Our 7-11 has closed, they’re closing our post office, it looks like Archie’s Sonic the Hedgehog comics might be cancelled and now the Mattycollector era of Masters of the Universe Classics is officially over with his release. All things must end, but that doesn’t mean I have to fucking like it. Now Masters of the Universe Classics isn’t ending overall, it’s gone over to Super 7, but the Mattel era, MOTUC as we know it, is over. Mattycollector’s final release was this, a Roton with a pack-in-figure of a Skelcon. As far as I know it went on sale December 2016 simply under the Masters of the Universe Classics name and is the fifth vehicle in the line, the fourth to come with a figure.
The Roton is a small flying
vehicle used by the Evil Warriors (Skeletor’s mob), according to the bio that
came on the box they were built by the pirate Ditztroyer who double crossed the
Evil Horde and gave the Evil Warriors the design, which makes no sense as the
vehicles were in use before the Horde came back to Eternia and thawed out
Ditztroyer - if I’m getting my MOTUC timeline correct anyway (the Filmation stories
should be before the She-Ra FIlmation stories which should be before the Horde returned
to Eternia right?). Out-of-cannon the toy debuted in the third wave of Masters of the
Universe toys in 1984 and was the first vehicle for the Evil Warriors. The fist
mention of it comes from the He-man story bible (’82) where it was a heroic
vehicle and the earliest design we have for it is by Ed Watts, who also
designed the Dragon Walker and Battle Bones (and some of the best unproduced items – including the Torton and Turbosaurus). The Roton is my favourite vehicle in
the Masters of the Universe or Princess of Power lines, something about its
1980s VHS colour scheme and angry cat face have always spoke to me in ways the
Attack Trak of Battle Ram never did, the Land Shark and Bashasaurus are close
runners up by the way.
Fuck me this Roton is huge,
it didn’t look this big at the convention, in fact it’s too big, at least when
compared to the original toy. The
original Roton is a small one seater craft – little more than an armchair
surrounded by a ring with red bits on it – this beast is a lounge chair set
inside a mini-roundabout, it looks incredibly comfy and I can imagine that if
it was attached to a deluxe version of After Burner II it would be a delight. It
has been shown to be this big in say the Filmation Cartoon or the odd Earl
Norem painting and I’m guessing that the Four Horsemen just chose the bigger
size of aesthetic reasons. Personally I’d’ve preferred they went with the
smaller size and the Roton retained the ‘sporty little number’ feel the
original toy had, that felt manoeuvrable and nippy, a step up from the Sky Sled
but not quite a Wind Raider, this feels like it could ram the Wind Raider and
write it off – in fact I think it’s nearly as big as the vintage Wind Raider.
That bitching aside the thing is a bloody amazing piece of sculpting and
painting, if you’ve bought any of the other vehicles everything that was good
about them returns and in many respects has been ramped up – the detailing,
fusion of animal elements and little ‘paint’ details for instance. The main
body of the vehicle is cast in mat black plastic and then selected areas are
painted in shiny black plastic achieving this thing where you don’t even notice
half of the paint apps but know that if they weren’t there, you would totally
notice they weren’t there. Likewise the rotating blade has been given little
metallic accents in two different shades of red, oh and each of the spikes turn
– why do they did they feel the need to do this? Fuck knows but it’s quite fun
to twiddle them. By the looks of it the green panels, main control panel and
those two silver air vent like things either side of the seat are separate
pieces, cast in their respective colours and then glued in which just makes
things look that much more crisp (and probably saved a lot of money on paint),
apparently the fine detailing on places like the control panel is achieved by
decal1 rather than paint apps, at least this was true for the Wind
Raider and this looks the same to me. As such the whole thing ends up being
very subtlety detailed and I like that, I’m incredibly impressed with the
clean, hard edges everywhere, how do they do this? Do they like us metalwork or
bits of wood? They surely can’t make it all out of clay and shit right? Oh and
it only bloody retains its action feature, dunnit? Push it along and the red
‘blade’ will rotate with that nice smooth but chunky feel the original had, it
even makes the same noise. Criticisms other than size? Well I don’t know why it
has ports for four guns but only comes with two (and the Roton has only ever
had two guns), they don’t seem to be on the prototype (which I still say looks
smaller) and I can’t imagine what purpose they serve other than shifting the
guns slightly back for…I dunno, personal taste, if you manage to cram two
figures in? I dunno. Also the nostrils are separate pieces glued into the front
– why?
The vehicle has accessories
– I imagine Stratos is fuming - it’s stand and it’s canopy. The stand is reused
from the Wind Raider and if you can’t tell from my photos, really shows your
fingerprints, mind you I am a greasy unwashed bastard. It has a big stiff joint
that looks like a ball joint but HA! fooled you it’s actually just a hinge, it
allows you tilt the vehicle forward which I appreciate but doesn’t really allow
you get many poses, a ball or simply a swivel to allow for side-to-side
movement would have been preferable. The canopy then: as far as I was concerned
if they were gonna make a Classics Roton they had to include the canopy, no
ifs, not buts, they had to do this. The backstory of this part is that after
Masters of the Universe came out and made it big, Monogram licenced three of
the vehicles and made model kits of them2 – they made the Attack
Trak, Talon Fighter and Roton but worked from prototype designs so their
eventual models were a little different, the most readily apparent difference
being the Roton had a canopy. The Classics version of the canopy is very nice,
it’s a shame it’s not hinged but it slots in nicely via four small and very
discreet plugs and looks snazzy, I realise that I took far more words to
explain the history of the thing than I did to review it, welcome to nerdom.
The Roton’s my favourite
vehicle yes, but I don’t think it would have been the ‘instant buy’ it was if
it didn’t come with a Skelcon. I would have WANTED the Roton and umm’d and
ahh’d and probably given in and bought one in the end but by including a
Skelcon Mattycollector got me to ‘pull the trigger’ (another term I hate, I
hate so much) straight away. So who or what is a Skelcon? According to the bio
included on the package, they’re a race of death obsessed savages from the dimension
of Infinita3 who were mind-controlled into serving Skeletor before
Hordak sent them back. They appeared in the Masters of the Universe books
produced by Ladybird where they were just Skeletor’s forces and were just
there, but the look so cool and fans jumped on the ‘Skelcon 4 Classics’ wagon
based almost entirely on that alone, that and Skeletor had no standard army
builder like the Snake Men or the Horde Troopers, he had his Robot Knights in
some episodes of the cartoon, or the Skelcons in some of the Ladybird books.
For me the Skelcon
represents everything that Masters of the Universe Classics under
Mattycollector was and thus he’s a fitting end to their time with the line –
drawn from the entire brevity of the franchise, heavily reliant on part reuse,
well sculpted, slightly overpriced and with one little flaw to grab ahold of.
Parts wise he’s the standard He-man buck with his extremities taken from
elsewhere – his forearsm are from Oo-La, his hands from Skeletor and his shins
and feet from Demo-Man, this means he lacks the ‘boot swivel’ artic point, his
ab crunch is also severely limited by his ‘armour’ piece. Yeah, his clothes,
and that ‘one little thing’ – you can see his belly button, and you can usually
see part of his neck; what he’s wearing is supposed to be a one-piece hooded
tunic, you shouldn’t be able to see these things. Now these buggers are so
weird I can buy it them dressing with their mid-drift on show so it’s not as
galling as it was with, say, Intergalactic Skeletor but it’s there and it could
have easily been avoided by making the body part of the tunic all one piece (so
giving him a ‘dress’) and painting the neck purple – the ab crunch is so
blocked it wouldn’t have any effect there, in fact it might have given it more
range. With that out the way, Skelcon is one scary creepy motherfucker, this
sort of shit is the Four Horseman’s forte and they turn in a wonderfully creepy
head (that’s cream bone rather than white because MOTUC hates white), it looks
like the jaw should be articulated but ha! surprise! It isn’t but ha! surprise!
The horns are, they’re on swivels and that’s just fantastic. You can get extra
expressions with it, you can personalise your Skelcon a little, and really
there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be, they have to attach somehow, it’s not
like this sort of joint costs more.
Skelcon comes armed with a
spear and dagger made from the bones of his dead ancestors (really). The dagger
is straight from the books and I THOUGHT the spear was too but I can’t seem to
find any proof of that, so for now I’m going to say it’s just a nice thing the
Four Horseman whipped up, the Skelcons do look like they should have spears
don’t they? Both accessories have issues fitting on the figure though: the
spear is too wide for one hand and too thin for the other, at least with my
figure while the dagger can be stored on the figure in a scabbard (a nice
thought) it’s a VERY tight fit, there is a horrible phrase involving the
reproductive organs of nuns that applies to it nicely, and once in it’ll get in
the way if you try to move him at the waist, bit of a failure but both to look
very nice and both have a very generous amount of paint apps, I imagine Blade
is fuming.
Conclusions: this was a
$125 set meaning that, effectively, that Roton was $100 which is about £80,
maybe a little bit overpriced but not by too much, especially as it’s a small
run, online only item, it’s big, it’s insanely well sculpted and painted, it
has its old action feature and even though it’s a bit too large for me it’s
fucking awesome. The Skelcon is wearing a slightly more revealing version of
his outfit than usual but is otherwise fine, now I’ve jammed his spear in
(sexual innuendo?). I don’t regret buying this set and that’s the main thing
really, now where the hell am I going to put the bloody thing?
1
Think of it as an up-market rub-on transfer, I do.
2
This is also where the Classics figures called the Fighting Foe Men come from, they
appeared on the boxes and were usually called the ‘Monogram drivers’ or ‘Monogram
Riders’ before Scott ‘Toyguru’ Neitlich (I think) gave them a name from very
early in He-Man’s development (around the time of the Vikor drawings).
3
Skeletor was originally supposed to come from Infinita, and then I think it was
that he went to Infinita as Keldor and came back Skeletor (or something like
that?) so it makes sense that a race of blue skinned skull faced men would come
from there, in fact for the ‘standard’ race of Infinita they’re a perfect fit.
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