Author Topic: Ye Gods! An Olympian Appreciation  (Read 10127 times)

Offline Macruran

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Re: Ye Gods! An Olympian Appreciation
« Reply #20 on: July 19, 2021, 05:08:45 »
Next we have Poseidon! (known on the Italian peninsula as Neptune!)



Not a lot to say about this guy, because apart from the different colored beard and hair, and the toga in place of the cape, Poseidon here is IDENTICAL with the Zeus klicky. Now I understand the intention of emphasizing the close relationship between these two, but it seems to me a slight variation wouldn't have gone amiss. How about a curved meander at the tunic hem, to represent the sea and contrast with the square meander that Zeus has? To be fair it is a strong design that clearly says "high ranking Greek god", so I can't be too harsh, but...



Another similarity with Zeus is that some of Poseidon's totem animals appear to be inaccurate. The red fish is (I am assured by a fishknower) a butterflyfish, of the Chaetodontidae, and the blue one is an angelfish of the Pomacanthidae. As far as my research reveals these tropical fish are like the bald eagle FOREIGN to the eastern Mediterranean, barring some very recent immigrants who have found their way through the Suez Canal. Obviously this canal didn't exist during classical Greek times  - even its name indicates this, being "Zeus" backwards! So these fish could not have been associated with Poseidon at that time. Really PM, how could you get this wrong? He does get a clam and a seahorse but why not a dolphin in place of the fish? The dolphin was much more strongly associated with Poseidon than any other fish I can think of.  Anyway I am ordering a dolphin right now to correct this grave oversight, as I have corrected the eagle oversight with Zeus. HARRUMPH  :no:

Minor note: my klicky had a manufacturing defect on his left wrist:



That's it for this good-looking but slightly disappointing god!


"We like things in little." - G. Stein  
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Online GrahamB

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Re: Ye Gods! An Olympian Appreciation
« Reply #21 on: July 19, 2021, 08:04:52 »
Great review, Maccy! I especially liked the Clash of the Tritons at the end! :lol:

Heirs-apparent in France were known as Dolphins for many years.
At that moment the ship suddenly stopped rocking and swaying, the engine pitch settled down to a gentle hum. 'Hey Ford.' said Zaphod, 'that sounds good. Have you worked out the controls on this boat?' 'No,' said Ford, 'I just stopped fiddling with them.' (With thanks to Douglas Adams)

Offline Redmao

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Re: Ye Gods! An Olympian Appreciation
« Reply #22 on: July 19, 2021, 09:40:35 »
The sets just came out on the Canadian website and I'm very pleased with how they turned out.
Such a great theme that still has a lot of untapped potential like mythical creatures and many more characters.
Perseus vs the Gorgon anyone?

Offline drbatesy

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Re: Ye Gods! An Olympian Appreciation
« Reply #23 on: July 20, 2021, 09:19:58 »
Heirs-apparent in France were known as Dolphins for many years.

Ba-da-dum, ching!  :lol:

Offline Macruran

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Re: Ye Gods! An Olympian Appreciation
« Reply #24 on: September 20, 2021, 04:49:41 »
And now: Demeter! Known as Ceres in Rome, and in America as Deyard, this goddess presided over the harvest and agriculture, grains and fertility.



I have to say I think this is an absolutely SMASHING klicky :inlove: The bold combination of scarlet and pale yellow is striking and attractive. The gold trim is unique, and looks to me like an authentic ancient design.



The curly bits would've looked good on Poseidon. The scarlet might have been a deliberate choice; according to wikipedia Demeter was strongly associated with the poppy, so the color might come from that flower.

Sadly the arms are slightly lighter, and the back is blank.



Visible there are the three holes in the hair, that together make a kind of scary face!  :o
They are for mounting a big gold headdress. In my view this is the only weak point of the character.



It is simultaneously too big and not visible enough (from the front). It looks wrong to me and going forward my Demeter shall not be wearing it. She does need a headdress of some sort so I will think about it, perhaps I can come up with something that will fit on that hair, or find a different hair in the same pale colour.

Her accoutrements include a small golden scythe, for reaping grain, and representatives of the four food groups.




Highly attuned as I am to anachronisms in this theme I was all prepared to denounce those watermelons as wrong, because I assumed that watermelons are New World plants that were unknown to the ancient Greeks. Well color me incorrect! because I looked it up and watermelons were originally cultivated in ancient Egypt and North Africa, and were thus known to the Greeks! Indeed, if my ten seconds of googling can be relied on, modern Greece is the sixth largest watermelon exporter in the world!

So all told it's full marks for this beautiful klicky (minus the headdress), who, if you propitiate her correctly, will surely bless your crops!

"We like things in little." - G. Stein  
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Online GrahamB

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Re: Ye Gods! An Olympian Appreciation
« Reply #25 on: September 20, 2021, 11:48:30 »
Another great review, thanks Macruran!
At that moment the ship suddenly stopped rocking and swaying, the engine pitch settled down to a gentle hum. 'Hey Ford.' said Zaphod, 'that sounds good. Have you worked out the controls on this boat?' 'No,' said Ford, 'I just stopped fiddling with them.' (With thanks to Douglas Adams)

Offline Tiermann

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Re: Ye Gods! An Olympian Appreciation
« Reply #26 on: September 20, 2021, 20:08:25 »
Great reviews so far, it's a wonderful series. I have most but haven't gone for the Olympus set yet.

Offline Macruran

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Re: Ye Gods! An Olympian Appreciation
« Reply #27 on: October 18, 2021, 04:18:54 »
And now we have Hermes, aka Mercury! The only god in the world named after both an element and a French high fashion brand, Hermes is sort of a grab-bag god who is in charge of things like commerce, messengers, magic, thieves, wit, travelling, shepherds - pretty much all the leftover stuff the main gods didn't handle!



He carries a snakestaff and a big sack, and is accompanied by two doves - who are oddly not listed as symbolic animals of his in any account I've seen.

upload an image

The snakestaff is a VERY rough approximation of a caduceus, a stick with wings and two snakes. (Note that this is different from the medical symbol, which is a stick with only one snake!) I guess they weren't doing new parts for this series; if they had done, a caduceus would have been an absolute must. As it is - it's really not even close.



His headgear is an attempt to simulate a winged helmet. Nice effort but a little odd looking.

He's got matching winglets on his sandals.



I have to say that, although the overall white toga look is very on-brand for Greek gods, it seems to me that Hermes, who clearly does a lot of flying and running, should be wearing a short tunic. It can't be easy to run in a toga. And since we've already had two white toga'ed gods, they could have tried a different approach.



The rubric on playmobil.gr states that "In June 2018, after studies and with the valuable contribution of archaeologists and educators, the first collectible six of the twelve gods of Olympus will be completed. The creation of the collectible figures required long-term research and preparation, so that the result is as representative as possible, according to historical data." Based on real research it seems, so maybe I'm wrong in my criticisms. Be that as it may I can't help regarding Hermes - given the lack of proper caduceus, the ad hoc headgear, the doves, and the clothing unsuited to running - as less successful than some of the other gods in the series.


Hermes Disrobed:





And that's all for a nice but somewhat underwhelming god!

"We like things in little." - G. Stein  
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Online GrahamB

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Re: Ye Gods! An Olympian Appreciation
« Reply #28 on: October 18, 2021, 07:05:31 »
He ... is accompanied by two doves - who are oddly not listed as symbolic animals of his in any account I've seen.

Perhaps they are pigeons, also well-known winged messengers!
At that moment the ship suddenly stopped rocking and swaying, the engine pitch settled down to a gentle hum. 'Hey Ford.' said Zaphod, 'that sounds good. Have you worked out the controls on this boat?' 'No,' said Ford, 'I just stopped fiddling with them.' (With thanks to Douglas Adams)

Offline Macruran

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Re: Ye Gods! An Olympian Appreciation
« Reply #29 on: October 23, 2021, 00:45:46 »
Perhaps they are pigeons, also well-known winged messengers!

Possible, but did you know that doves and pigeons are the same species? The English words dove and pigeon are not precise denotations but rather just conventions.

Also I searched for pigeons as a mascot for Hermes and came up empty handed. It's not impossible they were one of his animals but if so they were not popular enough to make it into any lists accessible by me in a few minutes searching - so they may be out there but I didn't find them.

In the course of doing this I wondered when messenger pigeoning started, and it turns out it began in Ancient Egypt, so the Greeks definitely would have heard of them. Yet the connection with Hermes seems not to have been made.

Finally, it's possible that gods' symbolic animals were chosen for reasons opaque to us. We think it's obvious that a messenger god would have pigeons as a totem, but the Greeks thought a tortoise suitable to represent a fleet-footed messenger! So there may be another logic at work!
"We like things in little." - G. Stein  
 :roman: