My Old Toys

Merry Xmas from My Old Toys!

Taking a break from the holiday action to continue my Visionaries retrospective with this guy, Leoric, leader of the valiant Spectral Knights.

Leoric’s got some wear and tear on him, probably from all the adventures he used to get into back in the day.

His hologram is blurry now, but it was a lion. Leoric, Leo, lion, you get it.

His power staff had a hologram of an owl, for wisdom, which he would use whenever he needed some questions answered. I always thought Leoric’s magical power was redundant, because another character had the power of knowledge. But whatever.

When Leoric needed to call upon his owl, he would recite the magical chant, “Whispered secrets of a shattered age, I summon you, renew this sage!”

One thing I found interesting about Leoric was that he’s the only good guy with facial hair. The defining characteristic with Visionaries villains was that every one of them had an “evil” beard or Mirror Universe goatee.

Leoric’s just chillin with the Tom Selleck moustache. I guess it makes him stand out among the heroes, and since he’s the lion, he needs a little fur.

Last week I mentioned how voice actors in the Visionaries cartoon also did voices for G.I. Joe and Transformers. That happened with Leoric too.

The actor who voiced Leoric, Neil Ross, did a lot of G.I. Joe voices, most notably Shipwreck.

He also voiced Wolverine in the animated X-Men pilot Pryde of the X-men, which a lot of fanboys will remember is the version of Wolverine where he speaks with an Australian accent, even though the character is Canadian.

I’ve got four more characters to go in the Visionaries retrospective, and then it’s back to Kenner’s Super Powers. On Wednesday, you’ll meet one of only two Spectral Knights characters who didn’t get their own magical power staffs.