Thumb
wrestling. When it comes to sports for the truly apathetic, thumb
wrestling ranks right up there with rock, paper, scissors,
paper football and those novelty basketball hoops that you can hang
above your wastebasket. But what if, just WHAT IF you could make thumb
wrestling more interesting? Believe it or not, one company called
Radica - which sounds like the name of an 80's glam band - has
done just that.
The
people at Radica decided to combine all the action of thumb
wrestling with the ferocity of monsters! The result? Thumb
Warriors! The idea is simple, you wear these grub-like monsters on
your thumb and have a "thumb war" of epic proportions. Each monster
grub thing wears some heavy (read: "plastic") armor which you have to
knock off in order to expose its weak point. The name of the weak
point? Why it's the "Trigger of Doom!" of course,
what else would you call it? If you
can pin down this trigger for 1.5 seconds, your opponent's monster
will let out a death cry and you shall emerge victorious. Now please
allow me to introduce our Thumb Warriors:
As you
can see, they all basically look the same, they just have different
sets of armor and names that range from awesome to embarrassingly bad.
Magma
(Red Armor): Not a bad name at all. If only he could vomit up some
magma during a thumb war to melt his opponent's face off, he would truly be the
ultimate of all the thumb warriors.
Onyx
(Black Armor): Probably the best of all the names on the list, you just can't
go wrong with a name like Onyx. Once you go black, you'll never go back.
Hydra
(Blue Armor): Unless you're planning on having an underwater thumb
war, I see no reason whatsoever to have a Thumb Warrior character
named Hydra. Furthermore, these toys are electronic and taking them in
the water probably isn't the greatest of ideas.
Mantis (Green Armor): Now here's a good name for a fighter. Think
he eats his opponent's to celebrate his victory?
Pachua (Purple Armor): While this is one of the coolest looking
monsters in the set with bright green skin, he's still got one of the worst names. Pachua? What is
this, a friggin' episode of Pokemon!?
Dracul
(Orange Armor): Dracul? What is he supposed to be, some kind of
blood-sucking monster from Transylvania? Sorry Dracul, I think you
should've gone with Onyx's look, because your victims are probably gonna see you coming from a mile away in that neon orange armor.
Now that
the introductions are out of the way we can get down to business. I
was able to find one pack of these Thumb Warriors in the closeout rack
at my local Toys R Us. Since Onyx and Magma weren't anywhere to be
found, I present you with...
Pachua and Hydra!
Great,
so I get to own the Thumb Warriors with two of the worst names in the
entire set. Also, when you wear these things for long enough, their
tails (which wrap around your wrist) can give you a nice little
rope-burn after a while. But hey, that's just the kind of stuff one
accepts when he GOES TO WAR. At least there's one truly cool thing about 'em...
When you
remove their armor, their faces look extremely menacing and I'm pretty
sure these are the same things that Khan dropped into Chekov's ear.
But enough about their names and aesthetics, there's only one way to
know if these toys truly deserve a thumbs up or not. I know what you came here
to see. You wanted to see a thumb war, right? Well then... a thumb war
you shall have!
I
decided to call out Dr. Boogie to battle me in a thumb war. He went
with Pachua and I had Hydra. We agreed to have a "best of three
matches" thumb war to see who was the ultimate Thumb Warrior (between
the two of us that is, not that we couldn't kick your ass in a thumb
war too). So just who would win this thumb war of epic proportions?
You'll just have to watch the video below, complete with totally
cliché battle music, to see!
Click above to play.
Questions or Comments about this piece?
email -RoG-