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.

So last month when I bought Castaspella I also tossed in Rattlor. In my warped mind, buying another figure helped to assuage the cost of shipping, even though it meant spending an extra $27. Yes, I could probably use some counseling, I’m aware. But Rattlor intrigued me and he does tend to be a bit pricey on the secondary market so “why not?” said I. I finally got around to opening him the other day and I’ve gotta say, he is one of the coolest MOTUC figures on my shelf. Hot damn… let’s take a look at this magnificent snakey bastard!

Oh, green bricks of Greyskull… will I ever tire of seeing you? No, no I won’t. Rattlor comes on the standard MOTUC card with a big “Snake Men” sticker on the bubble to designate his faction. I know absolutely nothing about the Snake Men in Masters lore, other than they are the minions of King Hssss and that I will have to buy more of these, because…

When I flip over the card I can see how many I missed out on. I have no interest in Snake Man-At-Arms and I don’t know why Hurricane Hordak is on there, but the others I’m going to have to hunt down at some point. Oh wait, I just read the bio… I guess Rattlor got demoted and went to work for Hordak. That’s cool. You win this round, Matty.

Ok, so out of the package and Rattlor is simply amazing. The combination of sculpt and paintwork on this guy just grabs me with both hands and kisses me full on the mouth. I mean, he’s totally gorgeous. T4H took the MOTUC buck and gave it the full snake treatment with individually sculpted scales and a long tail that actually does rattle. All the sculpted texture on this guy is stunning. I also love Rattlor’s proportions. He looks so majestic just standing there on the shelf.

And yet as amazing as the sculpt here is, it’s the light tan and blue striping that really makes this figure pop for me. Even the neon green snake on his belt contributes to the wow factor of this figure’s coloring. The only possible thing I can say against Rattlor’s coloring is that Mattel left the pins and hinges in his joints blue in some inappropriate places, particularly the shoulders and elbows. But even that isn’t enough to besmirch this figure in my eyes.

I also really dig Rattlor’s head sculpt. His mouth is perpetually open and showing off his fangs. Yeah, his fangs are rather dull, but I’m guessing that might be for safety reasons. The paint here is also really impressive, particularly inside the mouth where it looks all pink and wet and disgusting.

Rattlor also comes with an extra neck piece so that you can extend his neck. It’s as easy as popping off his head, putting on the neck piece and popping his head back on top. It looks pretty good and gives the figure a far more imposing look. I’m rather torn on whether or not to make use of this option when displaying him. For now, I think I’ll just go with regular neck Rattlor.

Besides the extra neck piece, Rattlor comes with a snake staff, which is an impressive accessory all on its own. I’m no expert on Eternian Snake Man customs, but isn’t this kind of like a regular dude carrying around a staff with a little human hanging off it? Anyway, it’s one of the larger accessories I’ve seen in this line and he can hold it comfortably in either hand, or wield it in both. The coloring on the snake matches the base color of Rattlor himself, and the staff is painted copper.

Rattlor features most of the standard MOTUC male articulation. That includes ball joints in the neck, shoulders, and hips. The arms feature swivels in the biceps and wrists as well as hinged elbows. The legs feature hinged knees and ankles. He can also swivel at the waist and he has an ab-crunch hinge in the torso. The tail has a swivel cut and is a little bendy at the end.

One of my favorite things about the MOTUC line is that I can get a figure based on a character I know nothing about and still absolutely love it. It’s happened plenty of times before with the likes of Chief Carnevous and Optikk, and it’s definitely true with Rattlor here. I picked this guy up on a whim and he turned out to be one of my current favorite Masters figures standing on my shelf. In the world of Eternia, it’s not easy to stand out, but Rattlor does it and he does it with style. I guess this means that I’ll have to hunt down some of the other Snake Men now.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.