Panda Mony Toys - Daart (Alter Nation)

A young and naive operative of the team, Daart is the most teenager out of the lot. He is the largest member of the team (at least by the action figure standard!). He's the most singular in his hybrid form, being a very unambiguous giant poisonous frog. His powers include jumping a ridiculous amount, super agile, paralyzing skin poison, and some mean martial arts skills. He's my favourite in terms of character design. He's got the cool gloves, gear and headset at all times, as well as the flashy red poison dart frog colours. Admittedly he's one of the most restricted in terms of poseability, but he still looks great on the shelf and comes with some cool items.


Sculpt/Paint 3/5: Daart has some really nice sculpting detail and a fairly simple, albeit well-done paint application. The spots look great and are mostly evenly distributed among parts of his body except for spots on his back where his spine sticks out the most. I like that they added a white shine to his eyes to capture that innocent froggy look! No shading though or many other interesting details keeping it simple but cool.

Articulation: 2/5 (12 points) The official site says 15 but they've done some funny counting. He's got swivel wrists and feet (4), double-jointed elbows (4),  single joint knees (2) a ball and socket head (1) and none of the shoulders or hip joints move independently in order to do the backflip maneuver. That means if you move one shoulder the other shoulder and both legs start to move to do the flip (and that's all they can do). That's 1 point of articulation if you ask me. On that note, mine has a broken hip so essentially that one feature doesn't work. He is the least poseable out of the six!

Accessories: 3/5 He comes with three items as many of the Panda Mony toys do, two weapons and...an action figure! Ha! The white/grey boomerang looks pretty cool and space ageish in design and the frog grip (hex) bolas are also pretty sweet. I like that they used real string for those. Also the action figure is called Iron Stomach. Grey cast plastic with some yellow paint and doesn't have any articulation points, but he can hold it up for you whilst you admire his collection piece!

Fun Factor: 2/5 Giving Daart a mere two was hard. On the one hand, he's my favourite design and touches on my herpetological side. On the other, you can only put him in two stances (regular and up on two legs) and move his elbows/wrists a bit to show action. Not very poseable! Also, I've read I'm not the first to have a hip joint break. It is a bit too easy to press down too quickly at the wrong angle and break the hip joints. Not ideal! He would've likely been a 1 with that criteria, but he got +1 for goodness aesthetically.

Verdict: 10/20 Limited: He just barely gets a passing grade by this scale, but I say if you like his design, pick him up for that reason because the rest doesn't have a ton to offer. On the plus side, other members of the team can ride him he's so big!

Comin' atcha!