Review: MOTUC SDCC Filmation Hordak

I posted in the lead-up to San Diego Comic Con about the disappointment that was the exclusive figure Mattel were selling at the convention. Despite this, I still went ahead and bought it from MattyCollector.com when he went on sale there shortly after the con ended.

Opinion: Castle Grayskull 2013 box art vote

Firstly, a quick apology for the lack of updates in 2013. I actually have written a bunch of reviews, but they're all lacking photos since writing can be done anywhere and photo-taking requires having a block of free time at home, which with one thing and another I simply haven't had.

But now onto the entry proper.

Last Novemeber(?) Mattel announced they would be producing a new Castle Grayskull for their Masters of the Universe Classics line. It went up for pre-order, with nothing more in the way of detail available other than a bunch of design sketches. If you ordered at this stage you were entitled to a number of perks, including a lower price, a free poster, and the chance to vote for who you wanted to see on the box art.

Last weekend, at New York Toy Fair, Mattel revealed the prototype Grayskull, put it back on pre-sale for an increased price, and opened up the voting for the box art characters.

There are over 320 characters to choose from and each pre-orderer gets to pick 10 (ideally 5 heroes and 5 villains). I think it's obvious that He-Man and Skeletor are going to romp home with the majority of the votes, and Hordak and She-Ra are very probable too. Also likely are a lot of the '8-back' characters such as Trapjaw and Man-at-Arms.

Looking closely at the list there in addition to the 'obvious' characters there are people that the fans are slightly dubious that Mattel even have the rights for. Julie and Kevin from the movie are on there, for example. Would Mattel be allowed to stick Courteney Cox's face on the box?

So who did I vote for? Well...

1-3. Extendar, Dragstor & Stinkor.
My favourite MOTU characters. I wanted to add Sy-Klone too, but I'd already reached my limit so, sadly, he had to be dropped. I could tell you why these are my favourite characters, but, hey, I can write a whole blog post on its own about that.

4-5. Julie & Kevin.
Yep, I voted to get Tom Paris and Courteney Cox on the box. Why? BECAUSE IT'D BE FUNNY! My assumption is that Mattel don't have the rights to their likeness and their inclusion on the list is because they think they'll never win the vote, but you never know...

6-8. Alcon, Gepple, Meldoc
aka The really annoying scientists from New Adventures who everyone hates...except me. Everyone is really mean about these guys and no one wants to see them made as Classics figures. I never found them that annoying. I didn't love them, but - like Snarf or Srcappy-Doo - I never hated them the way everyone else seems to. Couldn't remember what their names were (other than 'NA Scientists') so I had to resort to Wikipedia. I wanted to vote for Krex as well, but I couldn't find him on the list.

9. Illumina.
As one who frequents He-Man.org on a regular basis, I felt I had to vote for her. She never made any appearance in MOTU-lore beyond the promotional image below.

10.
Um. Yeah, so despite me placing the vote about 10min ago, I can't for the life of me remember who the last one was. I definitely did vote for 10 because the website told me I had to remove one (hence no Sy-Klone) but as to who it was... I know I did consider Smash-Blade He-Man for the Funny (his over-production was partly responsible for killing the 200x He-Man line) and Glimmer because she's pretty (it's the pink hair), but now only Mattel knows for sure.

Overall, yes, I will hold my hands up and say that I just voted for who'd be funniest. In part because being funny is its own reward, and in part to counter what will likely be a landslide victory for the big guns.

The list in full...

Review: He-Man Starship Eternia

There's a black sheep in the family.

There tends to be one in most families. I suspect, though no one's ever stayed around me long enough to confirm it, that it's me in my family. The oddity. The one people aren't sure about. The disliked one.

For the Masters of the Universe franchise it's The New Adventures of He-Man.

I only found out this was the situation when I started reading the stuff on He-Man.org, which was about the time the 200x series launched. As a child, I happily watched NA every school holiday morning. It was shown on ITV, usually paired with COPS or some other cartoon that most people have forgotten about, yet I have fond memories of. I didn't know, at the time, that He-Man wasn't supposed to be in space, that it was all just a rip-off of Star Wars, that the scientists were annoying, that all the characters looking different from the Filmation show was bad.

...That Skeletor having eyeballs was sacrilege.

Nope, I just thought it was a fun action-adventure series.

I didn't have any of the toys, however. Not being able to pin down exactly how old I was when I was watching, I'm not sure why I didn't have any. Maybe I just didn't like it that much. Maybe there was something else that was consuming all my pocket money. Maybe I wasn't taken to toy shops that often and so never knew the toys existed.

I simply have no idea.

From reading, however, it seems that one of the main reasons people disliked the toyline - in addition to the cartoon-dislike reasons stated above - was that the figures were a different design to the old Masters of the Universe line. The NA figures were a lot slimmer and had none of the GIANT muscles or other exagerated parts that the originals did. It was difficult to play with both the old and the new together since they looked so different.

It's interesting that these days it's a lot more difficult - and expensive - to get hold of NA figures (on the whole) than the original Masters ones. Presumably this is due to them being no where near as popular and therefore a lot less of them produced. It tends to be ~£20+ for a good condition figure, which is why I don't have any.

I do have the big ship, however.

I would go into details of my adventure in getting hold of Starship Eternia, but my getting lost in Birmingham probably holds little interest to readers of this blog. In brief, however, I found one on ebay for a reasonable price and bought it.

Review: MOTU Fright Zone

A few years ago, when I was having my 3 year paid holiday doing my PhD, I, for no reason other than 'I wanted to' bought up a number of vintage toys. Some may say that this isn't exactly true - or not the complete truth, at least, because technically I've been buying vintage toys since the time when they weren't vintage but brand new. But this is beside the point. What is the point is that while I was doing my PhD one of the things that appeared on ebay was a Masters of the Universe Fright Zone playset. A boxed Fright Zone playet, no less. In fact it was a cheap, boxed Fright Zone playset.

So I bought it.

Ordinarily I don't go for boxed things since they are usually extremely expensive, but as I mentioned: it was cheap.

What I didn't realise at the time, but did when I started to read about it later, was that not only was this a cheap, boxed Fright Zone but that it also came with its little glove puppet in near-perfect condition (a rarity, I am told). It also came with its original rubber band, but I doubt that's of much interest.

For a few years the set was proudly on display in my flat, covered in He-Man figures (and an increasing thick layer of dust). For the past few years, however, it's been back in its boxed in a cupboard at my parents. For there is only so much room at my house and I figured I could store it there without anyone noticing.

Until one day when two little boys noticed the box...

Review: Power & Honor Foundation Catalog Vol. 1

I had an absolute blast growing up in the 80s. As anyone who's ever seen my house (or seen some of the photos on this blog, for that matter) will know, I have desperately tried to cling on to these days by collecting as much of it as possible in the form of small plastic figures.

ThunderCats, Transformers, Centurions, Visionaries - the list goes on and on. I loved every single one of these toylines and the universes the characters lived in. And it wasn't because they all had cartoons (aka 'half hour adverts') - despite what adults may think, children aren't stupid and want anything they see on TV. A lot of work went into some of those shows, but that's a story for another time.

The one that kicked off this toy/cartoon revolution was Masters of the Universe, created as a competitor to the Star Wars toy line. It wasn't the cartoon or even the comics that attracted me. It wasn't even the amazing artwork that adorned the toy boxes. What I really liked best were the figures themselves - just like the boys in the child focus group who attempted to steal the prototypes. As a child, I simply thought they looked fantastic.

When the 200x (as it is referred to due to its non-exact year of arrival) Masters of the Universe line arrived, I started lurking on the He-Man.org forums. It was from there that I began to learn the rich history of the toyline. The dispute over who exactly created created He-Man. The early mini-comic stories I'd completely forgotten about due to them being hugely overshadowed by the Filmation cartoon. When the Classics line began, characters such as Gygor appeared, who'd been designed for the 80s line but never gotten past the prototype stage.

And now a load of this information has been put into a book - The Power and Honor Foundation Catalog Vol. 1

The SDCC Haul

A couple of months ago I posted here about the San Diego Comic Con exclusive toys that I'd like to own. It's been a while now since the Con, so let's have a look at what I did and didn't manage to get hold of.