Logo Analysis: 7th Kingdom

Some may remember an episode of PowetToys early on that focused on the Four Horsemen’s FANtastic Exclusives for 2006. The exclusive was based on an original story premise from the Four Horsemen called The 7th Kingdom. The exclusive figure was a minotaur named Xetheus of the Animal Kingdom and had several variant figures. In the course of that episode, I looked at the logo and revealed what sections of the design represented which kingdoms from the storyline. This was not public knowedge beforehand, nor had it really been discussed before the episode’s release. The design hadn’t seen much exposure before the figures’ release. Because of this, I have been credited for this revelation.

The 7th Kingdom was so popular in the FanEx polls, it has been spun out into its own line, independent of the annual FANtastic Exclusive promotion. I thought I would take this opportunity to take a look at the logo and how I figured out what symbols went with what kingdom.

Read on for some simple reasoning, research and deduction.

A bit of background first. Its important to understand the storyline in order to understand the logo.

Seventh Kingdom Backstory (from back of packaging):

In the infancy of time the world was made of one great continent. As civilizations prospered and grew, the world’s people separated into six enormous kingdoms. As some kingdoms expanded so did their hunger for power. Bloody battles raged for centuries resulting in nothing but death and frustration. When the devastating effects of these wars finally became too unbearable, a plan was devided to end the bloodshed once and for all. The kingdoms would combine their power to shatter the very land they fought for into six equal parts. However, when plan was indeed realized a grave miscalculation was made. Six equal continents were created, but central to all of them was a seventh continent bigger than the rest. It was a land that breathed an incomprehensible new power. Because of the new unpredictability of this power, the kingdoms vowed this terrain was never to be stepped foor upon. Until now… Growing doubts about the creation and evolution of the seven separate realms have infected some with a renewed thirst for power. Quests for power have turned once again into battles, and those battles have transformed into wars. In these troubled times one thing is for certain – the wars will not end until a legendary power is unleashed. The power of the … SEVENTH KINGDOM

Xetheus (from back of packaging):
The mighty minotaur known as Xetheus was once called Memmnonn. Memmnonn’s dedication to bringing peace to the kingdoms was so great that he freely gave up his life during the splitting of the lands. The sun lord Xemnoss, the most powerful of the elementals, was so moved by the selfless act that he granted Memmnonn immortality and renamed him Xetheus – son of Xemnoss. Xetheus is now a champion whose power is unrivaled by even the greatest heroes of myth and legend. He founded the captial city of Mynothecea in the center of his native kingdom of Animynthus. Xetheus and his mighty Mynothecean minotaur warriors have dedicated themselves to overseeing and defending the land that he has been spared to protect.

With that information under our belts, this logo now looks more like a map than it does random design. Six mostly equal parts surrounding one large seventh piece. Sure sounds like the description of the six kingdoms surrounding the seventh to me. Neat! That means the middle kingdom is being represented by that big sun symbol, but wait. That looks familiar. Check out Xetheus’ chest.

Certainly looks like a certain symbol of a sun god that brought Xetheus back to life and granted him immortality. You may ask why the 7th Kingdom is represented by the powerful elemental. The answer to that is still yet unknown. We can only speculate at this time.

Seeing this map and the distinctly different patterns and designs in each of the 6 Kingdoms gave me pause. Its clear from the sculpts on the figures that the Horsemen are pretty detail-oriented and FanEx board members knew that the 4H had a bible for the series already and many other characters tentatively planned. It just made sense that these symbols meant something. It wasn’t very hard to figure out which symbol belonged to the Animal Kingdom.

It was on the front of every minotaur package and on every flag accessory they came with.

 

The symbol on the left ‘land mass’ seemed to match it perfectly and the design pattern even looked sort of like a maze.

Since the selection of the 7th Kingdom as the property for FanEx 2006 was in the first round of voting, the second round consisted of character designs entirely from the property. I did not have much else to go on, so I looked at each character design and looked for cues that might match the sybmols in the 5 remaining ‘land masses’. Fortunately, I had two matches.

The first and more obvious was the Human. If you look at the markings on the top of his weapon, we seem to have a match. For an exact match, you need look no further than the marking on his forehead. Its a little hard to make out, but its there.

Our next match was on the Alien Shaman.

At the top of his staff, just above his hand, there is a symbol that seems to be a match for another piece. It was hard to make out and I definitely did not see it the first couple of times I looked at the image searching for a match, but a match it is.

That narrowed it down to three. With only the Elemental, Machine and Mutant kingdoms remaining, I turned to my intuition.

  

So lets do a little word association. What do you think of when you hear the word ‘Elemental’. I think ‘the most basic of things’. I think forces of nature; fire, water, earth, wind, etc. Looking at the remaining symbols, I see one that seems to match that theme.

While I guessed that was a match, I had no way of being 100% sure so I kept it in consideration for the other kingdom choices. Time for another round of word association. This time, ‘machine’. The first thing that pops in my mind is robotics, circuit boards and computers. And I didn’t even notice it until I did the word association, but one of the symbols is a dead ringer for a circuit board.

That was such a dead-on match I wouldn’t accept that it was any other kingdom. That left one unchosen logo. I looked at it and thought about what I would have thought from the word association for ‘Mutant’. My first thoughts were chaos, entropy and confusion.

It was a close enough for me to say that it was a match since everything else matched up so well between kingdom and logo. That gave us all six symbols to represent each of the kingdoms. After figuring all this out, I thought I’d add it to the FanEx 2006 video I made and see what happened. My assertions would be confirmed days after the video’s release by the Four Horsemen themselves.

If you are interested in the 7th Kingdom story, characters and/or the FANtastic Exclusive project, check out FANtasticExclusive.com for more information.

Remember to also check out the episode of PowetToys referenced at the start of this article.