Mattel’s been busy pumping out the Cartoon versions of their MOTU Origins line, and I’m getting closer to being all caught up. After today I’ll be only one wave of figures behind, and the Cartoon Series first vehicle, The Collector has arrived as well! And today we’re taking to the skies and the seas of Eternia with a look at Stratos and Mer-Man!

I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep on saying it: I love this packaging so much! The cards are so colorful, the cartoon logo and the figures against the castle backdrop looks so good! There’s a rainbow colored “Cartoon” collection logo on the bubbles, reminiscent of the Filmation logo, and every figure comes bundled with a mini comic behind the tray. It kills me to tear into these, but my figures are in there, and I want them out! Let’s start with Mer-Man!

The toon version of Skeletor’s fishy minion shares a lot in common with the vintage-style figure, but everything gets smoothed over and simplified for that slick animated look. But before getting to any of that, just look at the colors! The blue and yellow plastic is a one-two pleasure punch to my peepers, making for such a beautifully striking deco. He’d look right at home standing side-by-side with the 90’s X-Men! The little bit of orange thrown in for the fur diaper and around the eyes just ups the ante. I also really love that these figures make use of so much colored plastic over paint. Unlike the vintage-style figure, toony Mer-Man sports yellow gauntlets and boots, his belt is simplified and his chest armor has some simulated muscles, that look like abs running all the way up to his neck. Finally, you get a little bit of fishy flare in his webbed shoulders. I love it!

The head sculpt is a complete rework from the vintage style, giving him the exaggerated fins on the sides of his head and a very fishy looking mouth. His eyes have puffy orange borders and he’s got those delightful Simpsons-style eyeballs. I used to love watching them pop in the cartoon when something unexpected happened to him. It’s sometimes hard for me to pick a favorite between vintage and cartoon styles, but I’ll always love Mer-Man’s Filmation look over the vintage style. I just think that head worked better for a skunk man than it did a fish man.

Mer-Man comes with two accessories, his trident and the Pearl of Power, both of which were seen in the episode City Beneath the Sea. And boy is that a cracking episode! I’m not just saying that because it starts out with Prince Adam blindfolded and playing what is clearly a sex-fiend game of drunk hide-and-seek with a couple of palace whores. Afterwards, He-Man and Man-At-Arms investigate missing ships only to find out that Mer-Man has seized control of Aquatica, captured their Princess, and hypnotized the people with his Pearl of Power. The pearl looks really nice and Mer-Man’s left hand is sculpted perfectly to hold it.

The Trident is pretty simple, but it matches what he had in the cartoon perfectly. Sure, I prefer the more ornate sword that came with the vintage figure, but I can always loan that out to him if I want to… Moving on to Stratos!

As a character, Stratos is not top of my list of favorites in the cartoon, but I’m going all in on this line, so I was content to pick him up, and with the figure in hand I’m glad I did. The figure is not as flashy and colorful as Mer-Man, but I was surprised at how well the body’s mostly gray deco pops with those splashes of red and blue. The cartoon design switches the vintage deco up with the harness going from red to blue and the wings from blue to red, meanwhile the belt stays red and the fur diaper stays blue. Toony Stratos also nixes the sculpted fur around the gray lower legs and feet and gives him red boots, the tops of which are the same sculpt as Mer-Man’s. Of course, we get a lot of the usual smoothing and simplification to evoke that animated look. Stratos’ sculpted chest hair is gone, the harness lacks all detail. The jetpack looks great and the wings still have the sculpted feather detail, but are streamlined in their shape. The Cartoon Series proportions also look really great on this guy!

The head sculpt is a lot more robust than what we got in the vintage-style figure. The helmet is larger, the goggles are smoothed out, and the beard is fuller and more majestic. I also think he looks a lot more human than simian here. I also like his broad smile.

Stratos comes with only one accessory and of course it’s the Staff of Avion. That makes two tridents in this wave! I don’t know how many times this thing was seen in the cartoon, but it was specifically called out in the episode, The Reign of the Monster. Apparently he only got it out once a year to do a fireworks display, although the episode does have him using it as a weapon to shoot energy blasts. It’s a decent looking accessory cast in gold plastic with angled prongs on the end.

I really dig how Mattel is releasing these figures in waves of two at a time, with one hero and one villain, and this wave is definitely another solid pair for the collection. I’m not the biggest Stratos fan around, but his figure looks good, and I find that I’m warming up to him as a character more and more. Mer-Man, on the other hand, is a key addition to Skeletor’s core minions and I just can’t get enough of the great colors! I picked these up for $17.99 a piece, which ain’t bad considering it’s hard to get figures in this scale for under $20 these days. Next up will be Evil-Lyn and Webstor!