Thanks to MEGA Brands, I can now cross “Own a Toy of a Dragon Flying A Helicopter” off my bucket list. While I’m no big fan of the Skylanders video games, I’m such a glutton for Mega Bloks sets that I end up buying the occasional Skylanders Mega Bloks set based on the video games anyway. What attracted me to the Mega Bloks Skylanders Giants Arkeyan Copter 95418 wasn’t the title vehicle, however–it was the figures. Oh yeah, Spyro’s great and all, but what had me the most excited for this set…? CHOMPIES!!!

The Right:

I really, really like the Chompies. The bright blue aliens have a scary yet sweet quality to them, and looking at them makes me think of the Yip-Yip Martians from Sesame Street and other old-time Muppets. I know that they’re technically the enemy, but man are they cute. The little treasure chest they’re protecting, filled with riches–and a pretzel, of all things–makes them even more irresistible. These Chompies are definitely the cutest Mega Bloks figures in my collection from any Mega Bloks line. I love these Skylanders Chompies, I love that the set gives me three of them, and…

I love that I can blow away the Chompies with the Arkeyan Copter’s missile-firing action. Since these Skylanders Giants Mega Bloks sets are seemingly aimed at younger children than most Mega Bloks sets, I wasn’t sure how powerful the missile firing action is. Well, the answer is that it’s plenty strong and works far better than LEGO’s flick-fire missiles. You can easily blast the Chompies and knock them over with the Mega Bloks Arkeyan Copter’s missiles, but they’re not nearly powerful enough to ever damage an actual child (thankfully).

The Arkeyan Copter has a simple, cartoony design to it. This is clearly a fantastical helicopter made simple to appeal to a younger audience, so it’s pretty straight-forward both as a build and in its eye-grabbing red and gold color scheme. The rotors of the Arkeyan copter can really be twirled, the cockpit hatch can opened and shut (allowing a certain little purple dragon to pilot it), and the missile-firing works like a charm.

The Wrong:

The star of this set–no questions asked–is Spyro the Dragon. He’s the poster child for the Skylanders video games, and beyond a doubt the most popular character of the franchise. So it’s more than a little disappointing that MEGA Brands didn’t make the Mega Bloks Spyro the Dragon figure in this set better. Don’t get me wrong–Spyro is pretty adorable–but I find the flexibility of this figure sorely lacking. Spyro has 7 points of articulation, which isn’t terrible–but the fact that only his head is ball-jointed and all his other moving parts are simple swivel joints is.

We’ve seen hundreds of examples in the Halo Mega Bloks and World of Warcraft Mega Bloks lines of super-articulated figures where almost every joint is a ball-joint (including the four-legged Promethean Crawlers just released in the Halo Mega Bloks line), so I don’t understand why poor Spyro got the short end of the stick.

Even the Chompies that I like so much don’t have any articulation–at all–but are unarticulated PVC figures instead. Just a little bit of simple articulation–in the arms or neck perhaps–could go a long way in making these figures have more personality and be a lot more fun to play with.

In addition, I’m no fan of the $29.99 price-tag on this 138-piece Skylanders Mega Bloks set. That’s more than 21 cents per piece, making this one of the highest priced per-piece medium sized Mega Bloks sets around. Given that this set has very little deco and only one figure with any articulation at all, the MSRP for this set is too high by at least $5.

“Where Can I Buy It?!”
The Mega Bloks Skylanders Giants line started to hit select retail stores like Toys R Us and Walmart in late 2012, but some of the sets can still be challenging to find at retail. You can always buy the Skylanders Mega Bloks Arkeyan Copter for below regular price with free shipping and no tax online, however!

Overall: For me, this set is really pretty “Ehn.” I’m used to MEGA Brands really blowing me away with their quality of work, and this set just doesn’t really do it. Spyro is cute and all, but as a toy he’s woefully inflexible and not nearly as much to play with as he should be. The Chompies look good, but are just solid PVCs that can’t move at all. The missile-firing action on the Arkeyan Copter itself works great, as does the opening cockpit, but I don’t feel like that makes up for this set’s high price-tag and other shortcomings. The Skylanders Arkeyan Copter is fine as a kids’ toy, but it’s not really sophisticated enough for choosy collectors. I don’t think this is a bad set, per se, but the Skylanders Giants Mega Bloks Arkeyan Copter Attack is merely an average one.

GRADE: C