The Masters of the Universe/She-Ra Thread!

[IMJ]

Originally Posted by Walkabout

My brother and I had **** tons of the original MOTU line as a kid, reading through this thread drives me wild.


I think Gwildor was the last figure I ever got.

That's how I felt. I abandoned MOTU almost twenty years ago when I sold my entire vintage collection (that I had in storage since I was a kid). I even sold a complete Snake Mountain and this was back when MOTU wasn't so desirable - now people want 80 bucks for a vintage, complete He-Man.

But I got suckered into the Origins line and I can't believe it. And now, what's worse is that I'm doing the logistics and list-making to figure out how I can put the Filmation set together at the best possible cost.

[Leo656]

$80?! I want THAT deal. I generally see original "vintage" He-Man complete with weapons and armor for like $130+. For $80 he'd be missing parts, probably.

But yeah the demand for all things MOTU has skyrocketed in recent years. All the 80s kids having YouTube channels is probably a lot to do with it. Same reason why every time AVGN and Sega Lord X talk about a game or system, it shoots up in price online because now everybody wants it.

[Leo656]

SUNDAY MAIL CALL!


I normally swear by Big Bad Toy Store, but they were sold out of these two so I broke down and bought them on Amazon. They came about four days earlier than it said they would which is awesome. As is common for ordering action figures from Amazon, though, the cards a re little banged up; not TOO bad but some bent corners, etc. If you just want the figures fast and are gonna open 'em anyway, they're alright, but for anyone who wants their figures minty, definitely stick with BBTS.

I will say, I've ordered all of my MOTU hardcover books off of Amazon and so far they've all been terrific. I guess they just take more care with books or something than with action figures.

Anyways, these guys are awesome! I'm really loving this line and can't wait for my other pre-orders to show up.

[Leo656]

Today's mail: Mega-Construx Wind Raider!

Yeah, I guess I'm into these now. Putting Roton together was fun, even though it was missing a piece (which they said they're gonna mail to me). So I'm gonna mess with this one and then the Point Dread/Talon Fighter set.

[neatoman]

Is it a coincidence that Orko looks like a Black Mage?

[Leo656]

Probably. MOTU predates Final Fantasy and such. Although I don't know what D&D Black Mages looked like in the tabletop games circa-1983. I only know FF Black Mages, and those came way after Orko did.

[neatoman]

But what if Square copied Mattel?

[Leo656]

Possible, but I'm still inclined to lean towards coincidence.

I clicked a few links after Googling the subject, and apparently He-Man/MOTU is a non-entity in Japan. So it's pretty doubtful that Orko had anything to do with the design of the FF-style Black Mages as designed by Square.

Apparently Filmation just wanted a very simplistic design that clearly made you think "wizard", but would be easy to animate and perfectly symmetrical so that they could flip the animation cells.

Who knows? But apparently you're not the first one to ask about this.

[Galactus]

Originally Posted by Leo656

Apparently Filmation just wanted a very simplistic design that clearly made you think "wizard", but would be easy to animate and perfectly symmetrical so that they could flip the animation cells.

RIP Gorpo.

[Leo656]

"Gorpo" turned out to be "The Unnamed One" later on in the Classics line, anyways, so at least he finally turned up someplace.

Of course, in that storyline he eventually ended up getting slain by He-Man's son, Dare, so... R.I.P. Gorpo, indeed.

[IMJ]

You found wave 2 you bastard.

[Leo656]

I had to cheat and go on Amazon, though. Good luck finding Trap Jaw for less than $30! Orko is still around $15, though. I have Man-E-Faces on the way and I think my wife ordered Scare Glow, so I'm almost caught up.

Meanwhile, I spent all night f*cking with these Mega-Construx. Totally awesome, so much fun.

First I did the Wind Raider set. It was only 198 pieces so I figured it would be a good "warm-up".


This is a great set. It does an amazing job of recreating the original vintage toy, down to the smallest detail. The wings and tail fin rotate slightly, and it even has a retractable anchor! It also comes with He-Man (with his Axe, but no Power Sword) and Skeletor (with his Power Sword, but no Havoc Staff). See, if you want a He-Man with a Sword and Skeletor with a Staff, you gotta buy them in a separate set. That's how they get ya! But the colors on this Skeletor are a bit brighter than the ones you get in other sets, so that's kinda neat as it sets this one apart.

In the one picture I just decided to get the stuff that came with the Roton set in there, too. That's another great set with a lot of fun bonuses, as it comes with Mer-Man, Battle Cat, AND Battle Armor He-Man, so that's pretty awesome.

After that, it was only about 10pm and I was all fired up from doing the first set, so I decided to just push through and put my Point Dread set together as well. That one was a bit more challenging and time-consuming, with about 557 pieces (although it also came with a bunch of extras, which was nice of them).:



This set is awesome! First of all, you get a TON with this set: The Point Dread tower, the Talon Fighter, the Weapons Rack, 8 weapons, Zodac, Panthor, Battle Armor Skeletor and "Temple of Darkness" Sorceress (along with Zoar). WOW! The Talon Fighter can sit on top of Point Dread or detach from it, the claws and radar dish are adjustable, the cockpit opens, AND it can actually shoot missiles! The computer inside of the tower also spins around, which is kinda neat.

Just for the record, I haven't done anything Lego-like in about 30+ years, but I had no trouble at all with these as the instructions are really in-depth and easy to follow. So I wouldn't say one would need to be an expert to assemble these sets. At first I was a bit overwhelmed by the sheer size of the Point Dread kit, with all of its tiny, near-identical pieces along with TWO big instruction manuals, but the manuals do a great job of walking you through the steps. The bags of parts are numbered in some of these kits, and the manual will even go so far as to tell you when to open each numbered bag to find the next batch of parts. There's still a few mixed bags of "Misc." parts so you still have to dig around a little bit to find what you need but as long as you don't skip steps or make a mess and lose anything, these things go together really fast and easy.

I definitely recommend checking these out. Some places have a few different sets marked down right now so it's worth looking into - I still can't believe I got that massive Point Dread set for FIVE DOLLARS at Walmart; that's what got me into buying these in the first place, I normally don't bother with these kinda things but at that price I couldn't say no. They're more typically around $20-30 but that really isn't bad at all for what you get. I know there's a few more I gotta pick up, still; Grayskull has gotten pretty outrageously priced but I'm gonna need to find a way to get it, so I can stick Point Dread on top.

I can't believe I was just ignoring these. They're really awesome.

[Leo656]

Today's mail came with another long overdue addition to the collection, one I've wanted my whole life and never managed to get until now - the evil bionic horse, Night Stalker!



I've had his heroic counterpart Stridor for as long as I can remember - although I think I'm missing a few parts from him - but I never managed to pick up Night Stalker. The stores around here never seemed to have him when I was a kid; I'm not sure if he was rare or not, doesn't seem like it, but I only knew a couple of kids who had one. I always liked Stridor a ton, but I always wanted this one, too; let's face it, Night Stalker's color scheme is about ten times more awesome.

He was a little dusty but I scrubbed it up nice; I was really glad to find one in such great shape, the stickers are near-perfect and everything. I gotta check and see what kinda shape my Stridor is in, so I can see if I need a new one or just a couple of parts.

[Leo656]

Some new pick-ups!

First up, when I was at Wal-Mart I grabbed the Skeletor and Flocked Panthor pack for my Mega-Construx collection:

If you scroll up to an earlier post, you can see that this Skeletor has a much darker purple costume than the one that came with the Wind Raider set. And also, the BIG selling point on this set is the flocked Panthor, which everybody wants in any scale (the Origins one is supposed to be a hot ticket item once it comes out, too).

Next up, a nice vintage piece I won in an auction for about $13 + shipping, a near-mint condition Roton!

One of the stickers is a bit askew, but otherwise it's perfect. I've had one for ages but mine has a few pieces snapped off, and I think I'm missing a gun, so this was a steal.

Finally, something I picked up at Big Bad Toy Store for my Classics/Club Grayskull collection, this really awesome Shadow Weaver!

What a great figure. After re-watching "Secret of the Sword" and then reading the DC MOTU Omnibus recently, I was heavily inclined to grab this one.

Incidentally, as a kid I was kinda too afraid that she might be all "Night of the Living Dead" under there to even notice that she's got a smokin' little body. As an adult, I don't even care; she's got a killer rack, and I respect that.

[ZariusTwo]

Masters of the Universe: Revelation figures unveiled

[Vegita-San]

looks like a cross between classic and 2k3

[Leo656]

Interesting.

Not a fan of "classic" He-Man having Battle Armor He-Man's chest logo. Otherwise, pretty neat!

EDIT: Everybody seems to hate that Evil-Lyn. I've seen everything from "Looks like a man" to "I had no idea Evil-Lyn was such a huge fan of 'Legend of Korra'." That totally is a Korra Cosplay Evil-Lyn, though.

I'unno, they're alright. Lots of people were hoping that these were going to simply pick up where "Classics" left off and are pretty annoyed that it's not that. I personally never expected that from the "Masterverse" line, so it doesn't bother me as much. Could be better, but they're alright.

[Leo656]

There's also an image they revealed for the design of He-Man and Battle Cat from the other upcoming Netflix series, the full reboot one NOT the Kevin Smith "Revelations" one. It's getting a pretty mixed reaction so far.


To Copy/Paste what I said on the He-Man forums:

Well, it's certainly very interesting. Can't say as I love it, but I'm always more of a traditionalist/"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" type of guy so any type of redesign had an uphill battle with me ANYway.

I can see where it's like an amalgamation of sorts between the original, the 200X style, and the DC/"Eternity War" style - the sword immediately reminded me of the re-forged sword from the DC comics. So I guess it's good that they pulled from a lot of influences for it.

It's definitely very "busy", though, and I can't say I love that. Part of the appeal of the MOTU characters, to me, was in how they all had such a "clean", streamlined design. Like sure, a lot of that probably had to do with being developed as potential characters for the Filmation show and so their designs had to be "simple" so that they would be easier to animate, but at the same time it just plain "worked". I've always loved to draw, and I've always loved to draw characters like He-Man and Superman because of their bold, yet simple designs. I frankly wouldn't jump to try and recreate this look, on account of how busy it is.

I can see what they're going for, but I can't say I'm incredibly excited for it, in and of itself. If these were the ONLY MOTU toys and He-Man figures we'd be getting, I'd probably be pretty mad. But since it's just one of three, with Origins out there as well as the upcoming ones based on the "Revelations" series, I can live with it. As I said, reboots and redesigns are always a hard sell with me anyway, so I was never expecting to fall in love with whatever they came up with. But since it's just one of several options available, I can deal.

I will probably pick them up, but based on what we've seen so far I can honestly say that I'm most excited for more Origins stuff, compared to these figures or the "Revelation" ones. I'm grateful for all of it and will try and get as much as I can from everything, but I think it's safe to say that Origins will remain my preferred line going forward. Unless we see more of the "Revelations" figures and they manage to really hit a home run somehow. And these will most likely be in third place, for me.

[Leo656]

Man-E-Faces from the Origins line finally showed up a few days ago!


Still waiting on all the other stuff I ordered from BBTS, like Wave 4, Battle Armor He-Man and Battle Armor Skeletor. It all originally said it would ship in February, but then everything got pushed back to March and now we're three weeks into March and people are saying their pre-orders are just now trickling out. Apparently it's a problem on Mattel's end. Still annoying, but it'll be worth it in the end once they finally arrive.

[IMJ]

Originally Posted by Leo656

Man-E-Faces from the Origins line finally showed up a few days ago!

This is cool.

The remainder of my wave 1 finally showed up from BBTS. It was weird that they were able to suddenly offer wave 1 without He-Man and Skeletor, so now I've got that whole wave unpunched. I still need a Man-At-Arms loose to put that wave to bed.

I still have no idea how I'll go about picking up Wave 2 at all. I've never seen them and you can't order them from BBTS, which means that putting together an unpunched set of wave 2 is going to be a real chore, possibly.

Any word on when Wave 4 is going to ship? I'm pre-ordered through wave 6.