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!

So last week we checked out the first Club Etheria figure, Double Mischief, and I found her to be a double downer. Today we’re checking out July’s Club Eternia figure, Flogg and I actually have some high hopes for this guy. While I’m not really a fan of the New Adventures continuity I do rather like the idea of it and so far I’ve been really enjoying the wacky designs of the Space Mutant figures. Optikk was one of my all-time greatest “I have no idea who this guy is, but he’s awesome” figure purchases. I’ll note here that I was on my fifth or sixth Jameson when I decided to open Flogg and my alcohol addled brain failed to realize that I had not yet snapped an in-package picture of him. No biggie, we all know what the packaging looks like by now and Flogg’s is more of the same. With that having been said, let’s just jump straight to the figure.

Unlike a lot of the New Adventures characters, I sort of know who Flogg is. I don’t know him intimately, but he featured heavily on the few fleeting parts of the NA cartoon that I have seen. But I can set that aside, because I think this figure gets by solely on his own merits. The design reminds of some of the vintage Major Matt Mason alien designs. It’s probably the goofy retro alien head and the ribbed tubing on the arms and legs his space armor. The armor definitely features some reused parts. I see some Trap Jaw in there, and I’m pretty sure those are Hordak’s flipper feet. Still, the overall look of the armor is fresh to me and quite striking as well. There’s plenty of great detail in the vest and I particularly like the sculpted ammo pouches that line the back of his belt. The arm bracers and boots have all sorts of bolts and straps and the texturing on the shoulder armor is pretty nifty too. Besides the great sculpt, you also get a very snappy deco with the deep crimson contrasting beautifully with the metallic silver parts.

Flogg’s portrait is probably one of those love it or hate it kind of deals. He’s got a weird expression, sort of like he’s just realized Icarus has fired a missile at his face and there’s nothing he can do about it. I still like the head sculpt a lot, particularly the huge eyes and the way the helmet goes along with the raised collar. It almost looks like he could pull his head in like a turtle to protect himself. I seem to recall Matty originally showing off Flogg with a removable helmet, but that seems to have been nixed in the final release. That’s Ok. Options are nice to have, but I can’t imagine I would ever want to display him without his helmet anyway. What’s also cool is you peek down into the neck guard you can see his purple scaled skin runs all the way down his neck.

The articulation here offers no surprises. Ball joints abound in the neck, shoulders and hips. The arms have swivels in the biceps and wrists as well as hinged elbows. The legs have swivels at the hips and hinges in the knees. The ankles are hinged and also feature a bit of a lateral rocker. Flogg can swivel at the waist and while his ab-crunch hinge is buried under his vest, you can still get a wee bit of movement out of it.

There are two accessories included with Flogg, but only one is for him and that’s his… um… ah… weapon? I have no idea what this thing is. The bio talks about a whip of some sort. This is a pole with a control pad near the grip and what looks like a caltrop hanging from a string. Yeeeeeah. I got nothing. My cat does enjoy playing with it though.

The other accessory is a more Filmation accurate Power Sword, pictured up there in He-Man’s left hand. Honestly, I have no use or interest in this piece. I had to hold it next to the sword released with the original MOTUC He-Man just to make out what the differences were. It’s going straight into my bin of accessories.

I’m at a weird stage with the MOTUC line. I’ve never been hardcore with the fiction or the vintage toys, so Matty has already covered most everyone I was actively looking for. On the other hand, one of my favorite things about this line has been its ability to deliver figures that I love, which are practically unknown  characters to me. Flogg certainly falls into that category. I’m thoroughly delighted with this figure. He’s colorful, he’s wacky, and he’s going to look great on my shelf amidst the menagerie of other Space Mutants, once I manage to pick up more of them. As for now, he’s just chilling in the corner of the shelf with Optikk.

June’s Club Eternia subscription figure arrived a few days ago and I thought I’d go ahead and jump on the opportunity to get him featured and out of the way. He is Extendar and he is quite possibly one of the strongest arguments in favor of wrapping up this whole Club Eternia thing sooner rather than later. Maybe that’s a little harsh, because I truly do adore this line, and I’m sure there are collectors out there who were hoping against hope that Extendar would one day make the cut. More power to you, but for me this release is an example that when it comes to character selection, Matty is starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel. Yes, Extendar is my first disappointment of the 2014 Sub.

There’s the packaging. We’ve seen it time and again, so I’m not going to dwell on it. The front insert declares that Extendar is indeed the “Heroic Master of Extension” which also happens to be what the ladies call me. At least they do when I goose them an extra fifty bucks for the night. As you can guess from his moniker, Extendar’s claim to fame is that he can extend his cybernetic arms, legs, torso and neck. Yes, this guy pretty much renders Mekaneck completely redundant. “Oh, you can extend your neck? That’s cute. I can extend EVERYTHING!” And yet, part of me is sad that I own this figure and not Mekaneck, because I’m thinking he’s got to be a much better figure than Extendar. Of course, it doesn’t help that the character was a late release in the toyline, which meant that I had virtually no exposure to him at all beyond a faint memory of seeing him advertised on the TV.

In his regular un-extended form, Extendar is a woefully bland figure and that’s a shame because he features a lot of original parts in a line that is famous for recycling. The problem here for me is two-fold. First, the character design is painfully boring and the sculpt does nothing to prop it up. Extendar has a very knightly look with nearly featureless armor and even a faceplate to hide his head sculpt. There are a few flourishes here and there, but in a world full of as many fantastical freaks as Eternia, Extendar is practically unique in how generic and uninteresting he looks. The deco does nothing to pep things up. He features a bare pearlescent plastic with a red belt and some gold paintwork. I’m not a fan of the pearl plastic as it feels super soft and cheap and the gold paintwork on my figure is practically slopped on. Of course, you can jump on me by arguing that he’s being faithful to the vintage figure and I’d have to agree with you, but that doesn’t make me appreciate him any more.

Despite his gimmick, which we’ll get to in a moment, Extendar still manages to retain most of the articulation that has become standard in the Classics line. His chest armor is actually a vest worn over the buck, so that inhibits the ab crunch hinge, but everything else is there. Unfortunately, the plastic is so soft that trying to pose him almost always results in me popping off his arms and legs. And of course, unless you have his head extended, the articulation there is useless.

So, let’s talk about the extending gimmick. While the original toy just let you pull out the limbs by using a sort of telescoping feature, Extendar achieves his extensions by adding pieces to the arms, legs, torso, and neck. It’s the same idea we saw employed with figures like Mekaneck and Strong-Or and while it seemed like an OK substitute for the feature in those figures it feels more bothersome for a figure like Extendar where everything extends. I don’t know, having to keep six extra parts lying around seems like overkill to me. I will at least give some credit to the detail sculpting on the extension pieces. They look better than anything else on the figure. I’ll also grant you that Extendar has a freakishly imposing quality about him when he’s got everything extended out.

To add insult to injury, even Extendar’s accessories are disappointing. The lance and shield are a nice idea to further the knightly motif of the figure, but they each have their own problems. The paintwork on the lance is pretty sloppy and there’s a fair amount of scratching around the grips as if it was put into the figure’s hands already… and a lot. The shield, which is hinged so that it extends outward to become bigger is an interesting idea, but it looks unfinished. A big accessory like that is just screaming for a couple more paint hits. The plastic also has a lot of scratching on it making it look used. Also, what’s with all the hidden peace symbols on this guy? There’s one sculpted into at least one of his extension pieces and you can also clearly see one in the upper right corner of the circuitry pattern on the shield.

Sorry, Extendar… I’m just not digging you. At the very least I can say he looks somewhat interesting standing in the back of my MOTUC display with all his shit extended out. I also dig that you can at least combine two of the arm extenders to get one arm really long. I suppose you could do that for one of his legs too, but there would be really no point. Battle Lion may have been the first character in the 2014 Sub that I didn’t really want to have to buy, but at least he turned out to be an excellent figure. Extendar is the first release this year that I really don’t even want in my collection. Indeed, the only thing that keeps this guy from being the worst figure this line has produced is the existence of releases like Sir Laser-Lot, Cy-Chop, or that total piece of crap, The Mighty Spector. Of course, I wasn’t subbing then, so I didn’t have to buy them.  I’m actually kind of surprised that Matty would release a figure like this in the same month that the 2015 Subscription drive is starting, but then I may very well be in the minority on my general dislike for this figure.