November was a crazy month when it came to feeding my MOTUC Addiction. When all was said and done I wound up with four figures and an oversized beast and that doesn’t even count what I just spent on the Early Access Cyber Monday stuff. That left no monies for the Battle Ram, which is probably for the best since I would have had nowhere to display it. Anyway, today I’m going to kick things off with a look at the Club Eternia subscription figure, Tung Lashor.

Tung Lashor arrives in the usual Greyskull-decoed card. I can’t say I was all that excited to get this figure, but MOTUC’s offerings have a way of winning me over once I get them in hand. I’ve only recently started collecting the Snake Men from this line, but I’ve been buying the ones I missed whenever I see them at a good price.

In fact, flipping the card over and seeing the Snake Men themed collection of figures on the back, I’m actually doing pretty well. Tung Lashor and Snake Face are the only figures pictured that I didn’t already own and both of those arrived in this shipment. I even have a duplicate King Hsss sitting packaged on my shelf. I think I bought him by accident. The bio on the card doesn’t tell me much about Tung Lashor that isn’t already obvious. He has a tongue and he’s not afraid to use it, making him both a fearsome enemy and rather popular with the ladies. Let’s open him up and check him out!

Lashor is 100% day-glo colored badass! I can wrap my head around this guy’s proportions, but somehow he manages to be lean and a hulking at the same time. The body definitely doesn’t feel like the traditional MOTUC buck and works really well for the Snake Men aesthetic. Rather than go with a newly sculpted vest over the existing buck, Matty sculpted right onto the torso, and I think that’s a big part of what gives him his unique proportions. He has a snake emblem sculpted into his chest, along with his ripped six-pack and nipples… Snake Men have nipples!?! The hands and feet on this guy are also really cool. I like the three spindly newt fingers and the clawed toes that point in each cardinal direction. For some reason I remembered the original Lashor having a tail, but after some quick research I see that my memory is wrong. I like my Snake Men to have tails, but I’ll try not to hold it against him. Oh yeah, he also has a removable Horde armband.

The portrait features a pair of creepy yellow eyes on the sides of his head with a mohawk crest running between them. He’s got a number of fangs protruding up and down from his closed lips and… hey… where’s his tongue??? Oh yeay, Matty went with two different portraits for this guy. One with the mouth closed and…

One with tongue lashing action! Clearly this was the best way to go on the figure, although I’m not sure whether I’ll ever bother to use the regular head. Tongue Lasher needs to be displayed with his signature gimmick on display and that means using the head that has his tongue hanging out. Why does his tongue have a set of barbs in the middle? Who knows… why does the f’cking gardener have a robot elephant head? Because, Eternia.

And now we’ve come to my favorite part of any MOTUC feature, where I recount the same articulation that I’ve been doing for the last forty or so figures. The arms have rotating hinges at the shoulders, hinges at the elbows, and swivels in the biceps and wrists. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, hinged at the knees and ankles, and have swivels at the hips. The torso can swivel at the waist, has an ab crunch hinge, and the had is held on by a ball joint. The only thing I’m bummed about here is the lack of rockers in the ankles. Sometimes we get them, sometimes we don’t, but with Lashor’s huge flat feet, we definitely could have used some lateral rockers here.

In addition to the extra head, Tung Lashor comes with his crossbow and snake staff. The crossbow is patterned after a dragonfly and features rich metallic blue paint. The wings are really soft and rubbery and mine is pretty warped, but I still think it’s a cool weapon.

The snake staff is one that we’ve seen before. It looks black or dark blue and while I generally like the sculpt on it, the coloring doesn’t do much for me. It doesn’t feel like something that suits the figure, but rather something that Matty just tossed in to beef up his accessories. Either way, an extra staff is never a bad thing, eh?

I have virtually no affinity for the Snake Men as characters, but I have certainly been enjoying the figures a lot. Tung Lashor doesn’t blow me away like some of Club Eternia’s other recent offerings, but he’s certainly a solid effort and a worthy addition to my growing clutch of evil reptile men. He’s as unique looking a figure as you can get among the cast of weirdos that populate Eternia and Etheria and that alone makes him worthy of note. Would I have bought him if he wasn’t already part of my Sub? Probably. I find myself getting to be more of a completist as the line is coming to a close, a fact that has already cost me a fair amount of money during Matty’s Black Friday sale.

[Sorry, I couldn’t include a group shot with some of my other Snake Men, but as construction rages around my home, my MOTUC collection is inaccessible at the moment. Once I can get at those figures again, I’ll update with some more snaps.]

It may be November already (holy shit!!!), but I still have unfinished business with my October Matty Subscription figures. Last week I checked out the Club Etheria Exclusive, Light Hope, this time I’m going to take a look at October’s Club Eternia figure, Eldor. As I understand it, Eldor was a figure that Masters fans were pretty excited to get. I know nothing about this guy, but I thought the official pictures of him looked cool enough. Some of you may know that a big part of my love of this line is for the figures themselves rather than the characters they represent. So, let’s see what Eldor is all about…

There’s a shot of the very familiar packaging and damn, if he don’t look cool in there reading his book while surrounded by all that greyskull stonework. Eldor’s tag line is “Heroic Guardian of the Book of Living Spells.” That sounds pretty important. I read the bio on the back of the card and it made my brain hurt. I was, however, able to glean a couple of things from it. One, this guy is a wizard and Two he’s from Preternia, which is probably why I know nothing about him. I can take or leave most of the Masters fiction, but the Preternian stuff is definitely outside of my wheelhouse.

I’m also not scoring too well based on the figures on the back of this card. With just Eldor, Rattlor, and Hssss on my shelves, I’m only at 50% and I suppose that makes me a bad fan. I have no interest in that Preternian Disguise He-Man, but I could see myself grabbing up Snake Face and He-Ro at some point in time.

As a wizard, Eldor has an interesting look that both embraces and dispels the classic wizard design tropes. The fact that he’s built on the traditional MOTUC buck is easily the biggest departure from the often seen withered and decrepit old man spellcaster. Oh, but as his name suggests, Eldor does in some ways look like he’s long in the years, but with the ripped muscles on his arms and legs and that broad chest, he’s obviously an old codger that has taken damn fine care of himself. He may know magic, but this is a guy who can also kick your ass. His outfit consists of a belted jacket and tunic, which is fashioned in soft, rubbery plastic and attached over the buck like a vest and he has a matching, and removable, hood.

Look at that fine ass! Wait, what? No! I really took that picture to show off the great detail on his belt. He’s got a little hooked knife and what look like a couple of dog tags hanging off one side. I have no idea what the tags are or but they have some kind of symbols etched on them. The little knife is also a mystery. Maybe I don’t want to know what he does with that. Brises for hire? On the other side of his butt, he’s equipped with what is probably a bag of magical reagents. They also did a nice job distressing the fringe of his jacket. What’s also especially cool is the texturing that they put into his hood and the fringe of the jacket. It feels sort of like corduroy. Under the jacket you can see the stitching and lacing on his exposed tunic. All these little touches make for a real stand out figure.

It’s in the portrait where Eldor betrays his age. He features a stern looking, white bearded visage with some sculpted creases in the forehead and around the eyes. The hood is a separate sculpted piece of plastic that fits on the figure very well. If you remove it, the fringe of the coat behind his head actually looks like it could be the hood in a down position, which is an incredibly nice touch.

Under his hood Eldor wears a tight-fitting skull cap, which is painted and sculpted to look like it’s fashioned from hammered bronze. It reminds me of a less flashy version of the cap Nicol Williamson wore as Merlin in the 1981 film Excalibur. God, I love that movie! Anyway, everything about this guy just looks great. Eldor’s is easily one of the absolute best head sculpts we’ve seen in this entire line. The Four Horsemen really outdid themselves with this figure.

Every wizard needs a staff and Eldor comes with a real beauty. It’s sculpted to look like it was carved from a single piece of ancient and enchanted wood and the head of the staff forms a “C” and holds a clear magic crystal. Eldor can hold it in either hand or both, but I should mention that the fingers on my figure’s hands are curiously tight so getting it into his hands is a bit of a challenge.

The other item in Eldor’s inventory is perhaps one of my all time favorite action figure accessories: The Book of Living Spells! In addition to action figures, toys, and statues, I’m also a book collector. Or at least I once was. I’ve stopped adding to that collection for fear of one day getting crushed by a book avalanche, but I still have hundreds of great books and I even owned my own antiquarian bookshop for the better part of a decade. So it should come as no surprise that I think this is easily the coolest rendition of a book in plastic form that I’ve seen.

The cover features gold painted fixtures and a clasp and the pages look appropriately aged and ragged. It’s the spitting image of what my mind conjures when I think of ancient magic tomes. Pop the clasp and the book’s covers are hinged, allowing it to open up. My only gripe here is that there’s no printing on the pages, although the bookmark is there. With how amazing everything else is with this figure, it seems like a rather obvious oversight. I hear tell some intrepid collector is cooking up a set of decals to add lettering to the pages. I’d be real interested in getting my hands on those! Either way, I don’t want to take away from what a cool accessory this is.

Once again, this is what I love about the MOTUC line. This is why I put up with the crazy website and the questionable customer service and the slow and expensive shipping. Figures like Eldor are what it’s all about. I have no idea who this guy is or what his role in the Masters Universe might be. I don’t even care. I think it’s great that Masters fans recognize him and are happy to be getting a figure of him, but for me that’s not the point. The point is he’s an amazing figure crafted with great attention to detail and he’d be right at home in any fantasy collection. When you consider that just about every single figure or statue in my collection is tied to some character from some fiction that I follow, it’s refreshing sometimes to get figures just for their own sake. I have a separate little display along side my MOTUC shelves where I keep Vikor and Battleground Teela with Battle Lion. To me, these are just fantasy type figures that exist in my mind outside the Masters Universe. I do believe Eldor will be joining them. Sorry if that’s sacriledge to fans of the Masters fiction, but I think they look amazing together.

Hey, hey… I got me my September Matty figures in the mails and it looks like I’ll be able to squeeze just one of them in before we roll over to October. I decided to go with Rio Blast over Entrapta because I’m a big fan of Westerns and so I always thought Rio Blast was neat. Plus, this gunslinger is probably the closest thing we’ll ever see to an updated Bravestarr figure. Needless to say I’ve been excited to get this guy in hand, but also a little worried. A number of collectors seemed none to happy with how Mattel treated his gimmicks, and while I’ve been avoiding details on the matter, I’m very curious to see how this guy turned out.

There’s the MOTUC packaging I know and love. Thanks to his large weapon rig, Rio fills out the bubble quite nicely, although right off the bat I think I’m going to have issues with the front flap protruding so far off of his chest. Hmm… Either way, my favorite thing about the MOTU Universe has always been it’s “anything goes” mentality. The mix of swords and sorcery and technology is cool enough, but why stop there? Let’s toss in ninjas and samurai and everything else. You can just pick and choose your level of zaniness. You want to have an Old West gunslinger team up with a dude with a robotic elephant head to defeat a giant skunk? You got it, friend! Let your freak flag fly!

On the back of the card we get the usual bio, which includes He-Man’s empty promises to help Rio Blast fight his own battles back home after Skeletor’s been dealt with. Good look cashing that check, Rio, Skeletor always escapes and your work on Eternia is never going to be finished. You also get photos of other figures in the line and teased with Matty’s “Collect Them All” tag line, even though that smug prick Matty knows they aren’t available anymore. Let’s see how I’m doing… I’m only missing Roboto and Mekaneck from that lot. Not too bad.

Rio is a figure that’s all about transformation, which in this case means he comes with a ton of stuff to attach to him, so let’s just start out with a look at the base figure. I’m actually surprised how well the cowboy design works on the buffed out MOTUC buck, but it does indeed work just fine for me. It should also be noted that Rio is just loaded with brand new sculpting and nowhere is that more evident than in that vest. The vest is designed so the front flap can drop down and we’ll get to that later, but the fact that it is hinged piece makes it stick out like an eyesore. It’s sculpted so that one corner is supposed to always be peeling down, but the other corner doesn’t close up properly either. Here is where Mattel should have gone with a separate snap on piece instead of a hinged one. I realize it would have required an extra piece, but I think it would have made all the difference in the world.

With that major bugaboo out of the picture, the rest of the figure looks great. I dig how his leg armor looks like Old West style chaps and, unlike the chest flap, the fact that these pieces fold down is pretty well concealed. I also love the details on his belt. He’s got bullets running around the front and sides and he even has a coiled whip and a coin purse sculpted onto the back. The addition of cables and sculpted circuitry behind his chest flap accentuate the point that he’s not just a gunslinger, he’s some kind of crazy future cybernetic gunslinger.

The portrait is awesome. Rio has a shaggy mop of hair that comes close to hiding his face and an epic handlebar mustache to match. He definitely looks like he stepped right out of the screen from an Old West classic. The only thing he’s missing is a wide brimmed hat to complete the ensemble.

Rio’s sizeable backpack attaches to his back via three pegs and the flexible hoses that come off the bottom attach into the sockets in his gauntlets. You can then plug his guns into the other sockets to give it the look of one complete weapon system. And if those two guns aren’t enough his backpack slides up and over his shoulders to give him a pair of massive shoulder cannons and a targeting visor. I love the way the backpack works, but some paint apps or a sticker for the visor would have been welcome.

The vintage Rio Blast’s gimmick was flip out guns, but Matty opted to have the Classics Rio’s guns clip on and that’s cool with me. You just flip down the chest flap and the knee guards and attach the three red guns. When fully loaded up, Rio Blast is a formidable arsenal with a total of eight guns ready to blast away at the bastards of Eternia.

There’s no doubt that Mattel made a poor design choice when it comes to Rio’s vest. It’s almost enough to ruin the figure for me, but not quite. In the end my love for his wacky design and the fact that I’ll probably display him with all his guns blazing allows me to overlook (mostly) this figure’s biggest cosmetic flaw. The truth is I’m still a little impressed that we’re getting figures with this much new sculpting what with the Autumn of this line approaching. The tail end of lines can often deteriorate into quick cash grab repaints as opposed to figures with so much brand new tooling. That probably goes double for a line like Masters Classics. Next week, I’ll try to get to Entrapta so I can have a clean slate for when the October figures arrive.

Alrighty, I’m back to wrap up this slightly truncated week with a double dip into the world of Masters of the Universe Classics. I’m still not feeling 100% but I’m propped up on various cold meds, so please bear with me. On Tuesday we looked at Faker, this time we’re looking at one of the two August Club Eternia figures and it is none other than New Adventures Skeletor. I hear tell that some of the purist fans out there are rather perturbed that the NA characters have wormed their way into this line, but I’ve found these NA figures to be a delight and I’ll tell you right now that this new version of Skeletor is no different.

There’s the packaging. About the only thing new and noteworthy here is that Skeletor does indeed sport the “Space Mutants” sticker on the front of the bubble. He fills out the package rather nicely and his huge staff is packed in behind him. Also concealed behind the bubble insert is the bonus Faker head which we’ll get to at the end. The bubble insert simply identifies him as Skeletor, rather than “New Adventures” Skeletor, but it does feature the tag line, “Intergalactic Overlord of Evil.” I like to picture a scenerio where Skeletor gets his ass beaten down by He-Man and he just tosses down his Havoc Staff and shouts, “F’ck this place! I’m going to go conquer the Universe!” and then jumps in a rocket and flies off. Well, that’s how it should have happened.

Out of the package and I’m really digging the look of this version of old Boney. From what little I remember about theNA characters, I recall them being a lot leaner, so this is the first time for me seeing this Skeletor all bulked out in the old fashioned MOTU style and I think it works beautifully. It also feels like Matty took some liberties with the coloring over the animated look. The deco here is fairly close to the Skeletor we all know and love, but his armor is now detailed with a cool technology and bone motif. That’s the one thing that sets this figure apart so much for me. A lot of the MOTUC figures get by with a fairly sparse amount of detailing, but there’s some extremely intricate and fine detailing on Skeletor’s armor pieces and even on the figure buck itself. Check out all those hoses  hoses and cables that appear to be grafted directly into his skin! Cool!

The portrait is equally impressive. The skull is really gnarly and features some fine detailing in the teeth. You can take off the helmet (which was a pleasant surprise!) to reveal even more detail, including cracks in the skull and tiny mechanical details like metal hydraulics in the jaw. And let’s not forget the eyes. Thankfully, Matty didn’t go for the bug-eyed animated look and instead just gave him a pair of red eyes set deep into the sockets. I think the only complaint some might have here is that Skeletor’s head looks a bit like it’s made out of clay. I’m not sure it that’s from the paint or the way it’s sculpted, but I’m getting a definite sculpty vibe from him. I think it’s rather distinctive, but some may disagree.

Articulation consists of the usual MOTUC fare. The arms are ball jointed at the shoulders, hinged at the elbows, and have swivels in the biceps and wrists. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, have swivels in the thighs, and hinged at the knees and ankles. The torso can swivel at the waist and there is an ab-crunch, but it’s a bit hampered by the fact that Skeletor is wearing a soft plastic vest. Lastly the neck is ball jointed.

Skeletor comes with a large staff with a skull motif on the head and what I assume are two beam emitters. The butt of the staff ends in a hooked blade. It’s quite a departure from his iconic Havoc Staff, but I do rather like it a lot and he looks great holding it. And then there’s the other accessory…

The other accessory is the extra Faker head and holy shit do I love this thing! Obviously, it has nothing to do with the Skeletor figure, but Mattel said they would be trying to get extras into the hands of collectors by packing them in with random figures and this is one of those instances. This extra head is obviously a Terminator inspired portrait with half of Faker’s face blown away to reveal the metal endoskeleton underneath. It’s an absolutely beautiful sculpt with a fantastic paint job to back it up. The silver skull contrasts nicely against the blue skin of the face and I love the way the sculpted hair hangs down over the skull portion. The eyes line up perfectly and I’d dare say the paint is very near perfect.

I’m definitely going to be using this piece for my Faker’s regular display head.

New Adventures Skeletor is another one of those figures that I wasn’t all that excited about getting, but still wound up winning me over in the end. The intricate sculpting sets him apart from the regular MOTUC figures and it’s clear that Matty went above and beyond when designing and executing him. The removable helmet was a great surprise and the extra head for Faker made a great package all the better. Now I’ve got to start hunting down some of the Space Mutants that I missed to get this Skeletor a more suitable army of assholes, not to mention a New Adventures He-Man to fight them!

Today’s feature posted late because I’m sick as a dog, but the show must go on… so here I am. The delay was actually rather fortuitous because now I can post it with the news that Club Eternia’s 2015 (and final) Subscription Year has been funded and is going forward. Matty claims they hit 100.9% funding on the final day after the window was extended an extra week. Is it true? Does that number seem a little too convenient? Honestly, who the hell cares? I’m typing through a cloud of Nyquill induced funk. Just give me the final year of figures so I can be done with all of this…

August turned out to be a rather heavy month for me with Matty Collector, with no less than four figures showing up on my doorstep last week. Club Eternia doubled up with two releases, Club Etheria offered up one and I picked up today’s figure through the Early Access Sale and yes, it’s Faker! There were a couple motivations in play that got me to buy Faker this tie around. First, his price on the second hand market has been creeping up quite a bit. Second, one of this month’s Club Eternia figures comes with a second head for him. Well played, Matty, you toss in a free head and get me to buy a figure! Anyway, I decided to look at Faker first so that I’ll already have had him featured by the time I get to opening New Adventures Skeletor and can try out his new noggin.

There’s the packaging and there’s really nothing new here. You’ll note the “The Original” explosion on the bubble insert, which in Matty-speak means the exact opposite. This is not from the original release stock but rather one of the reissues. In fact I’m pretty sure Matty has trotted Faker out on Sale Day a couple of times so this is a technically a re-reissue. I think it’s cool that Matty changes up the package so if you are a mint-on-card collector and you did get him the first time around you have some bragging rights. I don’t often comment on the bios, but in this case I really like Faker’s. It proclaims that he was originally invented by Man-At-Arms and tossed onto the “royal junkyard” so that Tri-Klops could fish him out and reprogram him. First of all, I think it’s funny that Tri-Klops spends his downtime going through junkyards. Secondly, why the hell is Tri-Klops allowed to run wild picking through the royal junkyard? Anyway, let’s rip open this blue bastard and check him out.

So, in case you didn’t already know, Faker is basically a blue repaint of He-Man, just like he was in the vintage line. Yup, even in a line of action figures designed around reusing the same body parts as many times as possible, Mattel still couldn’t resist just taking a He-Man, painting him blue, and selling him to kids that don’t know any better. Or in my case, a middle-aged toy collecting functional alcoholic, who really does know better but just doesn’t care. But don’t think I’m knocking him. In both concept and execution, Faker is so batshit stupid that the needle swings all the way around and comes back to land on awesome again. I’d pass on making the jokes about how a blue He-Man is supposed to fool anyone into thinking he’s the real He-Man, but I’m sure it’s already been done to death. I will, however, point out that thanks to his Classics bio, apparently both Man-At-Arms and Skeletor were both stupid enough to think a blue He-Man would do the job. Maybe as a species Eternians are all color blind.

If it sounds like I’m padding this feature out with nonsense, well you got me, because there’s not a hell of a lot to be said about Faker that isn’t abundantly obvious. Plus, I’m loopy from the illness and meds. The repaint of Skeletor’s armor looks quite nice, although the left shoulder guard is left a little warped because he was pre-posed in the package. I’m so glad Matty stopped doing that. The coloring on this figure is extremely well done. The shade of blue if rich and looks great accompanied by the purple boots and furry barbarian diaper. The grey and silver paint used for the belt and bracers is quite striking and the paintwork on my figure is immaculate. And if you remove Faker’s armor you’re treated to a tampo on his chest showing some of his exposed android parts. I always thought that was cool.

Faker comes with two accessories and both of them are copies of He-Man’s Power Sword. One is just the regular sword cast in orange plastic with a metallic orange finish to the blade. The other is an orange cast of half of the Power Sword.

Even for someone like me, who isn’t a hardcore fan of the Masters fiction, Faker is something of an iconic figure in the line and it’s nice to finally put him in my collection. This figure was not something I was going to be willing to pay a premium for, so I’m certainly glad Matty offered him up for sale again. I’m sure a lot of collectors availed themselves of the opportunity, particularly with the extra Faker head coming with New Adventures Skeletor. And speaking of which, I’ll swing back to check out that figure at the end of the week so we can gawk at Faker’s alternate noggin.

And with that, I’m crawling back into bed. I’m also going to be taking tomorrow off to try to carpet bomb the sick out of me with over-the-counter meds and Jameson, but I will be back the following day for Transformers Thursday!