Onell Design’s Glyos System:
Gobon Review (25+ Pics)

NoisyDvL5

For today’s Glyos Thursday feature, I’m going back a bit and taking a look at one of the first Glyos figures I ever purchased, the Gobon! A favorite of both me and my wife, the Gobon was also one of the first Glyos figures that I happily purchased in multiple colorways.

Not too long after Onell Designs made the jump from hand-casting to overseas production, an image of an all-new figure appeared on the Onell Blog. He was a rather rotund “little” fellow that evoked memories of classic robots of yesteryear. It took a little while to get the Gobon into production, but I wouldn’t see the Gobon until a year or so after that even. Still, I was rather smitten with the design right away and he was among one of my first Onell purchases. My first Gobon was a silver one, the Mark II with blue eyes, but after I got more into Glyos and started reading the Glyos Blog Archive, I ran across that white/yellow version at the link above. It was like love renewed. I enjoy all my Gobons in the review here, but I’m still dying for a yellow one (though dyeing for it would likely decrease my wait… har har).

Interestingly, while he’s one of my favorite Glyos, maybe third after Sarvos & Argen/Buildman (though the Glyan is skyrocketing to the top – you can’t pick a favorite, I swear), he’s a hit with the ladies. The wives of IAT (some of the builds in the gallery are from the lovely SilntAngl5), my female co-workers, even my Mom. They all love the little guy. It might be important to note that the Gobon is the creation of Michelle Doughty, Matt’s wife. He spawns from the second issue of her comic, Sidrick. Michelle must know a thing or two about what women are looking for in a Sarvonic Gendrone, because the Gobon clearly has it in spades.

The Gobon is a little bigger than the other PVC figures in the Glyos line, about 3″, and helps bridge the gap a bit to the bigger vinyl items like the Armodoc. Gobon is indeed a Gendrone (I’m still not sure what Sarvonic means…) so he’s more at home with the Argen & Phaseons.

The Gobon consists of thirteen parts, all of which are compatible with your favorite Glyos figures, most Outer Space Men Joints, and the upcoming Spy Monkey weapons. Like the Buildman, the Gobon is particularly fun to build with. I’m a little biased towards the Gendrones because their robotic / mechanical parts are easier to build some neat stuff without having to have a ton of them. I’ve seen some amazing things built of Exellis & Pheyden parts on the Onell blog, but unless I win the lottery or have a foolproof bank robbing plan, I’m not going to own this many Exellis’ chests in coordinated colors.

One of the hard parts about displaying a Gobon is deciding what look you want to have him in. Even in his standard configuration, you can choose between his seemingly-happier, friendly robot eyes or switch his head around to a Cyclops-ian visor reminiscent of Maximilian. And, to add to the mix, popping open the Gobon’s chest to see what’s inside will reveal that thirteenth piece: an extra, even more menacing head.

The second head only fits on the standard build loosely (if it all, it won’t hold on some of my Gobons), but if you flip his torso over – giving him broad shoulders instead of a wide berth – the second head gives you what amounts to an entirely new figure. And remember, these are just the basic of part swaps. This guy has a ton more configurations with just the thirteen pieces, let alone adding in the rest of Glyosdom.

So far the Gobon has seen release in multiple colorways. The silver versions have seen three separate releases with red, blue, and black eyes to differentiate between them. The silver versions also feature some black paint in the etched lines that makes the figure really pop and keep the silver colorway my favorite of the ones I have. There’s also been clear, black, white, GITD, and GITD-Red (the last two are colloquially referred to as “Globons”). There’s been some special releases as well, like the clear blue Nemica or the Rusty Gobon. That Rusty Gobon absolutely slays me. I have got to snag one of those some day. Continue to Page 2 & the Gobon Gallery!

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21 thoughts on “Onell Design’s Glyos System:
Gobon Review (25+ Pics)”

  1. Pingback: Spotted Online – Gobon Review at It’s All True | BattleGrip

  2. yeah… this photo battery is excellent. showcases the diversity of the pack.

    you’re the math guy noisy, i think it falls on your shoulders to devise the “time on task coefficient” to start calculating play time as an calculatable quantity vs the price tag of a toy.

    1. Thanks! I like these galleries, but I’m gunshy because the plugin is sensitive to site changes. I’m trying to work on a better way to incorporate the galleries.

      If we’re going to try to come up with a formula, we have to determine a value for display and a value for play. How much value does a figure accrue sitting on the shelf behind me versus one on my desk that occassionally takes flight or punches the guy next to him?

      1. we need to calculate a minimum wage… a per time number for dollars earned while idle, and then a different wage for when the figure is “on the job.” then just a basic calculation of hours spent… like, when you and i are sitting at home, idle, we’re not only not earning, we’re generating expense.

        maybe the fig should generate expense at the cost of square footage taken up by it’s “footprint” as a percentage of available display space. so like if your display space is a 5 foot by 1 foot shelf, 100% of your display space is 720 sq in… so let’s say ramathorr takes up takes up 6 inches square, it takes up .8% of my display space. if i were to calculate the total expenditure of my sitting around the house, i blow roughly 6.25 a day (removing time to sleep, weekends, and holidays… so in essence, the hours of the week where i could be working, but don’t.) that means ramathorr, as a display toy, costs me $.05 a day. now, if you’re a player, i’d weigh play time as worth more than idle time… but not everyone is. if idle time was represented t, i’d use 2t as play time. i’d use my 6.25 calculation and multiply by 2t, or in this case, 1,6%… so play time w/ ramathorr is worth $.1 per day.

        or should the size ratio remain the same and an additional factor be employed for the time spent playing multiplied by the shelf space ratio multiplied by expense of the toy? this is why math is not my field. or maybe, the toy’s value should be calculated as a percentage of one’s wage, and THEN multiplied by the time handling ratio and we leave the space percentage calculation completely out. or would we use the buyer’s wage, divided by cost of the toy, multiplied by the space ratio, and THEN divide by the remainder of time available for play minus time actually spent playing.

        1. LOL!

          Here’s a simple equation: you should be able to get one minute of fun out of it for every dollar spent.
          Onell Design figures usually go way over this mark.
          Compare it with an old McFarlane figure or NECA statue that just goes on a shelf forever.
          My own personal best value for the dollar ever is probably a crazy Kenner Police Academy figure or something nuts. But Pheyden is creeping up on the title…

  8. Damn, looks like another line of figures I’m going to dip into. All these weekly reviews are a plot to drain my wallet!

  9. Noisy – man, I wish I had never seen this review. I’ve looked at your past Glyos reviews and I THOUGHT I had known about all this stuff for a while, but I’ve never seen that Gobon before. I went back through your other reviews and that guy pops up in the background sometime.

    Glyos have always been a toyline I respected but never collected. I really liked the independent angle and how these had been of notable success; but the actual toys themselves never appealed to me visually. Combining, very cool, but the look was a turn off.

    So now you post Gobons and the whimsical nature speaks to me. I see these are from 2009 and long gone from the Onell store. I can only find one on ebay in the past 30 days and it was a custom.

    *Sigh*

    I know I’ll end up tracking some of these Gobons down

    *Shakes fist at you* NOISY!!!!!

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