He’s a ghost, it counts
This will be an even
quicker, crappier review as I only have 1 figure to talk about. We’ve actually had some contact from The New Team on behind-the-scenes issues with MattyCollector and Masters of the Universe Classics – not everything has been
cleared up, as I write this we have no idea if we dirty Eurotrash will be
receiving the Laser two-pack for instance, but at least some of the problems
have been addressed, how well they addressed them and the merits of spending a
chunk of this address complaining about people acting like arseholes uncouth beasts on the internet is still being hotly
debated. I’m not going comment on that1 but instead play with
this year’s Chase Figure, which I now own thanks to heman.org user MOTU_Maniac,
so big thanks goes out to him.
At retail a Chase Figure is generally a figure,
often a variant and often with very few new parts (maybe a head or a weapon or
something) that is made in fewer quantities than the rest of its ‘wave’ and
then ‘short-packed’ (less are put into each case or pallet or whatever the toys
are being sold in) so it’s harder to find, the ‘chase’ name coming from the
fact that you have to chase after it, it’s one of the horrible hangovers from the 1990s when ‘collectors items’ in toys became a big thing. Of course this can’t work in an online only line like
Classics without just randomly sending some buyers a different figure to what
they’re expecting, which would please no-one and may possibly be against the
law so Scott ‘Toyguru’ Neitlich - brand manager of the line from its inception
until very recently - came up with a way to bring the Chase Figure into an
online only toyline and bring the ‘fun’ and ‘hunt’ back into toy collecting –
he is going to hell for this. His idea was that randomly with no prior warning,
not even to subscribers, the Chase figure will appear on the Mattycollector
website for purchase so unless you’re checking their site every 10 minutes every
day of the year you’ll probably miss it fairly often, and while I may have very
little life, I have more life than to be doing that. Now in his defence the he
did put the Chase figure in one subscriber-only Early Access sale and they have
appeared on Cyber Monday (the worst day of the year to shop online anywhere but
a particularly awful day to shop at Mattycollector.com) but if you missed that
Early Access day (like I stupidly did) or aren’t a subscriber the best way to
buy the figure is to pay slightly more and get it off another fan, and despite
what you may have heard not everyone in the he-man fandom are entitled moany
bastards, some are quite considerate and buy a bunch of extra chase figures to
sell on at cost – so why I effectively paid for postage twice I still got
Spirit of Grayskull for way below eBay prices and without all the hassle, so
thanks again MOTU_Maniac.
So yes, Spirit of Grayskull
is the Chase Figure for Masters of the Universe Classics 2015, sold only on
Mattycollector.com, the website and online store of the collector’s wing of
Mattel, and only at random times throughout the year. He’s the ghostly form of
King Grayskull, the first He-Man in the Classics and ‘200X’ cartoon continuity
(the early 2000s ‘manga-ry’ one you probably hated) and the origin of the
‘grayskull’ part of ‘by the power of Grayskull’, although the concept of The
Spirit of Grayskull goes back to the very first media He-Man characters
appeared in – the first issue of the mini-comics that came packaged with the
toys: ‘He-Man & The Power Sword’2 where it was the castle’s
first magical inhabitant in the days before The Sorceress existed. This is
actually the second version of this version of the character (got that?), only
2 of the original Spirit of Grayskull were produced: one for a charity auction
and the other for the SDCC 2008 raffle. That version was in fact very different
from this, being made of shiny translucent blue plastic similar to Star Wars’
holo variants. I think the rationale was that by making Spirit of Grayskull
this year’s Chase Figure in a year that was supposed to be focussing on vintage
toys and ‘A-List’ characters from other media is it ‘guaranteed’ fans a chance
to own a figure they previously could never hope to own – but by making this
version so radically different from the original it kind of defeats that
purpose, the real deciding factor was probably him being incredibly cheap to
make in a year filled with lots of new tooling. So the Chase Figure is stupid
and THIS Chase figure is a waste of a slot but as a toy? Spirit of Grayskull
rocks (or glows, I guess).
 |
| I tried to take a glowing in the dark shot but as I have the photographic skills of a hamster, this is what I ended up with. You wouldn't get this shit over at The Fwoosh. |
This is mostly because he
glows in the dark, if you want me to buy a cheap repaint sold at full price,
make it see-thru or make it glow in the dark, if you make it both like
Grayskull here I will actually pay extra to get it – which I in fact did. The
figure itself isn’t really very transparent, not close to what I thought it
would be – nowhere near as c-thru as the original figure or his predecessor
Spirt of Hordak (chase figure for 2013 and the toy that started the bloody
concept), though given that the second Spirit of Hordak was unveiled fans began
dreaming-up mocking names like ‘Jolly Rancher Hordak’ and ‘Kool-Aid Hordak’
based solely on him being see-thru and red perhaps this was done to see if it
would allow Grayskull to keep some of his dignity and anyway his cape and
weapons are very transparent. Even if he’s not that transparent he is that glow-in-the-dark.
I have him haunting the back of my shelf behind all the Masters of the Universe
and Great Rebellion and even back there he lights up like a sodding torch, I
have just about stopped going ‘what the fuck is…ooh it’s Spirit of Grayskull’
when I wake up in the middle of the night for a piss. By combining my two
favourite toy gimmicks I wholly consider him good value for money and I bet
Mattel agrees – there is nothing new on the figure at all, he’s just the same
D’Vann Grayskull that’s been used since 2008 – a figure that was already cost
effective for Mattel: being that the only parts he doesn’t share with He-Man is
his head and armour/cape piece and being that about 72% of the vintage line is
based around He-Man parts (and the rest seemingly around Trap-Jaw bits3)
this was not expensive to make, cutting down costs even more is his lack of
paint-apps – which begin and end with a dark green wash. This is all completely
functional and makes him look very ghostly but it also makes him look very
minty – I’ve licked him and he doesn’t taste like mint (a missed opportunity
indeed) but he does look like spearmint icing and every time I look at him I
fancy cake – meaning that not only did he cost me too much money, not only does
he make me look sad, not only does he make people question my sexuality – but
he’s making me fat as well.
 |
| "G-G-G-G-Ghost!" Hush, that's a great joke. |
I kid, I am completely
happy with the figure – the only real issue with the King Grayskull figure is
that between his long hair and fury collar he has just about zero neck
articulation (though it is, technically, on a ball-joint) and that’s an issue
with all versions of King Grayskull (of which this is the fifth) and I knew that going in (I also own the fourth version)
and unlike those early Grayskulls he appears to have much tighter ankle joints
– though he is new so there’s plenty of time for him to learn the shelf-diving
techniques of his fellow He-Men. There is a general complaint lobbied at
200X-era figures, especially from the early years, that they’re not as accurate
as they could/should be because they’ve lost a of their exaggerated bulk; in
the cartoon he comes from the King here is a huge man, especially his upper
body, a lot wider than He-Man himself (which this figure is the same proportions
as) again this is an ‘issue’ with the original figure and it wouldn’t have made
much sense for the ghost of that figure to have suddenly doubled in size but I
do feel the need to bring it up for fear someone will complain that I didn’t –
not that I ever get any comments anyway *passive aggressive hinting*. I
personally don’t care because I came into the line (late) knowing full well
that these were all being made in a unified style (being ‘put through the
Classicizer’), a practice many will argue stopped around the time of the Club
FILMation (I disagree) and was buried by the release of the movie figures
(I…yeah ok you’ve got a point with Gwildor and Saurod). My point is I expected
nothing else, and the sculpt of the basic buck is so good I don’t mind it being
used (unlike, say, the thighs Hasbro keep using for whatever they’re calling
their 6” Marvel Comics line today) but I can totally see why it would bug some
people and I doubt that super-wide Grayskull would have stuck out as
‘over-detailed’ Gwildor and Blade and ‘too cartoony’ Fang-Man and Madame Razz certainly
don’t – IMO. Accessories wise though I am not completely happy – he comes with
He-Man’s sword, shield and axe but not with his
sword. “What are you talking about dwitefry” you would ask if you existed “I
can see the damn sword in the pictures, I recognise it and everything” yeah but
King Grayskull uses a completely different style of Power Sword, the one
designed for the 200X cartoon and in the episode dedicated to him a very big
was made of it being HIS sword, I
think that in Classics this isn’t the case and that sword was built by
Man-At-Arms but one cannon is not a good enough excuse for not including a
character’s signature weapon as far as I’m concerned, it would be like
packaging a classic Captain America with just his energy shield or the
holographic shield he had in the Secret Wars toyline – technically correct to A
source material but you’d be well within your rights to grumble he didn’t come
with his classic shield as well - especially as this figure cost fuck all to
make, they could have thrown in a minty-flavoured transparent 200X Power Sword,
no, they should have.
 |
| Pictured: Not HIS Sword |
But overall I’m very satisfied
with Spirit of Grayskull 2.0, yeah I’m satisfied because he combines my two
favourite toy gimmicks with a one-two punch of it being one of my favourite
Masters of the Universe characters and being a call-back to an obscure part of
the franchise’s history, something I greatly enjoy (I like my continuity porn,
sorry) he IS superfluous, he IS just a repaint and he SHOULD have been someone
like Dree-Ell and Uncle Montork and the Chase Figure system IS shit but he
looks damn striking on the shelf (hell, he’s the only character on it you can
see in the dark) and he has a lot of things about him that appeal to me (and
make up for the lack of HIS sword) so he goes in the
‘win’ pile. Sadly it looks as though next year the Chase Figure will be
Anti-He-Man - another repaint that, annoyingly, I HAVE to have (I’d make a joke
about First World Problems but I hate that term) so it looks like I’ll have to
do the Chase Figure Fuck Around again *sigh* maybe some nice forum member will
grab some extras if they happen to stumble across the 10 minutes he pops over from
Antiternia.
1 OK
just a little bit, while I wholly agree that people shouldn’t act like raging
turds when posting on a company’s Facebook or forum, regardless of how annoyed
they are about a topic, I don’t think this was the right time to bring it up,
had the New Team member (Skeletor’s Love Child, whose real name is….Kim I think?)
posted a separate post about it on
another day in perhaps a ‘keep it respectful it could be damaging the line’
thread of its own I don’t think there’d be such issue being taken with it,
instead she used what should have been a post dedicating to shutting up fans to
something that makes them debate s'more.
2
that comic actually calls it The Spirit of the Castle
3
this is an exaggeration, I know full well that characters like Rio Blast,
Twistoid, Ram-Man, Modulok, Mantenna and Leech share little to no parts with
anyone, it’s just for comedy value.
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