogs. One of the last few things on Cartoon Network I have found worth watching. I can easily rank it within the same or similar tier as Transformers Prime. While it is not quite as dark as Prime, it is no less well written, animated, and voiced. The main characters of The Secret Saturdays also eventually appeared in a crossover episode of Ben 10: Omniverse. Since Ben 10 (anything post original series) isn't content with destroying it's own lore, it had to drag both Generator Rex and Secret Saturdays into itself as well. I won't speak very much about the horrible designs among other things that the crossover did to the Saturdays. But much like how the finale of Justice League Unlimited sought to turn Batman Beyond into a mess of plotholes, I can just pretend it doesn't exist since they aren't part of their respective series. Anyhow, lets continue onwards to the first playset!

Can you feel the awesome?

First up we have "Fiskerton's Train Chase". Fiskerton is the "gorilla cat" on the left, and literal face of the playset. Munya is the spider man, and henchman of the main villian. This playset, much liek the other two are based on specific episodes. Channeling a good deal of Mighty Max, these playsets do their best to pack alot into such a small space. In the bottom half, this set has a Buratsche-al-Ilgs creature molded into it. Oddly, its not show accurate. Notably in that has a mouth and is the wrong color. One of it's tentacles can be pressed to open and close it's mouth. The other action feature of this set is the train on the icy wall. The panel on which Munya stands can be flipped like a catapult to launch him or any other figures that happen to stand on it. Overall, good set!

 He lived by himself in the swamp..

Swamp Creature's Battleground features Zak on the left, and the Honey Island Swamp monster. I won't go into detail as it involves spoilers for the episode, but the chamber is a heavy plot point of the episode, and it's function is for you to watch and find out. On the other side of the set is a set of circular panels that have slots of the characters, placing them on the panels and rotating one of the green logs causes them to spin and "fight". I enjoy all the details here, both sides of the central piece have molded details, and the alligator was a nice touch. And not to mention, every figure in these mini sets have great detail, and paint apps for their scale. Another solid win!

Leapin Lava Lizards!

The final set for today is "Cherufe's Lava Lair". Again, based on an episode, taking into account the size of the playset, they squeezed in a really good amount of detail in here, including a reference to the villain's goal. On the left is the cryptid Cherufe, and the right is Zak in a fireproof suit. Great detail on them, but most especially so in the middle volcano piece of the playset, they even included some buildings of the village found in the episode! And an action feature all in one slice. Given what they had to work with, all these sets are really well done, and if by chance you can find some floating around in bargain stores, I recommend them easily.

I hope you enjoyed this Saturday post! catch you next week!