Mantenna is a great example of my relationship with the MOTU Classics line. I have no love for this character and he was as annoying as hell in the cartoon, but he’s such a creative and bizarre design and the figure is so wonderfully executed, that I absolutely had to have him on my shelf. Mantenna was released the same month as the Horde Troopers, which meant that there was a lot of new tooling invested in the October product. Normally, I would say they should have split it up better and spread all this goodness out over a couple of months, but then I was lucky enough to be home on that day to get them, so I’ll just keep my mouth shut.

The packaging is the usual Greyskull-inspired card and bubble. I thought Mantenna might warrant something bigger because of his odd configuration, but Mattel was able to get him into the standard package quite comfortably. He’s carded with his regular eyes in place and his extra set of peepers are concealed at the bottom behind the insert. There’s a Horde sticker on the bubble. There’s not a lot else to say about the presentation here, except that it’s as awesome as ever and I am now going to destroy it.

There’s no doubt that Eternia and Etheria are full of a bunch of freaks, but most of them have some basis in logic. Oh, look that guy’s a “beast man!” That chick looks like a scorpion. There’s a fellow with three eyes! Mantenna, however, takes the Etherian Handbook of Freaks and tosses it straight out the window. His design is pure imagination and it works splendidly. He’s also a delightful blend of goofiness and sheer horror. He may be a bumbling goon, but if you woke up and this thing was standing at the foot of your bed, you’d have some sheets to launder because you will have shat in them. But it’s not just this guy’s creative anatomy that makes him special… everything on this guy is just fantastic. Even the armor is gorgeous with the Horde emblem brilliantly sculpted into his chest and again on each of his four grieves.

But it’s not just the design that makes me love Mantenna, it’s the absolutely brilliant way Matty crafted him into action figure form. The Classics version is a satisfying mix of vintage toy and 200x design. The head sculpt is a nightmare circus of bulging jaundiced eyes, a toothy vagina for a mouth and vestigial tusks. Toss in some deformed Mogwai ears and you’ve got yourself an undeniably gorgeous piece of work. He’s in a class all by himself and his portrait alone will make him stand his own against even the strangest figures in most collections.

Naturally, the other thing that makes Mantenna distinctive is his two sets of legs. Both pairs are scaled just like regular MOTUC legs and attached to a specially sculpted double-pelvis so as not to mess with articulation. It looks great and wonderfully wrong at the same time, rather like staring at the Geometry of the Old Gods. I’d love to see someone do a stop-motion video of this guy skittering along, because it would probably freak me the hell out. With four legs, now is as good a time to talk articulation as any. From the waist up, things are what you would expect from a MOTUC figure, but the legs are a little different. You get ball joints and swivels at the hips and at the knees. The ankles have hinges and rocker joints as well. It’s great to see that Matty didn’t cheap out and Mantenna is every bit as poseable as he should be while keeping him at a regular monthly figure price point.

Beyond the bizarre design and excellent sculpt, I’ve got to say that Mantenna represents a beautiful selection of colors. The bright red, yellow, and orange contrast wondrfully with the darker blues and blacks. The use of a high gloss metallic blue for his boots and knee armor is a nice surprise and it makes those pieces stand out from his blue skin.

Of course, Mantenna can also stick out his peepers to ridiculous lengths and Matty reproduced this gimmick in the figure by providing a pair of swappable extended eyes. Making the switch is easy, as all you need to do is pull off the mouth and then pop out the one set of eyes and peg in the others. If you didn’t think this guy was unsettling enough, try looking into the soulless abyss of his face without his mouth or eyes attached. And the result of pegging in his popping eyes makes an already freaky figure even more bizarre and disturbing. The eye stalks are disgusting and veiny and take what was an innocent, goofy toy gimmick and elevate it to an artful form of anatomical gore. It’s simply splendid. The figure wouldn’t be Mantenna without this feature, but I doubt I’ll ever display him with the eyes popping out. My MOTUC collection is currently residing on some shelves in my bedroom and quite frankly, I like to sleep at night, thank you very much.

In addition to the extra set of eyes, Mantenna comes with the ubiquitous Horde crossbow. Obviously everyone got one of these at orientation. Mantenna’s has an awesome sculpt and a nice metallic silver painted finish. He can hold it in either hand.

October was a crazy-awesome month for Club Eternia and Mantenna is a big part of the reason why. I had very high expectations for him and he managed to exceed them with all his freaky charm. I love everything about this figure: It’s design, sculpt, coloring, articulation… it’s all fantastic. He’s one of those cases where I don’t even think about how expensive these things are getting with shipping because the end justifies the means. Had I missed him on Sale Day, I would have had no choice but scramble to get him on the secondary market, and I shudder to think how high I would have gone. All this, mind you, for a character I don’t even care much about. To me, that’s how good Matty is making some of these figures. This Summer, after a great deal of hand wringing, I eventually caved and subbed Club Eternia for next year. I’ve reassessed that decision many times since, but October’s releases make me so very glad I did. With Two-Bad and Modulok following in Mantenna’s wake, I think it was the right decision!

Every now and again the stars align themselves in my favor and the universe blows me a kiss. Such was the case on Tuesday the 15th of October when I just happened to be off on the day the Horde Troopers and Mantenna went up for sale on Matty Collector. Next to Ram Man, these were easily the most anticipated figures for me this year and the very releases that made me go, “Oh shit, now I kind of wish I had subbed” because I knew how hard they were going to be to get. To make matters worse, that week I had Q4 planning meetings virtually every single afternoon. But, as it turned out, Tuesday the 15th was the only day that entire week that I didn’t need to be at work. It was the one day I could be sitting comfortably in my sweatpants at my computer at 11:59a EST. And despite having a few scares on the order page, I was able to purchase my figures with little fuss. It was a good thing too, because these babies sold out in under 10 minutes.

If you’ve picked up any of the MOTUC two-packs in the past, then you should know what to expect from the packaging here. This was actually my first two-pack in the line, so I was in unfamiliar territory. It’s a window box with the familiar green Greyskull stonework motif and artsy-fartsy angled sides. You get the usual Horde sticker on the window and an explosion of dialogue on the front inviting you to “Collect an army of Horde Trooper robots!” Many collectors did just that, buying eight or ten packs of these things, and the result was a quick sell-out that left others to scramble to Ebay and pay scalper prices. Oh, Matty, you seem to always know just the right spot to poke that sharp stick where it will hurt your customers the most. The troopers are laid out on a tray beside each other with all of their gear on display. It’s a nice presentation that doesn’t waste much space. If you’re careful enough, and patient with the invisible rubber bands, you can get these guys out without destroying the box.

The back of the package has the usual biography and features some other Horde figures, as well as the very elusive Spirit of Hordak figure… there’s that poking stick again! Matty be trolling you!

Out of the package, the Horde Troopers are very cool figures. Keep in mind, the two figures aren’t exactly the same. One has some minor battle scarring, which has received mixed reactions from collectors. I don’t mind it, especially since it only amounts to just three painted black blemishes, although I suppose if you are army building these, it’ll look funny to have the same blast marks in the same spots on so many of your troops. It’s not a concern for me, as I was content with a single set, so I approve of Matty’s little effort to distinguish these guys apart. Still, your mileage may vary.

Obviously, there’s a crap load of brand new tooling on these figures and it’s almost uniformly excellent. The proportions are great as these guys really do look like bulked out armored robots and the torso armor is even easily removable to reveal some new robotic sculpting on the torso of the buck underneath. It’s something that I will never do, but the extra effort is still appreciated and I think it helps make the armor more convincing. These trooper designs have always had a special place in my heart and a big part of the reason that I always liked The Horde better than Skeletor’s motley crew. Compare these guys to Skeletor’s goofy floating robots and there’s just no contest as to who had the cooler disposable army.

The one issue I take with the sculpting on this figure is in the way the heads turned out, and we’re really talking about a deliberate design choice rather than a failing in the sculpt. I so wish Matty had gone with the animated look for these guys over the vintage toy. The glowing red eyes looked so much better to me than the yellow boomerang-style band, and they didn’t even really get the look of the vintage toy visor down quite right either. The yellow part looks too large and chunky to me. It’s not a deal-breaker, the rest of the figures look way too good for something like this to ruin them. You can position the head so as to conceal part of the visor and I think that does a lot to improve the look. Besides, I wouldn’t be surprised if we get some Filmation accurate heads in a Weapons pack somewhere down the road. And while we’re on the subject of the heads, yes you can easily pop them off and pop on another figure’s noggin to make them look like they are wearing the Horde armor. I love it!

Gear! You get two complete sets of gear to kit out each of the troopers. I’m not up on my He-Mans enough to know where all of this stuff came from, but I’m imagining that the designs are borrowed from both Filmation and the vintage toys. Either way, it’s a great selection of goodies and if you do happen to be troop building these guys, there’s enough variety to arm your various troops in a lot of different ways. Mattel could have cheaped out here and gave a different set of weapons to each figure, but instead each one gets it all.

First off, you get a matching staff and shield, which are probably my favorite pieces in this little arsenal. The shield is sculpted to look like the Horde symbol, and while I personally would like my shield to offer a little more protection and less artistic flair, I can’t deny that it looks great in the troopers’ hands. It looks even better when paired with the nicely sculpted red staff. I would imagine that these are more ceremonial garb… the kind of shit that Hordak has these guys hold when their standing around the The Fright Zone and trying to look regal. Why else would you put a hole in the middle of a shield? Sure they’re just robots, but replacing them must get expensive.

Next up, you get these totally bitchin black Horde crossbows. These things are awesome, It’s a great looking sculpt made all the better by the slick glossy black paint job and they have a yellow paint app towards the tip to mimic the troopers’ visors and some red painted circuitry patterns on the back.

Oddly enough, the least interesting looking weapon in the bunch will probably please a lot of fans the most. It’s the wand that these guys carried in the Filmation cartoon. It’s not much to look at, but this is the weapon that I associate with these guys the most. For display, I’ll likely be sticking with the red staff and shield. If I ever get drunk and start playing with these guys, they’ll be equipped with these little energy wands. In the end, it doesn’t matter what weapons you give them. They’re always going to wind up getting their metal asses kicked in.

If you can’t tell from all my gushing, I think this is an amazing set of figures and I’m so very pleased that I was able to snag them. Had my display space allowed for it, I probably would have tried for at least one more, just so I could display troopers with all their different gear. Unfortunately, as it stands, I already had to nix a shelf of Star Trek figures because my Horde and Rebellion collection has now grown large enough to require a shelf of their own. With two figures and a lot of weapons, this set actually feels like a good value at $55 even with the shipping thrown in, and that’s something I can’t say about a lot of the MOTUC figures. They’re almost all great, but I still usually feel like I’m paying a premium for them, even if it is a justified one. This pair is going to be a hard act to follow, but crazy enough, I think Matty managed to upstage them in the very same month with the October monthly figure. That figure was Mantenna, and we’ll circle back to him at the end of the week to bask in his awesomeness.

I had all but given up on getting my Jet Sled as it was lost in the mail for the better part of two weeks. The tracking said it was delivered, while reality proved otherwise. The nice people at the USPS continued to claim that the carrier placed the box in my post box, but after making a pest of myself and insisting that I would have noticed a huge parcel in my post box if it had been in there, the package eventually arrived on my doorstep. I’m not going to dwell on it, because quite frankly the USPS has a pretty good track record with me and besides, alls well that ends well. Anywho…

It’s been almost a year since Matty released the first, and what seemed like maybe the only, vehicle in the MOTUC lineup, but now it’s finally time to make some extra room in my Masters garage because the Jet Sled has arrived! I always thought this would be the first vehicle release of the line, because it’s so much easier to produce than the Wind Raider. It’s also a bit more iconic to me, because for whatever reason I just remember He-Man jumping on this thing and flying off more often than he did in the Wind Raider. Ok, honestly it’s really because I used to like checking out Teela’s tushie when she flew it. The fact that this vehicle is very reminiscent of the jet sleds used in Flash Gordon doesn’t hurt either.  I love Flash Gordon! Of course, the Wind Raider turned out to be an amazing toy in and of itself, and now that I’ve got a Jet Sled in hand, I won’t quibble over Matty’s strategies here.

The set comes in a window box, not unlike what has been used for most of the MOTUC multi-figure sets. It’s nice that you can see what you’re getting inside, but I’ll say straightaway that I wish Matty had put this set in a regular box like they did with the Wind Raider. The decision to use a window box for something that will never be sold in a store (unless it’s on clearance at a Big Lots) escapes me. Actually it doesn’t, because a regular box would need cool box art and that costs money. But the real reason I would have preferred a regular box is because it’s just easier to store it and chances are, the Jet Sled may wind up in storage until I can expand my display room a bit. I guess I’ll just save the white mailer box.

Anyway, the package certainly looks great, but all the artsy-fartsy angles make it a challenge to get everything out and still keep the box intact. Nonetheless, it can be done, so we’ll call it collector friendly.

Let’s kick things off with Sky High. He was not the main attraction for me here, but I do kind of dig Matty including him with the release. I’m not a He-Mans expert, but I believe this guy is based off artwork for the Wind Raider pilot? If I’m wrong, send your “You don’t know shit about the He-Mans” hate messages to me in the comments below. Some have accused him of being a kitbash release, but this is MOTUC, so I don’t know why we need to single this guy out for what the line has been doing all along. To be honest, the only thing that struck me right away as obvious were the legs being a straight repaint from Trapjaw. Who cares? They work well on the figure. The vest is a separate and removable piece with some nice tooling on the front. It does bulk out the figure’s top quite a bit and limits how far down his arms can go, but all in all, I still dig it. Sky High doesn’t have a face, just a sculpted helmet that is delightfully reminiscent of an old Greek or Roman helm. Since Sky High is basically a dude in a flight suit, you can swap his head with another figure. I’ll finally have a use for that spare He-Man head that I have rattling around in a tote somewhere!

While I like the overall look of the figure a lot, it seems to me like Sky High took a couple steps back in overall quality. The plastic looks and feels a little rougher than what we usually get and the paintwork is especially rough. There’s slop all over the place, albeit most of it is behind his legs so at least it isn’t all that apparent until you inspect the figure more closely. I’m guessing Mattel took some shortcuts here because he is a pack-in figure, but I have no confirmation of that. It could just be I drew an unlucky figure. I’ve had very few QC issues on any of my MOTUC figures, so what’s here just tends to stand out a bit more.

Sky High has standard MOTUC articulation. Considering that I still have the vehicle to get to, let’s just leave it at that. He does, however come with a set of wings that clips to his back. I really like this piece as it’s designed to be multi-functional. It could serve as a gliding device in case our buddy gets shot down and needs to glide to the ground. Think about it, the Jet Sled is a death trap just waiting to toss you off of it so you will plummet to your death. No, the wings don’t look aerodynamically sound, so call it magic if you want! If Orko can perpetually levitate, I’ll grant it that this guy can glide back to the ground on these wings. Why not just use a parachute? Oh, for godsakes, it’s the He-Man universe, folks, where people put out fires with their robot elephant heads. Let’s just move on. The wings can also serve very nicely as a bladed weapon. Several other reviewers have also pointed out that it’s designed to look like the wings of the Wind Raider and if you sit Sky High in the Raider, it looks like another set of wings. That’s cool! I do think he should have come with a blaster pistol or something, but I have enough extra MOTUC weapons kicking around that I can lend him something.

Moving on to the main attraction is the Jet Sled. As one might have expected, this thing is just a hollow piece of plastic, but that’s really all it needs to be. And I might add that it is a beautifully sculpted and painted hollow piece of plastic. I think what impresses me most about this piece is that Matty resisted the temptation to cheap out and go with stickers. There are no stickers. Everything on this toy is sculpted and painted. That means the dragons on the sides have a nice 3D feel to them and even all the little knobs and switches on the dash board are all part of the sculpt. Every little rivet is sculpted and painted, and there’s even some decent detail work on the undercarriage. It’s kind of cool that they even left the clips on the side where this thing would plug into the non-existent Battle Ram. There are some great looking guns on this piece too!

The fit for the figure is serviceable enough. You can’t quite get the feet planted squarely on the foot pedals, but you can get it close enough that most MOTUC figure (male or female) will look credible while riding it. Once the hands are in the grips, you can woooosh it all over the place and he ain’t gonna fall off.

So, what’s here is really good, but it’s what’s not here that gives me pause. The stand you see in the pictures was borrowed from my Wind Raider. The Jet Sled is made to work with it, but you don’t get one. Wait, what? At a $50 price point, that stand really needed to be included with this set to make it cost out for me. Mattel already has the molds for the stand, they should have just stamped out a bunch more of them for the Jet Sled. It was a missed opportunity to throw a little extra value to the fans for dealing with the rest of the Matty bullshit all year round.

Nonetheless, I’m not going to let a missing stand put a damper on my enjoyment of this set. It really is a nice release and I’m kind of surprised it happened at all, considering Matty’s claims that they were disappointed with the sales performance of the Wind Raider. The price point isn’t too bad and I do like the Sky High figure. On the other hand, had Matty released the vehicle alone with a stand for ten bucks less, I probably would have bought two. But who am I to quibble with success, because the Jet Sled still sold out after just a couple of days.

I had originally planned on looking at the Jet Sled and Sky High today, but the USPS had other plans. Despite the tracking telling me it was delivered last Tuesday, I have to beg to differ. I’m pursuing the issue, but I’m not terribly optimistic about a favorable outcome. Getting something lost in the mail sucks, but I’ve got a lot of third-party Transformers coming in these days, so if the USPS had to lose something, I’m kind of glad that’s what it was. Anywho… In an effort to keep today’s slot about MOTUC, I’m substituting in this figure, which happened to be sitting around and waiting to be opened… Ok, end of prologue… let’s go!

So, we’re still a couple of weeks away from the next Sale Day for Matty’s Club Eternia, but I’ve been doing a little MOTUC shopping early to pick up some figures I was missing. One of those figures was Octavia, because with just Hordak, Katra, and Grizzlor, my Horde Forces are rather weak. I can’t remember whether Octavia sold out super-fast, or I just wasn’t privy to her Day of Sale, but having to pick her up second hand cost me an extra ten bucks. Let’s see if she was worth it…

In package, Octavia offers few surprises. It’s the same great green brick Greyskull-inspired packaging we always see with the additional Horde sticker on the bubble. She is, however, an absolute bitch to get out. The figure is secured with clear rubber bands, which are woven throughout the tentacles and the crossbow. It’s a veritable Gordian knot that demands to be cut if you ever want to free her.

Flip the card over and you get some previously released figures and Octavia’s biography. I have absolutely no recollection of the character from her pair of appearances on She-Ra, but having She-Ra on the TV was a dangerous thing. If detected, it would provoke instant teasing from my older brother and that would result in a cage match that often led to getting both of us grounded. Anyway, I’m missing quite a few of the figures on the back here. Of the six pictured, I only have Grizzlor and Katra.

While Octavia is not really complete without her tentacles, they take up a lot of room and chances are I may have to display her without them, so I thought we’d start by just looking at the base figure. For a disgusting fin-headed sea monster, Octavia is kind of smoking hot. Hey, Rule 34 tells me that at least one of you out there is into this chick! She uses a fairly standard female buck with a one-piece dress layered onto the figure. The belt is a new sculpt, as is the awesome Horde emblem on the front. She has simple red gloves and some really snazzy boots, each with a Horde symbol sculpted in. The coloring here is a bit drab with the dress being… what would you call that? Ochre? But the high gloss black paint for the boots helps and I do like the color green they used for her skin.

The portrait is very cool. Octavia looks a little more pouty than angry, but I like the head sculpt a lot and the flowing orange hair is just crazy enough to work. The paintwork on the face is quite nice and I dig the crazy eye shadow.

Octavia’s tentacles are four independent pieces, each with a hinged ball joint that plugs into a socket on her back. It helps to pop her head off to get that hair out of the way and some of them are tough to get in. Once set up, though, they’re totally impressive, and I am surprised how relatively easy it is to get her to stand with them. They have a little bit of bendy element to them and the ball joint and hinges give you some added poseability. You can also mix up the way you insert them to offer some different configurations. Each tentacle is sculpted with some rings and there are suckers at the ends. It would have been nice if Matty could have matched the color a little better with her skin, but it’s close enough.

In addition to the hinges and ball joints on the tentacles, Octavia has the usual articulation for the MOTUC female buck. The arms have ball jointed shoulders, swivels in the biceps and wrists, and hinged elbows. The legs are ball jointed at the hips with swivels, and there are hinges in the knees and ankles. She can swivel at the waist and her head is ball jointed. As expected, there is no ab crunch.

With a lot of arms, comes a lot of accessories! Octavia comes with a Horde crossbow with a Cthulu-like face sculpted on the end of it. She also comes with four identical swords that can clip to her tentacles. What I love about the swords is that they don’t have crazy hilts to accommodate the tentacles. Nope, they’re designed so they can also be wielded by any MOTUC figure.

As I hinted at earlier, the only issue I have with this figure is the space I’m going to need to display her. My MOTUC shelves are getting rather congested, and you need a lot of room to display Octavia in all her tentacle flailing glory. Truth be told, she looks good enough displayed without them, but it’s almost a shame to do that because when you get them deployed and each wielding a sword, she looks absolutely bitchin’! I do think it’s kind of strange that we got her before some of the other Princess of Power characters, like Glimmer or Scorpia, but since those ladies are on their way next year, I’m not going to complain. Octavia is indeed an excellent figure.