Tag Archives: Masters of the Universe

#0852: Tri-Klops

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , ,

TRI-KLOPS

MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE

TriClopsVint1

Mattel is a company most often remembered as the makers of Barbie, but pretty much since the inception of Barbie, they’ve been trying to capture an equivalent market, but more aimed at boys (for better or for worse). There first real try was a line called Big Jim, which was a sort of an odd mix of Barbie and G.I. Joe. It was a decent enough success, but certainly didn’t have the lasting power of Barbie. Their next attempt, Masters of the Universe, was far more successful, though it sort of comes and goes. The line was a fairly standard “heroes vs. villains” set-up, and one of my favorite villainous characters is Tri-Klops, who I’ll be looking at today.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

TriClopsVint2Tri-Klops is part of the 1983 series of the original Masters of the Universe line. The figure stands about 5 ½ inches tall and he’s got 6 points of articulation, as well as a rotating visor piece. Structurally, he’s the same as the basic He-Man figure, with his own unique head and armor piece. The base body is, of course, hysterically proportioned, but that’s kind of on purpose. He’s certainly very muscle-y. The character-specific parts haven’t aged quite as well as other MotU figures. While later Tri-Klops figures would put effort into giving him some interesting tech things going on with his visor, this one doesn’t do any of that; he’s got a simple ring with three eyes on it, each eye having a slightly different brow. That’s really it. Not the most exciting design work. His armor is a bit more interesting and ornate, though still rather basic.  As far as paint goes, Tri-Klops is pretty TriClopsVint3basic, relying mostly on molded colors. Whatpaint he does have is generally pretty clean, overlooking the obvious wear and tear from regular play. The one odd thing is the total lack of paint on the insides of the arms, leaving his armbands only half-existent. Tri-Klops originally included a sword (which was unique to him) and a weird, glow-in-the-dark skull ring thingy. My Tri-Klops, however, does not have these.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Since I wasn’t alive in 1983, Tri-Klops was purchase second-hand. He’s actually a fairly recent addition to my collection, having only been purchased last December. I found him in an antique store near my family’s usual holiday vacation spot. I’ve always liked Tri-Klops, but I can’t say I have a huge affinity for his vintage look. Definitely a character whose 2002 design was the one I enjoyed the most. Still, not a bad figure, especially given when it was released.

#0644: Roboto

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , ,

ROBOTO

MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE

Roboto1

I am, at best, a moderate fan of Masters of the Universe. That’s mostly a timing thing. It was really big in the 80s, but it was completely gone by the time I started collecting in the 90s. My first real exposure to the line was the 2002 relaunch, which I quite enjoyed at the time. I have a handful of characters I really like, but beyond that, I’ve never gotten super hooked on any iteration of the line. Still, I really enjoy the various iterations of the line for what they are, and I do pick up the occasional figure here and there, including today’s focus, Roboto, Heroic Mechanical Warrior.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Roboto3Roboto was released as part of the 1985 assortment of Mattel’s Masters of the Universe line. He stands roughly 5 ½ inches tall and has 7 points of articulation. That’s actually one more point of articulation than the average MOTU figure, so that’s cool. MOTU figures were generally pretty big on parts re-use, and, while Roboto isn’t completely exempt from that, he has a surprising amount that is exclusive to him. The legs are the same as those used on Trap-Jaw, but the rest of the figure is unique. He’s admittedly a little on the goofy side, but that’s hardly a bad thing. The sculpt features lots of cool hard angles and the “tech-y” details, which gives him a distinctive look. The head is probably one of the goofier aspects of the sculpt, but it does actually present a nice melding of MOTU’s contrasting barbaric and futuristic styles. It’s got a sort of a knight’s helmet look, but also maintains a more classic robot look. The figure takes advantage of the usually empty torso of action figures, and adds some cool gears to represent Roboto’s inner workings. Roboto is somewhat light in paint, being mostly molded in the appropriate colors (the clear plastic on the torso is super cool, by the way), but there’s some minor paintwork for his left hand and boots, as well as a few of the details on his head. The figure is packed with three possible attachments for his right arm: blaster, axe, and claw. All three snap in and out pretty easily, and offer a nice selection of variety. In addition, Roboto features a pretty nifty little action feature; when the figure’s waist is turned, the gears in the torso spin and the mouth guard opens and closes. It’s nothing big, but it’s something.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Roboto is another of the figures I got from the Rehoboth Beach branch of Yesterday’s Fun. Like I said, I don’t usually go for MOTU stuff, but I saw Roboto sitting in their glass case and he just called to me. It doesn’t help that I’m a sucker for robots. So, I bought him. He’s cheesy as hell, but I really dig it. He’s a really fun figure! Oh, and I went a whole review without a single Mr. Roboto joke. You’re welcome.

Roboto2

#0585: The Eternal Barbarian

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , ,

ETERNAL BARBARIAN

WEAPONEERS OF MONKAA

EtBarbarian1

“I have the Powe—er, the, umm, the… Weaponeers of Monkaa?” That’s how it goes, right? That’s the catchphrase of that He-Guy dude, isn’t it? Sounds right.

There’s no denying that Weaponeers of Monkaa pays tribute to several popular toylines of the 80s. One such line is Mattel’s Masters of the Universe. In fact, WoM made its debut at Power Con, a convention devoted to MotU, and the whole line spawned out of Spy Monkey’s weapon sets that were designed to be compatible with Masters of the Universe Classics. This time around, SMC has taken the tribute one step further, creating the Eternal Barbarian, a figure with some striking similarities to a certain Master of the Universe.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

EtBarbarian2The Eternal Barbarian was initially available exclusively at Power Con 2013. Excess stock was supposed to go up on the Spy Monkey online store a little while after, but he sold out at Power Con. Due to the popularity of the figure, Spy Monkey decided to do another run of the figure to be released alongside the Granite Warriors assortment. The Barbarian is touted as the “Strongest Gearo in the Universe,” so the guy is meant to be one of the heroic Gearo faction, but other than that, I don’t know exactly how he fits into WoM-lore. Like just about every other WoM figure, the Barbarian is about 4 inches tall and sports 19 points of articulation in his default set-up. The Barbarian is constructed from the same selection of parts that we’ve seen many times before in this line. It’s good set of pieces, and the figure has a nice retro toy feel to it. His default head is the Empyreus head, which is a good, generic hero guy head, so it works quite nicely here. Of course, the figure still includes the other four possibly heads, should you want to change things up. EtBarbarian4WoM figures are defined by their color-schemes, and oh boy, is this one well-defined. SMC was clearly going for a He-Man homage with this guy, and he ends up with a fair bit more paint than the average Weaponeer. The body exhibits mostly clean work, and does a very nice job of applying the He-Man style to the WoM body. In place of the usual heroic gear symbol, he’s been given He-Man’s classic Iron Cross symbol, which really sells the homage. The heads are a little sloppier with the paint application (though certainly nothing too bad), but what’s cool about them is that they each have a completely unique paint scheme, and two of them even throw an additional two MotU characters into the mix, which just adds to the fun! The Barbarian is packed with the usual short blade and sickle, but he also includes an additional weapon pack, with two guns, hilts, short blades, serrated blades, angled blades, and sickles. Quite an impressive assortment.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Seeing as I’ve never attended a Power Con (being only a moderate MotU fan at best), I missed out on the first run of Eternal Barbarians. So, I was quite happy to find out that SMC was doing a second run. I placed my order for this guy alongside my Granite series order. He’s definitely a fun figure, even to those not a fan of MotU, and he shows some of the versatility of the Weaponeer body.

EtBarbarian3

#0099: He-Ro

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , ,

HE-RO

MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE CLASSICS

So, I’ve looked at Mattel’s popular DC Universe Classics line a few times before on the site.  Based on the popularity of that line, Mattel decided to create a similar line based on their own in house property Masters of the Universe, handled by the Four Horsemen, the group of sculptors responsible for the amazing work present in DCUC.  They called the line Masters of the Universe Classics, and they used it to spear head the launch of their online store Matty Collector.  I’ll go into the wonderfulness of that store (read: sarcasm) in a bit.

Anyway, in addition to monthly releases on the webstore, they also have a yearly San Diego Comicon exclusive.  He-Ro is one of those.

Little backstory on He-Ro.  Towards the end of the original Masters of the Universe line, they had planned on rebranding the line “The Powers of Grayskull”, and moving the focus from He-Man to his distant ancestor He-Ro, a heroic sorcerer who had helped establish the Eternia we all knew and loved.  The line never took off, but a lone prototype of He-Ro was produced.  This figure is based on that.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

He-Ro was released as the 2009 San Diego Comicon exclusive for Masters of the Universe Classics.  He’s based on the unproduced He-Ro prototype from the 80s.  He stands about 7 inches tall and he has 24 points of articulation.  In a similar fashion to DC Universe Classics, MOTUC is built on the buck system.  However, MOTUC has two bucks: Male and Female*.  He-Ro is built on the male buck.  I hope that didn’t shock you.  In addition to the base body, He-Ro has a new head, lower arms, kilt-thingy, boots, and chest/cape combo.  These pieces are all well done, and have a lot of great little details.  The head has a bit of a young Arnold Schwarzenegger feel to it, which actually really works for the character.  The paint on the figure is well applied, no slop or bleed over.   I feel like he could possibly use a few accents to highlight some of the subtleties of the sculpt, but it’s not bad by any means.  He-Ro includes two accessories: a power sword and a staff thing.  The power sword is the same sword that’s been used many times over the course of the line, but this time molded in a clear, sparkly blue, which is cool if you’re into that sort of thing I suppose.  The staff is brand new, and can open up to show off the gem inside the top.  It was possible to get a green, red or purple gem.  I got purple.  So there…

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

If you’ve read my DCUC reviews, you know I’m not the biggest fan of Matty Collector.  I also wasn’t a fan of the price tag associated with the figures.  They were selling for $20 a piece (at a time when DCUC were still under $15), and when you added in Matty’s outrageous shipping costs, you weren’t getting one of these without dropping at least $30.  Of course, the price mattered not, because the only way you could get the figures was to get onto Matty’s site at noon (eastern time) the day they went up and pray to God that you were able to get one within the less than 10 minutes the figure was in stock.  And to make matters worse, Matty wasn’t willing to up their bandwidth to allow for the increased traffic, so you’d get stuck in perpetual loading screens.

I was a moderate fan of Masters of the Universe, but all that was enough to make me say: “I’ll spend my money elsewhere.”

But then a funny thing happened.  Mattel decided to release a select few MOTUC figures in two packs with DCUC figures.  Perhaps this was my chance, I thought!  But then they arrived and they were $40 retail.  Which definitely killed my excitement.  But then, the Toys R Us near me went out of business (well actually it moved across the street, but they still sold all of their stock because…?) and I found a Skeletor & Lex Luthor two pack for $15.  For that price, they were worth it.  And Skeletor was actually a really cool figure!  So, I decided to track down a few more.  I found He-Ro at a nearby toy store called Alltime Toys, who had him for about $25, which was pricey, but not outrageous.  And here he is.  And wow this review is a lot longer than I was expecting it to be.

*Okay, so technically there’s a few variations on the male body to allow for, like, furry characters and stuff, but it’s the same underlying musculature, and I really liked my witty banter back there.  Yeah, it was witty!