Action Figures & Their Beers -- I Ain't THAT Depserate

by Beedo Sookcool
on 2026-02-04, 12:02:39

DESPERADOS

In looking for alcoholic beverages to pair up the Retro TVC Cantina Adventure Set Aliens for a four-part mini-series, I’d pretty much decided on all of them except for Walrusman. And then my eyes settled on a display of Desperados beer. Perfect, I thought. Little did I know it would be an even more appropriate match-up than I’d first imagined.

On the run. Wanted man. Dangerous man. Desperate man. All these describe Ponda Baba, a/k/a Walrusman. So that was the main reason I chose this beer. But then I drank it . . .

. . . and it turned out that neither this beer nor this figure were quite what I was hoping for.

Desperados is touted as a beer “with agave spirit,” and “agave spirit flavoured,” so I figured it would be a Mexican-style lager with a bit of tequila adding a little extra kick. Nope. It’s a Mexican-style lager, all right, but it’s also got glucose syrup, sugar, citric acid, and only 0.1% agave spirit. It’s so darned sweet, but just barely not sweet enough. It tastes almost like a soda pop, but not enough to make it as tasty. It tastes like a shandy where they didn’t add quite enough beer, and not quite enough sugar. Oddly enough, this brew actually racks up a respectable 5.9% ABV, making it one of the stronger beers I’ve reviewed in this run of AF&TB. Despite all this, it’s not actually that bad; it just falls slightly short in several areas, where pushing one of them a little bit more – the beer, the sugar, or the citrus – could’ve made this drink a lot better. I don’t think I’ll buy it again.

Walrusman, meanwhile, half-arses the job of looking like his Vintage self. His jacket is open to show his cream-coloured shirt, his sleeves only have blue stripes down the side instead of being fully blue, and he doesn’t have flipper-feet. Now, a lot of people in various forums and pages have complained that the head on this Ponda Baba mould is too small – and that’s true when it comes down to onscreen accuracy – but that’s actually where this figure shines, because the original Walrusman from 1979 had a tiny little pea head. The undersized noggin is the most accurate thing about this figure besides its Pantone profile, so it gets a pass. In the end, I understand why he was done this way, but I don’t have to like it.

I’ve seen some pretty nice customs online where they take the Obi-Wan Kenobi (Wandering Jedi) from the Obi-Wan Kenobi TV series, repaint the body, and swap Walrusman’s head & hands onto the Obi-Wan body. So I might try that. But I want to go one further and add some flipper feet, so we’ll see what I can find in my parts bins.

I wouldn’t recommend this beer. It’s not a drain-pour situation, but I really can’t think of any situation where it would work. Not even with Taco Bell. And the figure . . . well, it comes in a neat set with some better figures, and there’s some customising potential, so . . . not a total write off, then.

Drink this if you also like: Alcopops, middling shandies.