Hot damn, Mattel sure is bringing their A-game to the 2014 Sub! It’s only been a month since the incredible Two Bad graced my doorstep and now we’re getting the mind-blowingly amazing Modulok. This crazy figure was one I never thought would ever happen in the Classics line and I’m so very glad to be proven wrong on that. It’s still hard to believe I’m holding the box in my hands. But with two such heavy hitters lined up for the first two months of the Sub, and Glimmer thrown in there too, I can’t help but wonder… is Matty shooting his entire load too early? Why the hell did I have to go and put an image of Matty masturbating into my head?  Arghh! Get out of my head! Quick, let’s jump straight to the packaging!!!

With Modulok confirmed, my first ponderings went to how he was going to be packaged. Surely he was going to be too big to fit into the regular card and bubble affair. And yet he wasn’t going to be big enough for a beast package either. The answer is he comes in a totally enclosed box and this made me very happy. I certainly have no complaints about the regular card and bubbles Matty uses for this line, but I’ll happily take any opportunity we can get for a box with some old school artwork. The front of the box has a great rendering of Modulok with all sorts of different combinations of him in the background. The back panel has his bio along with other figures in the line. The only gripe I have with this package is that the flaps are all glued shut and so I had to cut one of the flaps to get it open. I seem to recall a lot of collectors pissed about this with their Back to the Future Hoverboards. Tape, Matty! Ever hear of tape??? I know you have, because you used it on all your other MOTUC boxes. Anyway, this box sure seems rather thin to contain an action figure of Modulok’s bizarre stature.

And that’s because Modulok comes only partially assembled and with his various parts surrounding a core, humanoid figure. This was a great way to go because it makes you build him for the first time and really explore what Modulok is all about. Even if you just got this guy to stand on your display shelf, you’ll still get the fun of putting him together. It also gives a great sense of just how many pieces and combinations are available. Because of Modulok’s nature, this can’t be any kind of traditional MOTUC figure review because he really isn’t one figure. In fact, as soon as I got him out of the box I started having a ball mixing and matching his parts.

Of course, Modulok does have an official build, and there he is… creepy as all hell. I don’t remember being nearly this creeped out by him as a kid, but then that was before I was exposed to something called The Human Centipede. There are no instructions on how to build him into this form, but it’s not too hard to figure out if you use the box as a reference. I actually kind of dig the lack of instructions because it’s like Mattel saying, “there are no instructions because he’s whatever you want him to be. There are no wrong answers, kids!” The plastic used here is very similar to the regular MOTUC figures. For some reason I didn’t expect Modulok to fit well with the rest of the line, but he feels right at home on one of my Masters shelves. Building him in this form leaves some extra pieces, but it’s easy to throw on a couple more arms.

Modulok comes with a pair of guns that can be combined into one big gun. Or is that one big gun that splits into two little guns? Either way, he can hold it best with his regular fingered hands, but if you’re persistent it will also work with his clawed hands… sort of.

While Modulok’s official build is a great display piece for my collection, the real fun with this figure is found in experimenting. The other day I had a movie on and I spent virtually the whole two hours popping bits off and other bits on. With so many parts and so many combinations I found myself only limited by my twisted imagination. Playing with Modulok is very much like playing the PC game Spore only in action figure form. The fact that you can build him into two figures is pretty damn cool as well.

As a subber, Modulok set me back $40, which seemed rather high at the time. I think a lot of that was the sticker shock of seeing him plus Glimmer plus shipping and tax hitting $80+. As a result, it’s more accurate to say that I paid about $55 for him when all was said and done. A premium? Yes, but with re-sellers offering him at up to $100, it seems like a bargain in comparison. Even if my plan was just to display him on my shelf, I’d still be content enough with the price. He’s a great looking figure and manages to stand out even on a shelf populated by total freaks. But unlike most of my MOTUC figures that stand on display shelves and get moved around once in a blue moon when I dust or rework the display, Modulok is a figure that I’m going to be playing around with a lot. Like a Rubik’s Cube or a good Transformer, he’s a toy that begs me to fiddle around with him even if my attention is on something else. I was talking on the phone the other day and by the time the call was ended I was barely aware of the fact that I had broken him down into all his parts, and so I gleefully started building him again. FUN!  He may be one of the most atypical MOTUC figures to date, but it also makes him one of the coolest!

Holy shit, it’s 2014 and for the first time since the whole Matty Collector madness started I am an official Club Eternia subscriber: Smart move or pure idiocy? Folks, only time will tell. But right now I’m feeling pretty good about it because my Two Bad has arrived and I was able to let Sale Day pass me by without having to worry whether I would be in the middle of a management meeting at work when the gates opened. Of course Sale Day wouldn’t have mattered in Two Bad’s case because he was a Sub Only figure with no stock available for Day of Sale. It was kind of a dick move on Matty’s part, but at this point who isn’t used to it?

I don’t usually bother with the mailer boxes, but I took a shot of this one because Matty has moved away from the familiar white mailers in favor of these new (and I assume cheaper) brown boxes. To date, I’ve only saved two mailer boxes and those were for the two vehicles, which I keep boxed. As a result I really don’t care about this decision, but I can imagine it might irk some MIB collectors.

The actual package inside is what we’ve been seeing all along. The only thing I have to say about it is that it corrected my consistent urge to put a hyphen in Two Bad’s name when there isn’t supposed to be one. Sorry, Two Bad… My Bad! HA! I’ll also point out that I found his bio to be of particular interest. I’ve always been familiar with the vintage figure, but I never knew anything about the character. I love the fact that Two Bad was originally two people magically fused together by Skeletor because they failed to take out He-Man. Jeez, talk about a disproportionate response. If Skeletor did this every time his minions failed, he’d just have one giant ball of arms and legs and heads following him around. I also dig that their names, Tuvar and Badra fuse together to make Two Bad. Sort of. It’s like that episode of Star Trek Voyager where Tuvok and Neelix fused to become Tuvix. LOL… Voyager was shit. I’ve been drinking. Where was I? Oh yeah… Let’s rip open Two Bad and check him out.

My first impression is that I expected Two Bad would be bigger. That’s not a complaint against the figure, just a misconception on my part. He’s actually not much bulkier than your average MOTUC figure and that’s fine by me. With that revelation out of the way, I’ve got to say the next thing that impresses me the most are the colors. I absolutely love the colors on this figure! These particular shades of blue and purple look amazing and when you toss in the silver paint on Tuvar’s gauntlet and boot, the bright red belt and the orange chest armor, it all makes for a very pleasing deco. Indeed, Two Bad’s coloring really gives Mantenna a run for his money and that’s high praise. He’s gorgeous!

Not to be outdone by the coloring, the sculpt is right up there as well. The contrast between Tuvar’s smooth skin and Badra’s meticulously sculpted scales drives home the combined nature of the figure. I also really dig all the attention paid to the sculpt of Badra’s boot and gauntlet. They don’t stand out much because the dark brown blends in with the dark purple, but there’s some crazy attention to detail there. The boot has all kinds of medieval looking spikes and buckles and the glove has a reinforced band on the knuckles to deliver extra pain in his punches.

And then there are the portraits! Usually when we talk about multiple portraits on a figure we’re talking about swappable heads, but in this case it’s two at the same time. How cool is that, eh? The head sculpts are each pretty well done, although I’m leaning toward Tuvar’s as my favorite mainly because of the paint. I’m not entirely sold on the orange eyebrow ridge on Badra and it also looks like there might be a bit of mold flashing on his noggin. I’ll also point out that there isn’t a lot of clearance between the heads, thanks to Badra’s ear spike thingies. If Tuvar is looking straight ahead then Badra can turn just fine, but if Tuvar’s head is off to the side there’s some rubbing. No big deal, and I’d prefer it this way than have their heads set tilting away from each other like on the vintage figure.

Unless you count the extra ball jointed neck, Two Bad has mostly the same articulation as any other MOTUC male buck. That includes ball joints in the shoulders and hips, hinges in the elbows, knees and ankles, swivels in the biceps and wrists, a swivel in the waist, and an ab crunch hinge in the torso. Oh yeah, he also has swivels at the top of each boot.   

Two Bad comes with two accessories. First, you get an orange shield with a really strange clip that’s made to work with the fins on Badra’s gauntlet. I like the shield, but it seems like it could have used some more paint apps. Plus, if you like to mix and match weapons you’re out of luck here because this thing is only going to work with Two Bad. Secondly, you get the two headed mace, which is a really goofy and unwieldy looking weapon. I get it, it’s got two heads just like Two Bad, I still think it’s kind strange.

Two-Bad is an amazing figure and I love him enough to say he comes close to beating out Mantenna as my favorite recent figure in this line. He’s colorful, quirky, and beautifully sculpted. It’s a shame Matty had to go and make him a Sub only figure because I realize there are tons of collectors without the means or willingness to do a whole sub. That having been said, you can still find him for sale through secondary online sellers and while he’s expensive, he’s still a ton cheaper than buying a Sub just for the one figure. Either way, he’s a great way to kick off 2014 and it’s figures like Two Bad along with the great releases from last year’s Filmation Club that convinced me to go in for a Sub this year. Hopefully I won’t be regretting it by the end of the year.

Here we go, it’s the final day of Matty Madness Week on FFZ and I’m wrapping up my look at the Palace Guards two-pack. It’s the weekend before Christmas and I’ve got lots of Christmas-y shit to do, so let’s quickly run through a look at the guy that I affectionately call Guard #2!

From the neck down this fellow is practically identical to the guy we looked at yesterday. The only difference is the plate in his chest armor has a sculpted eagle emblem on it. I do enjoy that this offers a little variety between the guards, possibly denoting him as a Captain or Lieutenant. Or maybe this guy is in charge of guarding the Royal Aviary. On the other hand, all the damaged chest plates we looked at yesterday just have the horizontal lines, so there’s no way to mess up this guy’s chest plate. If you’re not keen on the eagle or you want these guys to look more like the same rank, you could swap in one of the damaged ones and make the two look more uniform. While damaged eagle plates would have been nice, I think this set comes with enough already to justify the price, so I’m not going to complain about the omission.

This guy’s portrait is a unique sculpt. He’s a pretty generic, clean-shaven dude and just like his buddy he looks way too nice to be a proper guard. Maybe all the battle-hardened bastards are out in the field and the Palace Guard jobs just go to the slow and simple-minded sons of Eternia’s wealthiest families. Once again the helmet is part of the head sculpt and while he comes packaged without a face plate attached, there is one included in the package for him. I definitely plan on displaying these guys with the enclosed helmets because it makes them look a lot more fierce and intimidating.

This guard comes with the same shield and halberd as his partner, but instead of the mace he comes with a little battle axe. It looks like a repaint of the red one that came with the Weapons Rack. Once again, his weapons can be clipped onto his back. I should note that there’s a lot of transfer between the paint on the weapons and the figure. I’m not sure why, because the paint doesn’t feel tacky or anything, but each time I swap the weapons around, I wind up having to scrape a little silver paint off the figure wiht my thumbnail.

Didn’t I mention something yesterday about severed heads? Yes, you get two more head sculpts to swap out if you aren’t happy with these two portraits. The additional heads are both different species. One is a reptile and while I don’t want to sound racist, I’m not sure I would be recruiting reptiles into the Palace Guard when one of the enemies out there are The Snake Men. On the other hand, you also get a cat person, which I assume is supposed to be a Qadian and one of Chief Carnivus’ lot. Both portraits are beautifully done and while they don’t come with their own faceplates, they are designed to work with the two that come in the set. Honestly, I doubt I will ever display the figures with these portraits, but it’s nice to have options. I think it was pretty generous of Mattel to include two brand new bonus head sculpts in this set.

When the Palace Guards were originally released on Matty Collector, I dismissed them as a way for Matty to use the Man-At-Arms figure as a troop building cash grab, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Matty went the extra mile with these guys and they turned out to be exceptionally cool figures. They got a lot of original sculpting, cool weapons, extra heads, and the nifty Battle Armor gimmick too! They are usually available as part of the Essentials Collection at $54 for the set and considering that most individual figures are now at $27 I think that’s a pretty solid deal. What tipped me over and made me pull the trigger was getting them for around $25 as part of the Cyber Monday deal and I kind of wish that I had picked up two sets. It’s not like I have the space to display a lot of these, but at that price getting another set to put away seems like it should have been a no-brainer.

Ok, we’re in the final stretch of this Masters Madness Week. My apologies to those of you who aren’t interested in this line and rest assured I’ll be back to more variety next week. I’ll also apologize here for stretching today’s feature into two parts, but it’s impossible for me to properly convey just how busy I am with work in this latter half of December so I’m eagerly grabbing any chance to pad something out for one extra day. Today we’re looking at the Palace Guards, better known as the generic and totally expendable Man-At-Arms Minions. They’re basically Eternia’s answer to Star Trek’s redshirts. How many of these poor bastards have to die before He-Man rides in and takes care of business? I guess that’s up to Randor.

Here’s a little variety! Instead of the same old Masters carded packages we’ve been seeing all week we get a window box! If you’ve picked up any of the MOTUC two-packs then this should be pretty familiar to you. This one is actually only my second two-pack, with the first being the Horde Troopers. The box is also quite similar to the package used for the Jet Sled and Sky-High. You get the same cool Greyskull motif on the inserts and a pretty good look at the figures and only a hint of some of the accessories inside. It’s an attractive presentation that utilizes quite an economy of space.

The back has the bio blurb and teases you with pics of other figures, many of which are now only available for exorbitant prices on the secondary market. Damn you, Faker, you’re the only one there that I’m missing! But enough about the packaging, I’m rather excited to open this up and see everything that’s inside. We’ll check out the dude on the right with the face mask first, because he looks bitchin. Then tomorrow we’ll check out his buddy and all the other accessories in the box.

Damn this guy is cool, and I love the armor. The design is appropriately similar to the kind worn by Man-At-Arms, but it isn’t exactly the same, so Duncan is still distinctive enough to look like the leader. That’s important, so Skeletor’s forces know who to try to kill first! And man, let me say that Duncan looks great with a couple of these guys flanking him on either side. There are a total of nine pieces to the armor: Two grieves, two lower arm pieces, two upper arm and shoulder pieces, the chest armor comes in two halves, and a plate in the chest that can be swapped out to reflect damage. Everything is removable via soft plastic straps or clips, and the armor is sculpted with great detail right down to the rivets. Awesome! Under the armor you get a buck very similar to Man-At-Arms, only the boots are different and these guys don’t have the center bump on their belts painted. As a result the deco is the same familiar green and orange that we get with Duncan, which makes for a nice uniform appearance throughout the Eternian Army. This guy’s left lower arm piece fell off a couple times when handling him, but otherwise the armor stays on pretty well. There are also a few minor splotches of silver paint on the figure, possibly transferred from the shield.

There are a total of three changeable plates for the chest armor: One clean, one with a single gash, and one that’s really been messed up. They work exactly like the plates on Battle Armor He-Man. To swap them you just take off the chest piece, pop out the plate and pop in the new one. Very cool! Here’s a ProTip for the bad guys of Eternia… When you’re fighting these guys, stop aiming for the heavily armored chest piece… try the totally unprotected groin area. You can thank me later.

While the helmet is part of the head sculpt, the face plate is removable revealing a nicely sculpted face with dark skin. This guy has a pretty kind expression and if he comes across you on the streets surrounding the palace he’s probably more likely to help you out with directions than threaten to club you with a mace if you don’t move along. I love the way the face plate fits and it looks perfect while still allowing you to see the eyes and the bridge of his nose underneath. They look rather intimidating with the fully enclosed helmet. I’m willing to bet these helmets are exactly what the killer wears in Etnerian slasher movies.

This particular Palace Guard comes with a silver shield, mace and halberd. All are very nice, no-nonsense weapons, just the kind of gear an average guard would carry. I’m very fond of the shiny silver paint used on them and I do believe they are going to look fantastic on my Weapons Rack. There are also two clips on the back of the guard’s armor to carry both weapons.

And that’s where I’m going to break for the day. Come on back tomorrow where we’ll check out the other guard and weapons as well as the severed heads that came in the package. SEVERED HEADS!!!

It’s Day 4 of FFZ held hostage by Masters of the Universe Classics! I know, it’s supposed to be Transformers Thursday, but Matty has a gun to my head right now and is insisting that we keep the purity of Masters Week by posting another Masters feature. Today we’re checking out another older figure that has been turning up for mighty cheap at various peddlers of plastics. Not coincidently, he is also one of the figures that has been showing up on the shelves at Big Lots around the country. I’ve had my eye on this figure ever since he was first offered by Matty, but he wasn’t one that I was willing to blow full retail on. Let’s find out why that was a terrible mistake.

What’s this? Beautiful Greyskull-inspired green stone packaging? Haven’t we seen this before? Why yes we have, over and over again, so let’s not dwell on it. I know very little about Count Marzo, only that he’s a wizard who turned up a couple of times in the MYP series and he seemed pretty cool. A buddy of mine informed me that he did appear in the Filmation cartoon but he didn’t look anything like this. Fortunately, this isn’t a Club Filmation feature, which means I don’t have to subject myself to watching that episode. Truth be told, I just wanted to pick up this guy to have a bad guy in my collection that didn’t look like a total freak and he certainly fits the bill. The back of the package has the usual bio and other figures in the line. Hey, look, a clean sweep! I actually have all of those!

So, straight up let me say that I am totally digging this figure! Everything about this guy feels fresh and unique. It’s funny how a relatively normal looking guy stands out in the MOTU Universe, but beyond the fact that he doesn’t have a skull face or elephant head, Marzo stands out because the sculpt is just phenomenal. The top half of the figure is just a regular buck, but it doesn’t look like it thanks to the large shoulder armor, chest armor, and cape all sculpted as one piece and placed over the figure’s neck. He has a standard MOTU bracer on his right wrist and a newly sculpted one on his left. The waist down uses a soft plastic belt and skirt layered onto the buck and he’s got a simple pair of boots. The costume looks amazing! It’s quite clever how they were able to build it off a regular buck and the design offers a great sci-fi and medieval combo that feels right at home on the MOTUC shelf.

And then there’s that portrait. Wow! Besides being a great modern update to the MYP character design, this has got to be one of the best head sculpts the MOTUC series has offered. The furled brow, the long blowing hair, the sinister ‘stache and beard… this guy looks epic.

Marzo comes with two accessories. You get his magic amulet and a sword. The amulet can be wielded in his left hand, much the same way we saw with Nepthu and The Faceless One. The sword is a great looking piece and it’s a nice surprise to find one bundled with a wizard. Aren’t Eternian magic users supposed to have staves or wands? Pfft! Marzo cares not for your stereotypes. What’s even better is that Marzo has a clip sculpted into his skirt that allows him to wear the sword quite comfortably. It’s brilliant.

Needless to say, I friggin adore this figure. He’s wonderfully executed and he makes a great addition to my MOTUC shelves. In my mind, I’ve already set him apart as a villain for Vikor and Battleground Teela to fight, as those figures sort of hover outside my mainstream continuity of this line. It’s crazy to think I held out on him, because I think he would have been well worth the $27 had I picked him up Day of Sale on Matty Collector. Still, I won’t complain about having grabbed him for around $13. Right now this guy is pretty high on my list of favorite figures in the line, and a line of figures as good as this one, that’s pretty high praise.

Tomorrow, we’ll start wrapping up this Masters Week nonsense with the first part of my look at The Palace Guard 2-pack.