Ok so I’ve decided to do a series of breakdowns if you will: a compare and contrast of the visual animation differences of the 4 core Thundercats from the old Rankin Bass show vs. the new Warner Bros. show.
Note - I’ll be referring to the 80s series Tygra as the “RB (Rankin Bass)” Tygra and the new series Tygra as the “WB (Warner Bros) Tygra”
I won’t be referring to picture orientation (top vs. bottom) but it should be obvious which one I’m referring to.
[SIZE=“3”]Suit[/SIZE]
The most obvious change is the suit. Instead of a *two-toned sea/dark green workout suit, we have what very much resembles almost a field officer’s suit. It looks armored in the chest area with an exposed midsection. The waste has an obvious utility belt akin to the one the kittens in the RB show used to keep their pellets in. There are some canister like objects on the belt which could be chaff or some other type of grenade. The green almost appears more like a dark olive in the new WB show. They were fairly faithful with the emblem location for him as it is dead center in his chest plate as it did on his jumpsuit in the original. One thing to note about the new suit that may be a nod to gold lined shoulder pad on the left shoulder of the RB series Tygra is the forearm section on the left arm WB series Tygra. From this angle its hard to tell whether this is just decorative or serves an unknown purpose (perhaps holding some type of monitor or additional pouches)
but given how field officer like the suit appears in the new series, I would be surprised if its just decorative
-
- So the RB Tygra actually has 3 seperate colors to his uniform. A slightly lighter section around the arms vs a slightly grayer area in the midsection. But since they are subtle, its easier to just note it as two-tone.
[SIZE=“3”]Weaponry[/SIZE]
The second obvious addition is the gun. I won’t speak much on it since we don’t know what it does yet, but it appears to holster on his left thigh. The only other thing to point out on the gun is the blue orb that appears above where a clip for a standard non-revolver would insert. I didn’t mention the bracelet in the suit section because its on the hand with his gun so you would naturally notice it immediately after noticing the gun. The only things to point out are that its silver colored and there appear to be arrows pointing in a counter-clockwise direction around the circumference.
His bolo whip is more or less faithfully rendered with 3 orbs on the end of 3 tails in the WB series. The handle departs from the gold of the RB show and instead appears here in either a smoke or a black color. The handle does have a metallic looking ornament on the bottom instead of just a solid gold handle. One final note of interest is it appears that the orbs in the whip of the WB Tygra could potentially rest when not extended inside of a metallic piece on the top as opposed to flush on the top of the handle in the RB series.
[SIZE=“3”]Tygra[/SIZE]
Onto Tygra’s face and body. His arms appear to have a jagged transition from orange to cream in the WB series whereas in the shot below of the RB series it is a smooth break. While we didn’t get very many shots of Tygra without his suit on, you can see from the Exodus episode that several of his stripes reach around to the inner portion of the biceps and triceps. In the new WB series the stripes do appear to slightly creep over inner bicep, however the bottom 4/5 of his arm appears stripeless with none appearing to come around from the bottom.
The face is probably where we see the second biggest change aside from the suit. Starting with the actual facial markings you can see that in the original RB series Tygra’s forehead had 3 to 4 stripes directioning out and upwards from the vertical center of his forehead. There are three cream patches (one for each eye and the mouth), his nose was orange and stripeless, and there appears to be a stripeless orange markings underneath each eye. In the WB Tygra we see that his face is predominantly white vs the predominantly orange and striped RB Tygra. Instead of the orange under-eye markings the WB Tygra has very bold black ones that really stand out. Like the RB version, the WB version does appear to converge to an orange neck (though unable to tell from this shot if the neck is striped). The forhead of the WB version does appear striped, but from this shot it appears more vertically oriented than the horizontally oriented RB Tygra. As for the side tufts, the RB Tygra’s appear much furrier and layered whereas the WB Tygra appears to be a single layer with no fur definition showing in this shot (Edit - you can see that there is fur definition in the image taken from the UK Toy Fare booth by Dr Slump) and a stripe across the top. He does appear to have the same smaller side burn tufts, but they appear longer and perhaps more pronounced on the WB version as opposed to the shorter ones on the RB Tygra. The final noticeable difference that sticks out are the ears. They are white and present on the WB Tygra, whereas they are hidden behind the fur on the RB version. Final note about the eyes. Its tough to see in the press release photo from WB because Tygra’s head is so distant and therefor small, but it appears as though he has retained the same orange eye color from the show.
Final Thoughts
That about sums up every major (and plenty of minor) differences and likenesses between the two. Overall I think Tygra’s update is by far the best and in my personal opinion I agree with the show’s producers that he is the one that needed the most updating as he’s always the last Thundercat of the core 4 that I thought of. I’ll be doing the other three breakdowns later this week. Most likely Panthro on Monday, Cheetara on Tuesday, and saving Lion-O for Wednesday.
