It’s another week and another miss. I tried to get back to my three update schedule this week, but it’s just not happening. I get home from work exhausted, I zone out with a video game for a bit and then go to sleep. Trust me when I tell you that I haven’t lost the passion to do this, but right now I just don’t have the time or energy needed. It’s frustrating, but at least I’m still hitting all the Marvel Mondays, even if it’s been a struggle to get anything else done. So, I’m not making any more promises about what future weeks will look like. For now I’ll get here when I can get here. But for now, at least I made it back before the week ended with one more review, so let’s get to it… I’ve got tons of different stuff waiting to be reviewed, and yet somehow I keep pushing MOTU Origins up to the front of the line. It’s the line I didn’t want to collect. The line I swore I wouldn’t collect. And yet here we are! Right out of the gate, Mattel is pulling no punches and giving us beasts and vehicles, and even a new Greyskull! So let’s check out Battle Cat!

The packaging for this line continues to be killer. Battle Cat comes in a window box with an extended top flap and a deco that plays at my nostalgia strings like Orko on an Eternian harpsicord. There’s some gorgeous artwork on the front and back panels, and the packaging is collector friendly. I really dig how they painted Battle Cat without his helmet on, and boy does he look all sorts of badass! I don’t usually keep these boxes, and I may wind up tossing it eventually, but for now I’m going to hang on to the box, because Battle Cat looks so damn good in it. Let’s start out sans armor and have a look at the figure underneath!

When Mattel first revealed that we were getting an Origins version of He-Man’s trusty steed, I was expecting something pretty basic and possibly with the armor permanently attached, but here I am totally surprised. For starters, this is a fantastic sculpt, with loads of detail. You get sculpted fur all over this big cat’s green body, with extra tufts of hair along his undercarriage. The musculature is pretty well defined, and they even sculpted the pads on the bottom of his paws, because even battle cats have adorable toe beans!!! The body is hollow, which makes the figure a bit lighter than one might expect based on his size, but that’s not to say it feels cheap in any way. The yellow striping is a little thin and rubbed in a few areas, but I’d probably rather that, then if they had gone too heavy with the paint.

Under that helmet is an excellent portrait of this ferocious kitty. I love the broad nose and puffed out snout. The eyes are even painted over with a little gloss to make them stand out, although I wish they had been painted in yellow too. His jaws are actually hinged and he’s got bold white top and bottom fangs and a textured tongue. It’s funny because the fangs on my Classics Battle Cat had some chipped paint right out of the box, but the Origins version’s pearly whites are perfect!

With my initial expectations of this being a very basic figure, I was expecting very limited articulation, like maybe just rotating joints where the legs meet the body. Well, we got that and a little more. Battle Cat also has rotating hinges in the middle of his legs, and a rotating hinge at the base of his tail. Now, I’m not saying that this guy is super poseable, but he’s still fun to play with and he remains a very stable and sure-footed cat. I really dig what they did with his head. The neck hinges up and down where it meets the body, and the head itself is on a ball joint, so he can look side to side as well.

The molded armor pieces are cast in very firm plastic with a belt to hold on the body armor. The helmet holds on merely by friction and it does it quite well. One of my gripes about the Masters Classics Battle Cat is the helmet constantly falls off. That’s not the case here! I can actually hold the figure upside down and shake it and this helmet will not fall off. Pretty cool! The armor sculpt is pretty smooth and simple, but it looks great. The only additional paint applications are on the eyes, which are painted in yellow with black pupils.

The molded saddle works perfectly with the Origins He-Man figure, and he looks as iconic as ever riding atop his faithful friend.

Wow, I am so delighted with how this figure came out. He may not be as big and beefy as the MOTUC version, but in some ways I do like this one better. It’s more stable, less cumbersome, and overall a bit more fun to knock around and play with. What’s more, he looks fantastic on the shelf surrounded by his fellow Heroes of Eternia. I was lucky enough to find one last Battle Cat on the shelf during a random trip to Walmart, and he has the distinction of being the very last Origins toy that my local Walmart has had on the shelves or the pegs. So far, I’ve been pretty lucky collecting this line, but my guess is things are about to get a lot more difficult. Either way, Battle Cat set me back about $25, and it seems like a decent value for the price! Now bring on Panthor!