Tag Archives: club eternia

Sep 3 2013

Masters of the Universe Classics: Castaspella by Mattel

Last month, I scheduled one of my work weeks around Matty Sale Day because I had convinced myself that I needed to be at the computer at precisely 12pm EST in order to get my mitts on Castaspella. Turns out, she was the ugly girl at the dance and hung around for quite a few days after. I really thought she was going to go fast, but I guess I’m not in tune with the ebb and flow of this fanbase’s interests. For the uninitiated, Casta is based off a character in the Princess of Power off-shoot line. The vintage toys were more akin to dolls than action figures, which meant if you were a young boy collecting the He-Mans and you wanted to expand into She-Ra territory you had to be extremely comfortable with your sexuality at a young age and have understanding parents or else you were just shit out of luck.

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Casta comes in the same style package as the regular Masters Classics, but she does have a “Princess of Power” sticker on the bubble, which is rather cool. I’ve said my piece about the great packaging for this line many times over, so let’s just move on.

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The flipside of the card has the usual bio, which I hardly ever read, and shots of other Princess of Power figures. I’m missing two of those: Netossa and Bow. One of these days, I’ll hunt them down.

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Out of the package, Casta is a delightfully colorful figure. The last time I remember being this pleased with a MOTUC figure’s coloring it was Sy-Klone, so obviously I have some innate love for blue and yellow decos. Casta has a blue top and blue leggings, which contrast beautifully with her yellow skirt and boots. Toss in some lightning bolts for good measure and she’s got major style. The orange for the high collar is a strange choice, but I guess it helps bridge the rift leading up to her red hair. Mmm… red heads… me likey. I have a very vague memory of her from the cartoon, but what I do remember was her voice was horrible and she was always macking on Prince Adam.

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I really like Casta’s head sculpt, although I don’t think it matches the artwork all that much. The likeness has a lot in common with the one used for Teela some time back, although it still works for me. T4H went all out on the hair sculpt, which is mounded up on top of her head and then cascades behind her. It’s very distinctive. The outfit’s sculpt seems to reuse some parts from She-Ra, most notably the skirt, although the boots have been re-sculpted to match her deco. All in all her outfit looks pretty fresh and original and it’s layered onto the figure as has been the case with many of the past females.

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Articulation appears standard for the females in the line. You get ball joints in the neck, shoulders and hips. The arms have swivels in the biceps and wrists and hinged elbows. The legs are hinged at the knees and ankles. Casta can swivel at the waist, but there is no ab-crunch.

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Casta comes with three accessories: You get a shield, an effect part, and a huge disc. I know that the disc is tied to her vintage counterpart’s gimmick, but I have no idea what the hell it’s supposed to be. You can clip it onto her waist, but I think it’s garish and ugly like it’s a piece of 70’s wall art and I will banish it to the darkest depths of one of my most miscellaneous totes. Mwahaha.

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The shield is pretty cool. Sure, it’s the same PoP shield sculpt we’ve seen before, but it’s cast in translucent plastic and some people will have you believe that translucent plastic makes everything better. Is it a magic shield? Yup, that sounds good to me.

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Last up is the effect part. If you know me, you know I am rarely impressed with effect parts. Casta’s is a large yellow magic beam that fits over either of her hands. It’s ok, I guess, but I doubt it will get much face time in my display case.

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So, needless to say I’m glad I was able to get this figure, even if I did wind up taking a morning off that I didn’t need to. It’s crazy to look at a figure that took a few days to sell out and wonder what went wrong, but that’s often the case with Matty’s bizarre business model. In any event, I’m a big fan of the Princess of Power figures in the MOTUC collection, mainly because it’s the first time we’ve seen these characters as action figures rather than dolls, and I’m hoping to see a lot more in the 2014 Sub. Casta is a nice, colorful figure and a great addition to my Masters shelf.

Aug 26 2013

Masters of the Universe Classics: Shokoti by Mattel

So, if you haven’t heard, The Matty Collector Pledge Drive hit their mark, which means that Club Eternia will continue for another year. I’m actually pretty happy about this because this was the first year I decided to sub. There are going to be some seriously cool figures being released in 2014, many which I never thought would ever be made, and while the August figures didn’t exactly sell like gangbusters, I do believe next year’s day of sale events will be a lot more cutthroat. Anyway, this year I did subscribe to the short filmation run and this week the second figure, Shokoti wound up in my postbox.

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It may not be Club Eternia, but the packaging is identical to what we’ve been getting all along and yeah, I still love it. Shokoti comes carded with her arms behind her back as if casually waiting to dispense evil. She also comes with her evil beast minion beside her and no other accessories to speak of. Flipping the package over, we get a bio card and a picture of other figures that are mostly no longer available this side of Ebay and your friendly neighborhood scalpers. Let’s see, how am I doing? There’s only one figure there that I don’t have and that’s Fang Man. I had zero interest in Fang Man until he became difficult to get and expensive and now I want him. DAMN YOU FANG MAN!!!

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Oh shit… Another Filmation Sub figure means that I have to try to watch the episode. In this case, it’s “House of Shokoti” and if it’s anything like Icer’s episode I’ll soon be begging for the sweet release of death. Wait… what? IT’S TWO PARTS??? Oh, hell no. I actually remember this one a little bit from my childhood. If memory serves Shokoti was a witch who was trapped in some temple under the desert and revived by Trapjaw and a sorcerer named Masque. She threatened to do some evil, had a weird relationship with some kid, and was eventually thwarted by He-Man. Oh yeah, and Ram Man called her Shaboobie or Shapoopie or something. I promised myself if I could recall the overall gist of the episode I wouldn’t make myself watch it. I still can’t remember what the tentacle thing is all about, but I got it close enough. Yes, she’s a one-off villain, but that’s the whole point of this sub-line. Also, I wouldn’t complain if Mattel decided to make Masque somewhere down the road. He’d be an easy figure to make and I wouldn’t mind having him on my shelf. Anyway… let’s look at the figure.

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Straightaway, I’m really pleased with the way Shokoti turned out. She is the spitting image of her animated counterpart without being overly simple. The head sculpt is perfect. She’s beauty and sinister evil wrapped up in one great portrait with a distinctive hair sculpt and a very cool headpiece. One nitpick I have is that Shokoti’s cape is sculpted as part of her hair, so you can’t just pop her head and take it off. Sure, she looks fine with the cape on, but I like to have display options. The rest of the figure features a black and blue one-piece dress with a low slung belt and skull belt buckle. The ensemble is wrapped up with a nice pair of boots. The articulation is standard for females of the line and includes the ankle rockers.

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Shokoti’s coloring features pale blue skin and a darker blue for her costume. She has tan gloves and glossy black for part of her costume and her boots. The cape is red with blue epaulets. I love the use of the copper color for her headpiece and a belt buckle. I think it works better than if they had gone with a more vibrant gold. Overall, the paint apps on this figure are quite excellent.

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I don’t get what’s up with Shokoti’s hands, but I kind of understand now why she’s packaged with them behind her back. She has hands that were intended to clutch some kind of wand or staff, but she doesn’t come with one. The result is that she just looks like she’s giving me the thumbs up… or down depending on how you pose her. It’s weird. They should have given her some spell casting, oogity-boogity hands instead. They also seem rather small for her. I’ll just pretend it’s part of her signature move. She throws a ball of tentacles at your face and then gives the thumbs up to the camera.

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Nope, no wand or staff, but you do get this guy. He’s definitely a cool piece, but I still don’t know who he is. Is it the great evil that she was trying to summon in the episode? Feel free to email me with the Subject Line, FIGUREFAN, YOU DON’T KNOW SHIT ABOUT THE HE-MANS, or just put it in the comments below. He has a very Cthulhu-like vibe to him, and I can think of more than a few other toy lines where he might fit in pretty well.

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Yup, I dig this figure a lot! Besides just being really well executed, I like the idea of having another female baddie for my display and possibly to pillow-fight with Evil-Lyn for the pleasure of Skeletor. “BEASTMAN… PREPARE THE ARENA OF PILLOWS!!!” Yes, the hands are odd and they make the absence of any kind of staff-like accessory rather conspicuous, but it’s something that I can overlook when the figure is this good. So far the Filmation Sub is two for two… Keep them coming, Matty!

Aug 10 2013

Masters of the Universe Classics: Sy-Klone by Mattel

With the Filmation Sub finally starting last month and so much hand wringing about the fate of Club Eternia for 2014, I’ve had MOTUC on the brain lately. As a result, the last time I was getting ready to ship my Pile of Loot from BBTS, I tossed in a few extra figures and one of them was Sy-Klone. He was definitely on my list of characters that I wanted on my shelf, but for whatever reason I wasn’t on hand to pick him up when he originally went up for sale. Luckily, he isn’t one of the ones that go for a premium nowadays, so I didn’t get beat up having to pick him up from a third-party retailer. In fact, I actually got him for less than he would have cost directly from Matty.

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There’s the MOTUC packaging we’ve seen dozens of times here. I love it, and I’m happy that it hasn’t really changed at all since the line started. Sy-Klone is billed as the “Heroic Fist-Flinging Tornado” as a nod back to his vintage action gimmick where he would flip the hell out and start spinning around and punching anyone that got near him. He was kind of like Eternia’s answer to the Tasmanian Devil only with the added value of an evil-detecting radar screen grafted into his stomach. God, I love Masters of the Universe. It lets me type the weirdest shit and present it as stone cold fact.

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The back of the package features his bio as well as other figures available in the line. And by available I mean mostly through scalpers on Ebay. Let’s see how I’m doing… Looks like the only one I’m missing out of these is Roboto. I passed on him because so many of the figures were assembled wrong.

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Oddly enough, I’m going to start out with the coloring, because it’s one of my favorite things about this figure. In Eternia, you really need to go the extra mile to stand out and just having a radar screen in your stomach and a wearing a huge hoop on your back isn’t going to cut it. You need bright colors to get noticed and Sy-Klone gets that. The combo of yellow and blue plastic on this figure really works for me and the little bits of mauve tie the whole thing together.

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But it’s not just the beautiful colors that make Sy-Klone unique. He also sports a nice mix of new sculpting and a reuse of some less obvious parts from other figures. Let’s face it, anyone in Eternia who doesn’t wear a furry diaper is a trend-setter and with his ringed gauntlets and boots, backpack, and stylish arm fins, Sy-Klone really gives off a cool futuristic vibe. The radar screen in his chest is a lenticular sticker, which causes the screen to move as you view it from different angles and I really dig how pixelated the graphic looks. Matty did a nice job recreating the one on the vintage toy very closely.

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Sy-Klone comes with his huge hoop weapon, an homage to the 200x version, and a shield. I seem to recall a bit of collector backlash over the hoop, but I think it’s a great signature accessory. It clips onto his backpack for storage and he can hold it in either hand as well. It definitely takes up some extra room in the display case, but I love the way he looks. The shield was an unexpected surprise, as I didn’t remember the vintage character having one, but a little research proved my memory wrong. I guess he needs it to protect his radar screen. Those things are expensive to replace.

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It seems unnecessary to discuss articulation at this point, since it’s been consistent throughout the line, but let’s rattle off the points anyway. You get a ball jointed neck, as well as ball joints in the shoulders and hips. The arms feature hinged elbows, and swivels in the biceps and wrists. The legs have hinges in the knees and ankles and swivels at the top of the boots. There’s a swivel in the waist, and Mattel still managed to get the ab crunch hinge into him, it’s just located below the radar screen.

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Sy-Klone is definitely a cool figure and one I’m glad to finally have in my display. The flak he gets over the 200x nod is really unnecessary as you’re free to pull off his hoop and display him without it. Personally, I think it just adds even more character to an already distinctive looking figure. He’s readily available on the secondary market in the $20-25 range and when you’re not paying Matty’s ridiculous shipping, it works out to be less than he was when purchased from the source. He’ll probably spend most of his time on my shelf chilling with Zodak.