Alrighty, folks, it’s Day Two of the Matty Cyber Sale Week here on FFZ. Today we’re checking out the leader of The Snakemen himself, King Hsss! Everything I know about The Snakemen comes from the MYP series, so I don’t have a lot of nostalgia for these guys. Indeed, I like the conflict in my toy fictions rather black and white, so throwing in a new faction kind of complicated things for me. As a result, I was planning on ignoring the figures completely, but then Rattlor impressed the hell out of me, making me reconsider adding some of these bastards to my collection. King Hsss turned up for cheaps on the Cyber Monday Sale and I pulled the trigger. A day or so later when I tried to order Kobra Khan, it turns out I pulled that King Hsss trigger once again, but if you were here on Monday, you already heard that story.

Yuppers. It’s the beautiful MOTUC packaging with the green stonework deco and the lightning strikes. Hsss has the “Snake Men” sticker on the bubble as well as that “The Original!” explosion, which denotes the exact opposite and that this is in fact a re-issue.  It’s worth noting that King Hsss comes packaged in his humanoid form with the snake parts tucked down under the insert. If you’re not familiar with the character, then you should know that he can transform into a Snake Man, or more properly a Man O’Snakes. Even back in the day when I used to go over my best friend’s house and play Masters with his collection I thought this guy’s gimmick was kind of stupid. Let’s see if the modern Classics version can bring me around. I kinda hope so, since I now own two of them.

In his humanoid form, Hsss is still a pretty distinctive looking figure for the MOTUC line. I dig that a lot, since he does represent another faction and shouldn’t look like he shares a lot of parts with the regular dudes. His green buck is sculpted to look like segmented armor and he has a pretty simple set of brown boots and gauntlets. Instead of the usual fuzzy diaper, this guy is sporting a pair of red snake scaled briefs and a belt. The ensemble is tied together by a grey gorget hanging around his neck with a snake emblem on it. The outfit doesn’t make him look like a Snake Man, but just a dude that really loves snakes, and that’s cool because it is supposed to be his disguise and all. Either way, this is a great looking figure!

The head sculpt is pretty fantastic too. Hsss is sporting a shit-eating grin like he knows something you don’t and that something might be that he’s actually made up of a bunch of f’cking snakes! The mask looks awesome and the fact that his deep-set eyes have snake pupils makes him look all the more creepy. Last up is his helmet, which perfectly matches the design of the rest of his armor.

Despite his gimmick, Hsss has the same articulation as any MOTUC figure. You get ball joints in the neck, shoulders, and hips. His arms have swivels in the biceps and wrists, and hinges in the elbows. His legs swivel at the hips, and have hinges in the knees and ankles. He can also swivel at the waist and he has the usual ab crunch hinge in the torso. All this is possible because of the way Mattel designed the execution of his gimmick. But, before we get to Hsss’ surprise, let’s check out his accessories, because they’re only good to him in his humanoid form.

Hsss comes with a snake staff and a shield. The staff is a repaint of the same sculpt that we saw with Rattlor a little while back. I really love this piece and I’m struggling to decide which version I like better. This one is green with some beautiful diamond paint apps on the snake’s back. I do enjoy the fact that Mattel painted the staff itself a slightly different shade of green instead of just stamping the whole thing out in one color of plastic. The varied deco really makes the snake stand out a lot more. The shield is a kite-style with an arm clip and another snake motif sculpted into the front of it. Again, it’s a very nice sculpt and Hsss looks fantastic holding both pieces. And now it’s time for the big reveal,,,

First, you pull the figure apart at the waist. I find he comes apart pretty easy when I want him to, but I don’t have any problems with him coming apart when I’m playing with him. This is a good thing. Next up, you pop the snake half onto him and voila, you have Hsss in his natural form. Folks, I still have no idea what I’m supposed to think about this. It looks like three snakes wearing pants. I don’t want to belittle it too much, because a) It’s much better executed than the original figure and b) Yes, no matter how goofy it is, if I saw this thing coming at me in real life I would shit my pants and run. That having been said, I still think this is a pretty ridiculous idea even by MOTU standards, and that’s saying a lot. Have you seen the guy with the robot elephant head?

The snake top is made out of soft plastic with the “arm” snakes being bendy and poseable and the jaw on the main “head” snake being hinged. The whole thing is sculpted and painted beautifully. T4H might have gotten a shit idea dumped on their laps, but god bless ‘em they took it, ran with it, and applied their usual amazing talents to make it succeed the best they can. And succeed it does! This is the best looking collection of snakes wearing pants that we will likely ever see.  The sculpted scales look fantastic and the paint features a wonderful glossy coat that gives the snakes a lot of credibility. My only real gripe here is that the snake torso comes off a lot easier than the regular one and it has a habit of popping off when I’m fiddling about with him.

So, I’m still not convinced that King Hsss’ gimmick is a good idea, but that doesn’t stop me from loving this figure. I’m pretty sure I’ll wind up displaying him in his humanoid form most of the time, although since I now own two of these I guess I can display him both ways. Unfortunately, now that I am pretty smitten by the two Snake Men figures that I own, I’ll probably be hunting more, and most of them have gone up quite a bit on the secondary market. Hsss on the other hand was nice and cheap, going for only $13.50 throughout the entire Sale Week and he didn’t even sell out. The fact that he’s included in the Essentials may have something to do with that, since collectors could buy him whenever they wanted. I can’t tell you the number of times I considered tossing him into my cart when buying some other figures. I would have still been pretty happy with him at the regular price, but obviously I’m glad I held off to get him for half off.

Tomorrow, Matty Sale Day madness continues with Hurricane Hordak! Wait, what? He wasn’t part of the Sale!