The fact that I only selectively collect the MOTU Masterverse series is perhaps one of my greatest demonstrations of willpower. The line has produced some truly amazing looking action figures, but I’ve already collected MOTU Classics, Origins, and now the Origins Cartoon Series, so I really needed to draw a line somewhere. I have, however, been picking up the figures they release based off the designs from the 1986 live-action movie. So far, they’ve given us He-Man, Skeletor, Evil-Lyn, and now Beast Man! Add these to the Classics versions of Saurod, Blade, and Karg and we’ve got pretty much all the baddies now!

The package design is the same as we saw with Evil-Lyn. You get some really cool original character art against a dynamic backdrop and a rather limited window showing off a bit of the figure. There’s a compartment running down the left side that contains a tissue-paper baggie with his extra pair of hands and his forearm bracers. I thought it a little weird that they didn’t just package the figure with those on, but whatever. I find it interesting that they don’t reference the movie anywhere on the the package. Maybe there’s a licensing loophole and they are basing these figures on artwork that doesn’t require the movie license? Don’t know! But it’s cool, because I’m not saving this box anyway.

Out of the package, Beast Man is looking pretty sharp! The costume features a wonderfully complex sculpt, making the design really stand out a lot more in action figure form than it did in the film. His trousers have a soft quilted look while his arms are sculpted with crude wrappings. The shoulder pieces look like they’re based on some bizarre Eternian horned animal shells and the cuirass has individually sculpted panels and tufts of sculpted orange fur peeking out from behind it. This figure is just replete with layers and textures! But as great as the sculpt is, I think it’s the paint and coloring that really sells this figure. I didn’t get a sense of much color in the on screen costume, but here it’s just gorgeous. The segmented armor plates have a lapis lazuli quality about them, which looks great beside the gold and orange. It’s so much more toyetic than what we saw in the movie, but still faithful to the design.

The head sculpt is a pretty solid likeness for the on screen makeup, although it is tooned up a bit. I think they were going for a stylized look rather than something realistic and it works very well for the figure. Like the costume, the detail here is very well fleshed out, from the great definition in the features of the face to the glorious mane of hair surrounding it. They even spent some extra effort on his horrible teeth! This portrait kind of reminds me of a higher definition 90’s Playmates sculpt and I mean that as a compliment. As we’ll see later, I think the style meshes very well with the movie figures released in the Classics line.

The articulation is solid with all the right points. The arms have rotating hinges in the shoulders and elbows with hinged pegs in the wrists. The legs have what feel like rotating hinges in the hips, swivels in the thighs, double-hinged knees, and the ankles have both hinges and rockers. There’s a swivel in the waist, an ab-crunch hidden under the armor, and a ball joint in the neck. I don’t collect this line regularly, so I assume this is the standard for Masterverse. Either way, it makes for a fun figure to play around with and all the joints felt great right out of the box. You get two sets of hands: One relaxed pair and one pair to hold accessories. I found that the wrist pegs are pretty mushy and kind of hard to socket properly.

If you don’t count the removable arm bracers, Beast Man comes with only one accessory and that’s his sword. I don’t remember the sword from the movie, but it’s a cool no-nonsense design with a straight blade and a stout crossguard. The hilt features some nice detail, the sculpted wraps on the grips are orange and the rest is left in bare gray plastic. There’s even a loop on his right hip where he can wear it.

And as I mentioned earlier, I think Beast Man fits in with the Mercenaries we got from Matty’s Classics line very well. Yes, the bodies and articulation are different, but I will have no problem displaying all of these guys together.

Assembling these Mercenaries sure took a long time, but I’m happy to finally be able to do it. And Beast Man is a great addition to finish off on. It’ll be interesting to see if Masterverse goes after the rest of the team or if they just gave us Beast Man as a means of completing them. It sure would be nice to finally get a Teela and Man-At-Arms from the film too, and I’d be perfectly fine if Mattel did it without pursuing the exact likeness rights like they did with He-Man. But until then, I’ll likely be done with this line now unless they start putting out more Princess of Power releases.