Today I’m continuing my look at a line that I vowed never to collect! Masters of the Universe Origins! After amassing boxes upon boxes of the MOTUC line, there was no way I was going to start from scratch with Masters in a new format. And yet here we are, as I’m nearly caught up on the current offerings of Origins and even pre-ordered the new Castle Greyskull, all because I’m a weak man, and this line is just so good! This time I’m teaming up too new Heroic Warriors (or at least one Heroic Warrior and one Bumbling Idiot), with a look at “The Master of Weapons,” Man-At-Arms and “The Court Magician,” Orko.

I feel sorry for anyone collecting these figures Mint On Card, because the primary source for them seems to be Walmart’s website, and Walmart ain’t got no time for proper packing. Plus, this elongated card design, while looking amazing, is just a big invitation to being bent and crumpled. I did manage to get an extra He-Man and Skeletor to keep carded, but those I found on the pegs. The rest were shipped to me and nearly all were bent up, with the exception of Orko, who arrived in nothing more than a mailer envelope, but somehow managed to remain almost dead mint. Go figure! Let’s start with Duncan!

When I first got Man-At-Arms in hand, I thought I was cheated because he wasn’t wearing his extra armor bits, and there didn’t seem to be any room for them in the package. But quickly after opening him, I found that they were indeed bundled with his weapon, TIGHTLY wrapped together and bundled behind the figure. These pieces are sculpted in extra soft plastic and strap on to his left arm and leg quite easily. The quality of their fit is a little across the board. The shoulder piece fits fine. The lower arm piece isn’t so bad, the leg piece is kind of wobbly. Still, I’m overall pleased with how they came out and I like that they made the arm and shoulder separate pieces to account for the added elbow articulation. I also love that they gave the area near the elbow an accordion style sculpt to make it look like it’s designed to flex with the elbow, even though it really doesn’t. The chest piece is your standard vest, which tabs together in the back and looks great.

The figure itself is your standard He-Man buck cast mostly in green, with brown barbarian diaper and boots, and a blue belt. The wrist bracers are left unpainted just like on the vintage figure. Articulation remains uniform for the line with all the jointed parts being modular. This no doubt makes the manufacturing process easier and less costly, but it also means if you want to customize your own MOTU figures by mixing and matching, you can go right ahead and do it! As he stands, the coloring on this figure looks fantastic, and I’m a big fan of the way the orange armor complements that green buck.

Probably the most interesting thing about the head sculpt is that they decided to go with the Filmation mustache look, rather than that of the original vintage toy. I’m curious to see how the old school MOTU fans will feel about this, but I would have been fine either way. Duncan always was an ugly son of a gun and the addition of his now familiar mustache doesn’t really change that. He’s got the same broad and lumpy face that he had way back when, which is exactly how I will always remember him. The blue helmet actually looks like it’s sculped separately from the head and features some nice details and pretty clean paintwork.

In addition to his armor bits, Man-At-Arms comes with his trusty orange mace. It’s a simple weapon, which he can hold well in his right hand, and it rounds out what is a superb recreation of the vintage toy, lip ferret not withstanding! Let’s move on to Orko!

I was pretty excited to see what Orko would be like, since he’s one of the only Origins figures so far to stray from the standard buck. Not to mention, the original figure was more like a Zip-And-Go toy than an actual figure. I’d say Mattel took a page from the MOTUC line when delivering this toy, and that’s not a bad thing at all. Orko features a hollow, hard plastic body with a ball socket under his robes to plug in his translucent stand. The other end of the stand plugs into the socket in the trippy looking base, allowing for articulation in the stand at both ends. I’m not sure what kind of effect they were going for with the base itself, but it sure looks cool. The purple plastic has sparkles in it and it looks like bubbles. A simpler clear base would have been more versatile, but it’s hard to complain when what they came up with looks this beautiful.

Orko himself looks very Filmation inspired, which makes sense since that’s where he originated from. The “O” on his chest is actually part of the sculpt and not simply painted on, but other than that and a few light rumples, there isn’t a whole lot of detail in his body, which again drives home the animated look. His arms have rotating hinges at the shoulders, elbows, and wrists. He has a wide range of motion at the shoulders, but more limited movement at the elbows and wrists because of the way the sleeves are sculpted. Still, what’s here isn’t at all bad.

The head is basically just a black ball with eyes. It’s ball jointed into the scarf that encircles his neck, and the wide brimmed hat has holes for his ears to pass through. The effect works well, and I was surprised at how much expressive motion I could get out of the head. I’ll also note that when I first saw my figure in the package, it had a black spot on the front corner of his hat. I thought this was a defect, but when I opened him up it brushed right off, and boy am I thankful for that!

Orko doesn’t come with any accessories, although I guess the stand does use a lot of plastic. I can’t say he’s really missing anything. Even the wand that came with the Classics version always seemed kind of out of place to me. Maybe a spell book would have been cool, but certainly not essential. To be honest, I’m surprised we got Orko so soon in Origins. It’s clearly a line that is structured around recycled bodies, and Orko had to be individually designed from the ground up, and I don’t see a lot of opportunity for reusing any of these parts.

And there we are… two more great figures from Mattel’s Origins line! Heroic Warrior ranks are growing and I’m looking forward to grabbing some more. My local Walmart stocked the first wave of these, but after that it’s been nothing at all, so I’ve been relying on Walmart’s website to pre-order and so far they’ve been coming through with the goods. My understanding is that Walmart’s exclusivity on these isn’t permanent, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to utilize Amazon to collect this line in the future. I’m not committed to being a completist at this point, so if I miss one or two along the way, I’m not going to go crazy hunting them down. Next time I revisit this line, we’ll take a look at some more of the evil denizens of Snake Mountain!