Though this blog may have
very little evidence of it, I have actually been receiving my Club Filmation
subscription – they didn’t come exactly monthly but I’ve received all 7 figures
– unlike my Club Third Earth subscription of which I received none. I only
subscribed to the He-Man & The Masters of the Universe line with the
intention of keeping Evilseed (who was the subscription exclusive) and the
Clawful included herein, I figured I’d decide on a case by case basis with the
other four figures when they arrived; He-Man and Skeletor were alright but
didn’t wow me enough to make keeping them preferable to selling them for a
sizeable profit and using the money to buy characters I don’t already own
between six and eight of already; I liked Trap Jaw but I already had my
preferred version in Classics (well almost, I really want a green mini-comics
version, get on that Super 7 and I’ll even pay your ridiculous postage prices)
and I also have his vintage figure AND both 200X figures and as much as I like
Trap Jaw the £50 he brought me was much better spent on reacquiring a boxed
Super Soaker SS 100 - and I never liked Filmation Beast Man, he was a bleedin’
idiot and I prefer his shaggier action figure look (which I already owned). So
I only ended up keeping Evil-Lyn – I have no regrets, I got both figures I
wanted plus one and the money the others brought in paid for some awesome
stuff, plus Collector’s Choice was so great this year it made up for it.
Clawful comes from the
third wave of Masters of the Universe figures, was designed by Colin Bailey and
his figure as released ended up looking a little odd: he has flesh arms and
legs, a red torso shell that was actually an armour piece and a head that mixed
dinosaur, Jim Henson and lucha libre, but was supposed to be a man-crab (being
half animal was the rage for wave 3, Webstor, Buzz-Off, Dragon Walker,
Whiplash, Snake Mountain and Kobra Khan all came in that series). The prototype
for his figure shows him with a unique torso and a head that came down to meet
it. Clawful then debuted in the Filmation episode Dree Elle’s Return and looked completely different, a bright red
dragon man with claws sums it up nicely. This look was probably based on an
earlier design for the character – Filmation and the people drawing the
mini-comics need the designs for new characters early in new wave’s design
process because of the longer leader time they require, which is why many
characters looked so different in them and why characters like Dial-A-Mug,
Acrobad and Octavia ended up in the cartoon despite never making it past the
concept drawing stage.
Clawful and Evil-Lyn are
very ‘buck heavy’ characters in that
they’re based around standard Masters of the Universe Classics parts that were
designed for reuse and lived up to their intended purpose, I find it’s a little
less obvious with Clawful here because, well, he’s bright red but his shoulders, biceps, lower torso, thighs, calves
are from the standard ‘He-Man buck’1, his hands are from Buzz-Off,
his feet are from Skeletor and I think his trunks are also reused, from
Filmation Skeletor I think. His forearms are new to allow for the bracelets, I
think his shins are new and most surprisingly, he has a new upper torso that
includes his spines. Being big and thick the upper torso piece is considered a
very expensive part for the figure to tool (make a metal mould for) so it’s one
of the most reused and a piece that’s rarely made anew to allow for little
things like t-shirt collars or a few spines, I had never considered that Mattel
would do this for a variant figure who was coming out in their last month of
operation and just assumed they’d either attach it to his armour overlay or
just not bother with them. I was wrong and it makes Mattel look better – it
does cause a huge gap in the spines whenever the head is tilted forward – I
think it’s one of those ‘unavoidable’ things that comes when translating a
design into an articulated toy but maybe they could have had an additional
spine below the head (like they do with long hair)? I dunno, I’m back seat toy
making here, that could have looked awful or been a pain to tool or something. His
hew head is fantastic, though I do wish it had an articulated jaw it’s all
fully painted inside and you can get a good few expressions out of the open
mouth depending on angle and tilt, he could have quite easily have ended up
looking pretty silly with those huge yellow eyes and cartoony face so much
praise to whichever Horseman managed to keep him looking menacing, as he was
the only male member of Skeletor’s Evil Warriors who had any intelligence on
the show, it’s also appropriate. Nearly everything’s cast in the colour it
should be so paint apps are few and basic, I don’t have any glaring issues with
mine though all of them are shipping with pink teeth rather than white, I didn't notice it at first but yeah, they're pink, like, milkshake pink *sigh*. Anyway let’s do accessories.
Clawful has two, his mace
cast in its usual green which he can’t really hold that well, it fits in but
tends to swing out and fall on the floor, or table, or record player in my
case. It’s his signature weapon and I appreciate it but meh it’s not that
Ooh speaking of female
figures: Evil-Lyn. That was almost a segue, a clunky, shitty segue but I take
what I can get, I could just go back and rewrite the previous paragraph so it
had a better segue yes, but these are quick and crappy reviews and I’m fucking
lazy. Evil-Lyn is Skeletor’s sorcerer, usually his second-in-command, certainly
the Evil Warrior who’s closest to him power-wise and is usually scheming to against
the skull-faced bastard. Plus depending on what iteration of He-Man you’re
looking at she’s also he love of his life and the mother of his child, though I
don’t think anyone didn’t think the two were ‘totally doing it’. Evil-Lyn was
also designed by Colin Bailey and debuted in the second wave of Masters of the
Universe figures, where she had bright yellow skin and blue armour, it seems
that Bailey intended for her to have a colours scheme closer to what she would
use everywhere else, and the original cartoon bible uses those colours, which
is why the cartoon does I suppose (though The Sorceress ended up looking very
different).
Evil-Lyn’s one of my
favourite villains, she’s great in every He-man incarnation she turns up in but
I actually kept this figure because I honestly cannot decide if I like her pale
skinned in black and purple or yellow skinned in blue more, I think I genuinely
like them both the same. All of Evil-Lyn’s problems are paint based and they’re
pretty distracting. Most noticeable is that her skin tone varies wildly form
piece to piece, ranging from ‘milky white skin’ (torso) to ‘too much make-up’
(head) to ‘Ambrosia rice pudding’ (legs) it honestly doesn’t look at bad
in-hand as it does in a photo, I promise – more annoyingly is that my one’s
head and biceps are painted atrociously – not a single thing on her helmet or
bands lines up and the edges are so soft you’d think they were airbrushed, her
lipstick’s wonky also – this is not an isolated incident. What I honestly find
the most distracting is that half her cape is folded over, I thought mine just
got warped in the package but no, looking at the prototype (the one the hand
fell off of, lol) and final product shot on Mattycollector I think it’s
supposed to look like that – it’s just so asymmetrical, aaagh! Otherwise
sculpt-wise there’s nothing to moan about though, she’s another buck heavy
figure with her thighs, torso, shoulders, calves, feet and hands all reusing the
standard female body pieces. Her biceps, forearms and boot tops are all new, as
is her ‘armour’ overlay and crotch which again manages to do the impossible and
not look like a loincloth, do you ever think that we were being bullshitted
about that? I doubt Mattel minded as the arm and leg pieces should have been
reused for Filmaton Teela but then they shut down the Mattycollector wing and
gave the licence to an art toy maker, oh well, maybe Super7 will use ‘em and
make the Teela I’ve always wanted (with the arse I’ve always wanted), I’d pay
their ridiculous shipping costs for that too. Oh Evil-Lyn has reversed forearms
– I didn’t even notice until I read it on Heman.org, this really bugs some
people and it’s been going on in the line for a long time, at least this time
we weren’t told it was intentional I guess.
Evil-Lyn’s accessorised up
and I salute that. She has her wand as accurate to its appearance in the show,
I so want this want in me size and I think I have since I was about…three years
old, it love it, it’s a bit warped and the black paints not quite in the lines,
though much better than the head or bands. Her alternate head is her unhelmeted
head; it showed up in the cartoon a time or two again it’s nice but it has the
too much make-up colour scheme even worse than the standard head (apparently
because the heads were cast in purple, which makes no sense at all really)
unless it was on the same mould as the new boot pieces (possible I guess).
Finaly she comes with the massive wad of Corodite Crystal she tried to con the
Widgets out of in the episode Evil-Lyn’s Plot – yes, yes yes yes yes, yes this
is a fantastic accessory, it looks absolutely lovely, the paint is, well a lot
better than the figure, it’s big and chunky but not too heavy for the lady to
hold aloft and pretty damn accurate to the cartoon too plus it’s base is
moulded to fit Evil-Lyn’s spell-casting hand and it slides on lovely and stays
there. Top notch accessory, more like this from every company please.
And there you are, I’ve
waffled on about another pair of He-man figures, I thank you for reading my
imaginary buddies. In conclusion Clawful is great but could do with shutting
his mouth and cleaning his teeth; Evil-Lyn was painted by a blind child using a pedal powered airbrush
in the dark and can't put her arms on properly.
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| "you look ridiculous* |
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