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.

We’re moving into Day 3 of Matty Cyber Week and today we’re checking out The Hurricane! No, not Hurricane Rubin Carter… it’s Hurricane Hordak! I’m actually cheating a bit today because I did not in fact get Hurricane Hordak from Matty’s Sale. I did, however, get him for a ridiculously cheap price from Amazon many weeks back and he’s been sitting around waiting to be opened and featured. So why not just toss him in here, eh?

Hordak comes in the same awesome packaging we’ve been seeing all week. You’ll also note that he’s one of these “Original” reissues. I’m kind of surprised Matty did a second run on this guy because I don’t think he sold for shit, but then that would explain why he’s populating the shelves of Big Lots all over the country. Even I wouldn’t buy him until he got down to near $10 shipped, and I’m a lunatic with no concept of the value of money. Nope, even I think this line is too expensive to be worried about picking up a lot of variants of the same character. In fact, the only reason I own Battle Armor He-Man is because I started collecting the line late and he was the only He-Man figure available at the time. As always, the back of the package shows off other figures in the line. Hey, there’s Leech. I passed on him when he was first offered because I don’t think he looked that good. Now, he’s a bit pricey on the secondary market and I really want him and will probably pick him up off of Ebay at a premium. Jesus, I’m my own worst enemy. I shouldn’t be allowed to have money.

So, Hurricane Hordak is a quick-and-dirty cash-grab that takes the same Hordak figure, does a little resculpty here and there, blings him out with some shiny gold armor and a new gun arm with more attachments than one of those $500 Dyson vacuum cleaners. Well, it’s three attachments, but it seems like a lot. I’m not holding any of that against the figure. Those of us that bought him knew what we were getting into. Plus, he is indeed a modern treatment of an actual vintage character, so it’s not like Matty made him up for the Classics line or anything. I’ve already looked at Hordak ages ago, so I’m just going to touch on what’s new here.

The new armor is vac-metal and allows all of Hordak’s foes to know when he’s coming even when he’s still miles away. It’s seriously shiny and despite a lot of collectors griping about it chipping, mine hasn’t chipped at all… yet. I would imagine that will change in time. It is removable, but because of the aforementioned chipping hazard, I wouldn’t recommend taking it off frequently. Other than the armor, the legs, head, and left arm are all pretty much what we got when we bought the first Hordak with just some minor variations to the paint. Hurricane Hordak is missing some of the grey painted fringe on the boots and cowl. The biggest change to the actual figure is the resculpted right arm that takes away Hordak’s hand and replaces it with a gun barrel. I dig this a lot because in the Filmation cartoon he could turn his arm into a cannon and this is probably the best homage to that we’ll see in the Classics figure line. Of course, the barrel is not meant to be left empty, that’s where you attach all his crazy spinning weapons.

How about those attachments? You get a three-pronged thing with balls on the end. There balls have what appears to be sculpted lightning or energy on them, but without a paint app to make it look right it kind of looks like the balls have veins. Ewww. You also get a four-pronged thingy with blades angled out. Lastly, you get a propeller-style attachment that’s vaguely sculpted after the Horde insignia. They all just pop right into the hole at the end of the arm and some of them can be a bitch to get out. I should also note that while the spinning gimmick isn’t there, Mattel still sculpted a fake thumb wheel into the back of Hordak’s armor like the vintage figure had. I dig that!

All in all, Hurricane Hordak is a decent enough figure. It’s a nice homage to the vintage figure, even if it has been stripped of the very action gimmick that gave the figure purpose. No, the truth is that my only complaint with this guy is that I never would have laid out the $25-27 he went for when offered at Matty Collector. I picked mine up at Amazon for $13.99 with free shipping and that seems about right. Even still, I’m a Club Eternia subber for 2014, so there’s a good chance that when my MOTUC shelves start getting congested, Hurricane Hordak here will be the first to be bumped into the storage drawer with all the MOTUC accessories.

I hope y’all like MOTU Classics, folks, because it’s that time of the year for FFZ’s Matty Cyber Monday Week! All this week I’ll be checking out the figures I picked up from this year’s Cyber Sale over at Matty Collector. I’ll be honest, the sale wasn’t nearly as good this year. The discounts weren’t as deep and the few flash sales of figures that I wanted were a bust. Webstor was sold before I could get to checkout and as for Kobra Khan, well I went into the checkout with him and some DCUC stands and came away with the DCUC stands and a second King Hsss. I’d like to blame Matty for that, but to be fair I was trying to place the order on my phone, while it was being concealed under a table, during a rather important District Management meeting at work, so I’ll just shoulder some of the blame for that one. Anywho, I did come away with some figures I needed and while the prices weren’t stellar, they were better than going to Ebay. We’re kicking off this week with Stratos.

There’s the packaging! Tuck in, kiddies, we’re going to be seeing a lot of that green stonework this week. I don’t have a lot to say except Stratos has that “The Original!” explosion on the front, which in Matty speak means the exact opposite. This was a re-issue from back when Matty was doing repeat runs on some of these figures. I was very surprised to see Stratos at the sale, seeing as even this re-release was put up for sale way back in early to mid 2011. He’s a nagging figure for me that has been on my want list for a while, more because I consider him to be one of the core characters, and therefore essential, rather than because I have any great deal of affection for him. The closest I’ve ever come to having any feelings toward the character at all was in the MYP series and that was just because he sounded like he was doing a bad Sean Connery impersonation and that made me giggle every time he talked. I know, not exactly a ringing endorsement for this purchase, but it shows how my OCD sometimes bleeds into my collecting habits. Anyway, I don’t usually bother with the bios, but in this case there’s something in there that I never really connected with Stratos. The bio refers to him as a “winged simian.” HOLY SHIT, STRATOS IS A FLYING MONKEY??? How did I miss that all these years??? Maybe I’ve underestimated this guy!

So, the thing about this figure is that I like it, I just don’t love it. There’s really nothing inherently wrong with him, except for his loosey-goosey joints. Seriously, this figure flops all over the place. It seems to be an issue with a lot of the early releases in the line. I fear he’s going to be at the heart of many figure-avalanches in my display case. Nevertheless, he’s got a nice grey buck with sculpted hair, gorilla like claws, and there’s certainly a simian affect to his mouth and beard. The head sculpt is actually kind of soft and it looks a bit dated when compared to the more recent releases. His mask is what it is, I’ve never been overly fond of the design, but it’s OK. I should point out a bit of a QC issue on mine, there’s a chip to the flesh paint on his nose.

Stratos features a set of red feathery wings, which are permanently attached to his arms via his wrist bracers. They’re nicely sculpted, but it’s hard to really pose him in a position that makes them look credible as the means of flight. I guess they’re just for decoration anyway, since the guy has a magical Emerald Staff and a jetpack to actually make him fly. I think the wings work well as shields. I can see him deflecting laser blasts with them.

Speaking of jetpacks, yes Stratos has a harness that holds his jetpack onto his back. It’s a simple sculpt with some feathers added at the shoulders and all cast in blue soft plastic. I dig the look of the jetpack. It’s very retro sci-fi and evokes just a little bit of Buck Rogers for me. As for the colors, the blue of the harness matches his furry diaper and contrasts pretty nicely with the red wings and belt and the grey buck to give Stratos a rather subdued, but still attractive, deco.

I think the thing that bugs me the most about this figure is the lack of accessories. I suppose you could argue the extra plastic went into the wings and jetpack, and I can’t recall whether the original vintage figure had any weapons. My only experience with the vintage figures was going over my best friend’s house and playing with his MOTU collection and he always had all the weapons piled in a heap. My point is, give him something: A battle axe, a sword, a goddamn ray gun. What about that Emerald Staff? I’m just looking for some accessories over here, eh? I suppose that’s what the weapons packs are for.

I searched for Stratos on Ebay every now and again and he was always running in the $30’s plus shipping, which was just out of the range that I was willing to pay for a character I don’t care much about, but still had to have in my collection. As a result, the $17 he went for during Matty’s Sale seemed to hit that certain sweet spot. Plus, since I was ordering a bunch of figures, I only factored in a couple of bucks for his shipping. He’s not at all a bad figure, just not a terribly exciting one for me. And yet putting him into my Masters display has certainly given me a sense of satisfaction and closure.

Tomorrow, Matty Cyber Week continues with King Hsss!

Mantenna is a great example of my relationship with the MOTU Classics line. I have no love for this character and he was as annoying as hell in the cartoon, but he’s such a creative and bizarre design and the figure is so wonderfully executed, that I absolutely had to have him on my shelf. Mantenna was released the same month as the Horde Troopers, which meant that there was a lot of new tooling invested in the October product. Normally, I would say they should have split it up better and spread all this goodness out over a couple of months, but then I was lucky enough to be home on that day to get them, so I’ll just keep my mouth shut.

The packaging is the usual Greyskull-inspired card and bubble. I thought Mantenna might warrant something bigger because of his odd configuration, but Mattel was able to get him into the standard package quite comfortably. He’s carded with his regular eyes in place and his extra set of peepers are concealed at the bottom behind the insert. There’s a Horde sticker on the bubble. There’s not a lot else to say about the presentation here, except that it’s as awesome as ever and I am now going to destroy it.

There’s no doubt that Eternia and Etheria are full of a bunch of freaks, but most of them have some basis in logic. Oh, look that guy’s a “beast man!” That chick looks like a scorpion. There’s a fellow with three eyes! Mantenna, however, takes the Etherian Handbook of Freaks and tosses it straight out the window. His design is pure imagination and it works splendidly. He’s also a delightful blend of goofiness and sheer horror. He may be a bumbling goon, but if you woke up and this thing was standing at the foot of your bed, you’d have some sheets to launder because you will have shat in them. But it’s not just this guy’s creative anatomy that makes him special… everything on this guy is just fantastic. Even the armor is gorgeous with the Horde emblem brilliantly sculpted into his chest and again on each of his four grieves.

But it’s not just the design that makes me love Mantenna, it’s the absolutely brilliant way Matty crafted him into action figure form. The Classics version is a satisfying mix of vintage toy and 200x design. The head sculpt is a nightmare circus of bulging jaundiced eyes, a toothy vagina for a mouth and vestigial tusks. Toss in some deformed Mogwai ears and you’ve got yourself an undeniably gorgeous piece of work. He’s in a class all by himself and his portrait alone will make him stand his own against even the strangest figures in most collections.

Naturally, the other thing that makes Mantenna distinctive is his two sets of legs. Both pairs are scaled just like regular MOTUC legs and attached to a specially sculpted double-pelvis so as not to mess with articulation. It looks great and wonderfully wrong at the same time, rather like staring at the Geometry of the Old Gods. I’d love to see someone do a stop-motion video of this guy skittering along, because it would probably freak me the hell out. With four legs, now is as good a time to talk articulation as any. From the waist up, things are what you would expect from a MOTUC figure, but the legs are a little different. You get ball joints and swivels at the hips and at the knees. The ankles have hinges and rocker joints as well. It’s great to see that Matty didn’t cheap out and Mantenna is every bit as poseable as he should be while keeping him at a regular monthly figure price point.

Beyond the bizarre design and excellent sculpt, I’ve got to say that Mantenna represents a beautiful selection of colors. The bright red, yellow, and orange contrast wondrfully with the darker blues and blacks. The use of a high gloss metallic blue for his boots and knee armor is a nice surprise and it makes those pieces stand out from his blue skin.

Of course, Mantenna can also stick out his peepers to ridiculous lengths and Matty reproduced this gimmick in the figure by providing a pair of swappable extended eyes. Making the switch is easy, as all you need to do is pull off the mouth and then pop out the one set of eyes and peg in the others. If you didn’t think this guy was unsettling enough, try looking into the soulless abyss of his face without his mouth or eyes attached. And the result of pegging in his popping eyes makes an already freaky figure even more bizarre and disturbing. The eye stalks are disgusting and veiny and take what was an innocent, goofy toy gimmick and elevate it to an artful form of anatomical gore. It’s simply splendid. The figure wouldn’t be Mantenna without this feature, but I doubt I’ll ever display him with the eyes popping out. My MOTUC collection is currently residing on some shelves in my bedroom and quite frankly, I like to sleep at night, thank you very much.

In addition to the extra set of eyes, Mantenna comes with the ubiquitous Horde crossbow. Obviously everyone got one of these at orientation. Mantenna’s has an awesome sculpt and a nice metallic silver painted finish. He can hold it in either hand.

October was a crazy-awesome month for Club Eternia and Mantenna is a big part of the reason why. I had very high expectations for him and he managed to exceed them with all his freaky charm. I love everything about this figure: It’s design, sculpt, coloring, articulation… it’s all fantastic. He’s one of those cases where I don’t even think about how expensive these things are getting with shipping because the end justifies the means. Had I missed him on Sale Day, I would have had no choice but scramble to get him on the secondary market, and I shudder to think how high I would have gone. All this, mind you, for a character I don’t even care much about. To me, that’s how good Matty is making some of these figures. This Summer, after a great deal of hand wringing, I eventually caved and subbed Club Eternia for next year. I’ve reassessed that decision many times since, but October’s releases make me so very glad I did. With Two-Bad and Modulok following in Mantenna’s wake, I think it was the right decision!

Every now and again the stars align themselves in my favor and the universe blows me a kiss. Such was the case on Tuesday the 15th of October when I just happened to be off on the day the Horde Troopers and Mantenna went up for sale on Matty Collector. Next to Ram Man, these were easily the most anticipated figures for me this year and the very releases that made me go, “Oh shit, now I kind of wish I had subbed” because I knew how hard they were going to be to get. To make matters worse, that week I had Q4 planning meetings virtually every single afternoon. But, as it turned out, Tuesday the 15th was the only day that entire week that I didn’t need to be at work. It was the one day I could be sitting comfortably in my sweatpants at my computer at 11:59a EST. And despite having a few scares on the order page, I was able to purchase my figures with little fuss. It was a good thing too, because these babies sold out in under 10 minutes.

If you’ve picked up any of the MOTUC two-packs in the past, then you should know what to expect from the packaging here. This was actually my first two-pack in the line, so I was in unfamiliar territory. It’s a window box with the familiar green Greyskull stonework motif and artsy-fartsy angled sides. You get the usual Horde sticker on the window and an explosion of dialogue on the front inviting you to “Collect an army of Horde Trooper robots!” Many collectors did just that, buying eight or ten packs of these things, and the result was a quick sell-out that left others to scramble to Ebay and pay scalper prices. Oh, Matty, you seem to always know just the right spot to poke that sharp stick where it will hurt your customers the most. The troopers are laid out on a tray beside each other with all of their gear on display. It’s a nice presentation that doesn’t waste much space. If you’re careful enough, and patient with the invisible rubber bands, you can get these guys out without destroying the box.

The back of the package has the usual biography and features some other Horde figures, as well as the very elusive Spirit of Hordak figure… there’s that poking stick again! Matty be trolling you!

Out of the package, the Horde Troopers are very cool figures. Keep in mind, the two figures aren’t exactly the same. One has some minor battle scarring, which has received mixed reactions from collectors. I don’t mind it, especially since it only amounts to just three painted black blemishes, although I suppose if you are army building these, it’ll look funny to have the same blast marks in the same spots on so many of your troops. It’s not a concern for me, as I was content with a single set, so I approve of Matty’s little effort to distinguish these guys apart. Still, your mileage may vary.

Obviously, there’s a crap load of brand new tooling on these figures and it’s almost uniformly excellent. The proportions are great as these guys really do look like bulked out armored robots and the torso armor is even easily removable to reveal some new robotic sculpting on the torso of the buck underneath. It’s something that I will never do, but the extra effort is still appreciated and I think it helps make the armor more convincing. These trooper designs have always had a special place in my heart and a big part of the reason that I always liked The Horde better than Skeletor’s motley crew. Compare these guys to Skeletor’s goofy floating robots and there’s just no contest as to who had the cooler disposable army.

The one issue I take with the sculpting on this figure is in the way the heads turned out, and we’re really talking about a deliberate design choice rather than a failing in the sculpt. I so wish Matty had gone with the animated look for these guys over the vintage toy. The glowing red eyes looked so much better to me than the yellow boomerang-style band, and they didn’t even really get the look of the vintage toy visor down quite right either. The yellow part looks too large and chunky to me. It’s not a deal-breaker, the rest of the figures look way too good for something like this to ruin them. You can position the head so as to conceal part of the visor and I think that does a lot to improve the look. Besides, I wouldn’t be surprised if we get some Filmation accurate heads in a Weapons pack somewhere down the road. And while we’re on the subject of the heads, yes you can easily pop them off and pop on another figure’s noggin to make them look like they are wearing the Horde armor. I love it!

Gear! You get two complete sets of gear to kit out each of the troopers. I’m not up on my He-Mans enough to know where all of this stuff came from, but I’m imagining that the designs are borrowed from both Filmation and the vintage toys. Either way, it’s a great selection of goodies and if you do happen to be troop building these guys, there’s enough variety to arm your various troops in a lot of different ways. Mattel could have cheaped out here and gave a different set of weapons to each figure, but instead each one gets it all.

First off, you get a matching staff and shield, which are probably my favorite pieces in this little arsenal. The shield is sculpted to look like the Horde symbol, and while I personally would like my shield to offer a little more protection and less artistic flair, I can’t deny that it looks great in the troopers’ hands. It looks even better when paired with the nicely sculpted red staff. I would imagine that these are more ceremonial garb… the kind of shit that Hordak has these guys hold when their standing around the The Fright Zone and trying to look regal. Why else would you put a hole in the middle of a shield? Sure they’re just robots, but replacing them must get expensive.

Next up, you get these totally bitchin black Horde crossbows. These things are awesome, It’s a great looking sculpt made all the better by the slick glossy black paint job and they have a yellow paint app towards the tip to mimic the troopers’ visors and some red painted circuitry patterns on the back.

Oddly enough, the least interesting looking weapon in the bunch will probably please a lot of fans the most. It’s the wand that these guys carried in the Filmation cartoon. It’s not much to look at, but this is the weapon that I associate with these guys the most. For display, I’ll likely be sticking with the red staff and shield. If I ever get drunk and start playing with these guys, they’ll be equipped with these little energy wands. In the end, it doesn’t matter what weapons you give them. They’re always going to wind up getting their metal asses kicked in.

If you can’t tell from all my gushing, I think this is an amazing set of figures and I’m so very pleased that I was able to snag them. Had my display space allowed for it, I probably would have tried for at least one more, just so I could display troopers with all their different gear. Unfortunately, as it stands, I already had to nix a shelf of Star Trek figures because my Horde and Rebellion collection has now grown large enough to require a shelf of their own. With two figures and a lot of weapons, this set actually feels like a good value at $55 even with the shipping thrown in, and that’s something I can’t say about a lot of the MOTUC figures. They’re almost all great, but I still usually feel like I’m paying a premium for them, even if it is a justified one. This pair is going to be a hard act to follow, but crazy enough, I think Matty managed to upstage them in the very same month with the October monthly figure. That figure was Mantenna, and we’ll circle back to him at the end of the week to bask in his awesomeness.