This
is the first Guest Toy Review here on Needless Things, which is
somewhat of a surprise. I’ve had articles about vampires,
wrestling, and even camping. You’d think toys would have come up
sooner.
I’m
thrilled that this one is from Mr. Beau Brown, co-host of the
Needless Things Podcast (eventually) and Master of Puppets. Beau has
a much stronger passion for Masters of the Universe than me, which
makes the subject of today’s review particularly appropriate –
the massively irritating Spirit of Hordak. You can read how I feel
about this damn thing right
here.
As
stated there, Beau was one of the folks lucky enough to get one. And
now he’s nice enough to be reviewing it for us, since it looks like
there’s no way in heck I’m ever going to get one.
Guest reviewer Beau Brown here to talk
all about the Spirit of Hordak figure or “Stinky Pinky” since he
caused such a stink online. Since poor Phantom missed out because he
actually works for a living and can't be on Mattycollector.com 24/7,
I offered to do the review.
The Spirit of Hordak figure or SoH
depicts the magical astral form that Hordak projected from his
imprisonment in Despondos and guided Keldor to learn dark magic and
eventually transform him into Skeletor. He is depicted this way in
the new minicomics as well as the MYP cartoon.
Mattel threw us a curve ball with this
guy and the fan base is decidedly split about it. As one of the
lucky few who just happened to be online during the tiny window
during which he was initially available I am a little biased in favor
of it, however also as someone who missed out on Strobo the first
time around and was pretty 1st world problems pissed about
it, I feel I understand both sides. There are basically two camps.
The people who are pissed because there was no warning at all about
the release and it sold out so quickly, and the people who think it
is fun that there is a element of mystery and surprise to the hobby
of toy collecting (the Hunt if you will) that is completely missing
in our age of the internet.
As a subscriber I commit to laying down
money for figures I haven’t even seen yet and won't even get until
months and months later. In return for that financial commitment I
expect to get everything I want. That is what I am subscribing for,
the guarantee that I will get what I want. Now Mattel has said that
the figure will continue to be released in short bursts over time and
that if people want one they will eventually get one. In fact he was
on sale again during Early Access this month. Personally Early Access
has failed to live up to expectations. Since I missed Strobo, all
Early Access has done is give me the chance to buy old figures I
already have out of left over customer service stock. I have yet to
reap any benefits.
The timing was TERRIBLE. As a
subscriber I got hit hard this month. The Fighting Foe Men 3-pack and
Karatti (all figures that I am not super excited about, although I do
like the blue guy, he looks cool) are scheduled for this month. That
is already $100 I am laying down. So when I ordered Spirit of Hordak
it occurred to me that it sure would be great to have him ship with
my subscription so that I could save on shipping. The shipping for my
sub for a 3 pack and another fig was the same amount as the shipping
just for SoH. In fact I contacted Matty customer service to request
this. First I received my shipping notice informing me that SoH had
already shipped and then after that I heard back from Customer
Service:
Dear Beau Brown,
Thank you for contacting the MattyCollector.com online store.
We apologize for the inconvenience. Unfortunately, we do not have the
capability to combine the shipment of individual orders to Club
subscriptions.
Sincerely,
Sherwin L.
MattyCollector.com online store
Customer Service
Thank you for contacting the MattyCollector.com online store.
We apologize for the inconvenience. Unfortunately, we do not have the
capability to combine the shipment of individual orders to Club
subscriptions.
Sincerely,
Sherwin L.
MattyCollector.com online store
Customer Service
So no, they are not capable of doing
that.
I made the mistake of commenting about
this on one of the MOTUC FB groups whereupon everyone who was being
crybabies about not getting one, called me a crybaby for complaining
about extra shipping, in fact going so far to say that they wished I
hadn’t gotten it all. This reminded me why I don't participate much
in the forums.
If you take a look at the release
schedule, they should have put this off until September. There is no
monthly sub figure in September, unless you have the Club Filmation
Sub, in which case you will get Batros. So regular sub holders would
be getting nothing and have money to spend. In June we are only
getting Octavia, that would have worked great too. Instead they
release it during of the most expensive months of the whole year and
punched the few lucky sub holders in their cock wallets. I won’t
even get into how expensive this must have been for international sub
holders.
All that aside, it is fun. It is a
chase figure, they are called that for a reason. Scott can't win for
losing with the fan base. This was a great idea on paper, it doesn’t
cost any tooling dollars to do a straight up repaint. There is no new
tooling on the figure and translucency is fun. In fact one of the few
figures I am missing is the Spirit of Grayskull King Grayskull
variant. It is a little bit of a cash grab on the part of Mattel and
either one of two things happened. Either it was a new idea to do
something fun that didn’t cost them much, or this figure was part
of the original road-map as a quarterly variant and since the
road-map has been scaled back, they cut it out of the regular line up
since it would feel a little cheap as a regular release. This way
only the people who want it will get it and doesn’t take up a slot
in the regular release schedule.
Which also may have been why they
decided to do it this way. If this had been a regular variant release
I think you would have seen just as much if not more negative
feedback from the fans since nobody really wanted this guy and he
doesn’t have a single new piece. At least by doing it this way
people are still pissed, but by making it rare, they will want it
just for its rarity. This way they feel cheated because they don't
have it rather than feeling cheated and getting it. Which in a
twisted sort of logic makes sense.
Back to the topic of him being cheap to
produce. Sometimes for trademark reasons they will print names of
characters on the white mailer boxes. I've seen The Fighting Foe Men,
Glimmer, and Preternia all on mailer boxes in the past. Oo-lar was
printed on this one. Oo-lar is the Jungle He-man depicted in the
mini-comics. Believe it or not Oo-lar wears less clothes than regular
He-man. As you can see all he is is He-man with a smaller loincloth.
I imagine they would do a new head but other than that he would be
all reuse parts and a loincloth. Now hopefully this guy will come
with some great accessories other than his spear. Maybe some more
artifacts from the minicomics like they are doing with Filmation
items. They will certainly need to do something to jazz him up. Since
he might be a pretty disappointing variant as well.
The cardback for SoH does feature all
Horde characters and Keldor which I like. I like it when the other
characters on the cardback relate to the figure. I think Spector gets
featured on cardback a little more than he should. Snake Face's card
back for example.
Study Hard. Be Evil.
Hordak comes with the white Horde
crossbow that was teased to us earlier this year and led to great
speculation, NONE of which was a SoH figure. So if you want to
display your regular Hordak with his vintage look as oppose to his
staff or gray crossbow, now you can (as a MYP series fan I prefer the
staff). I think it was a stupid tease, a tease is ideally going to
have some truth to it like a clue that could lead you to the right
guess. Nobody was expecting, or arguably wanting this figure.
So I reckon I ought to get to the
physical toy. I found some time to finally open him. I do not
casually open my figures. Since MOTU is the only thing I collect, I
savor each and every figure I get to open. I have a ritual. I want
plenty of light. I use the same pocket knife to open all of them. I
keep the card backs and the UPC codes. I have some strange urge to
keep the UPCs based on the extremely unrealistic idea that some day
they will do a mail away offer where you send in the UPCs for a bonus
figure. This of course will never happen and yet I continue on. I
enjoy the heady fresh plastic smell and am whisked away through sense
memory to simpler times. Then I spend some time posing them and
switching out accessories with older stuff and seeing how they look
posed with other character appropriate figures.
I won’t go into all of the
articulation part of a toy review since you can read that on other
reviews and I think it is boring to read or listen to.
The only paint that he has is one shade
of dark red on his Horde emblem on his armor, his eyes and his Horde
arm band. All of this is done well and looks great. I won't be
displaying him with his crossbow since it doesn’t really make sense
with the whole astral/magic projection vibe he has going on. Which
also means he doesn’t really come with any accessories at all for
himself. I will most likely pose him with a flight stand to add to
that hovering image idea. I have a Great Unrest display shelf and he
would look good there behind Keldor since it doesn’t make sense to
pose him with Hordak and the rest of the Horde.
You can see some interesting things
about the internal structures of the figures in him. He has an A1 and
A2 carved into the front and back inside of his abdomen that you can
see.
In closing you really have a lot more
controversy than actual toy going on here. It was a great way to
build buzz whether positive or negative for Mattycollector.com trying
to encourage people to keep checking the site for him. I applaud
Matty for trying to do something fun and give us the thrill of the
hunt and not have everything spoiled for us months in advance.
However I also completely understand being pissed as a subscriber who
may have missed out and feel cheated. Hopefully, like Scott has said,
there are enough of him to go around and everyone will eventually get
him who wants him. I certainly prefer getting him like this as oppose
to him taking up a variant slot that could go to someone like Terror
Claws Skeletor (who is awesome, but not Flying Fists He-man because
he sucks).
Things getting kinky back at the Fright
Zone
I give him a 2/5. He gets points for
being something exciting, new, outside the box and I love the Horde
and will happily get anything else related to them. When judged
solely as a figure though he loses big points for having zero demand
and not a single bit of new tooling. The white crossbow tease was
definitely a letdown. He also pissed off lots and lots of people.
For those of you who missed him I wish
you luck and hope that everyone out there who wants one eventually
gets one.
Thanks to Phantom for letting me do my
very first review!
I will be back soon for reviews of
Granamyr and Temple of Darkness Sorceress.
Good Journey!
-Beau
Thanks,
Beau!
Clearly
you are a much better photographer than I am. Or have a nicer camera.
And
let me just say that I thought it was really cool that Beau used his
own format for the review rather than just doing the same thing I do.
I mean, that would have been fine, but I think it’s more
interesting if everybody on the site has their own style. After Beau
offered to do this I was kind of curious as to the approach he’d
take.
I
can’t wait to see what he thinks of Granamyr and ToD Sorceress. I
passed on both of those and haven’t even seen them in person. Not
that that’s going to change.
Side
Note: Who wants to place bets on me coming back from HeroesCon with
one or both of those?
-Phantom
The more pictures I see of SoH, the less I want one. I can see that he is translucent, but he doesn't seem very see through (I don't know if that makes sense). I really like my translucent figures to have almost a glassy aspect to them, and this guy looks kind of frosted.
ReplyDeleteOn top of that, he is this weird pink color (which matches the comic), but I would have preferred a deeper red.
Nevertheless, thanks for the review. I think Mattel has released him in a stupid way, but only because I think they're not taking care of the subscribers. If they wanted to play this game for cherry pickers like myself, cool, but give subscribers a chance to get him without jumping through hoops.
I still want one. Because.
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