I’ve
got to be honest here – I was not looking forward to doing this
review.
There
are so many
problems inherent in reviewing something like this. It’s a
one-of-a-kind item that cannot reasonably be compared to anything
else on the market. It was massively expensive, so there was pretty
much no way it was going to – from a purely objective stance – be
worth the money. While Mattel did a very
good job of managing our expectations on this one, they still set the
bar a bit too high with their initial announcement. And finally –
the people that did pay $250 for this thing are possibly going to be
very resistant to – and resentful of – anything negative that is
said about this toy.
Never
mind the folks that failed to preorder and paid $300.
Another
issue was how long it took me to feel like I had enough pictures for
the review. I took one batch when we opened it, one batch a couple of
days later, and then a bunch more just a couple of weeks ago. There’s
a lot of real estate here and I wanted to be sure I covered
everything (I did).
So once
I had my pictures together and sorted I started playing around with
Windows Power Point. I had an idea of how I wanted to do the review,
but I needed a better narrative presentation than the Phantomaniacs
simply scrolling down the page. I feel like this worked and I hope
you guys get a kick out of it. I put a lot more time and effort into
this review than I have any other because regardless of the final
score, I feel like Scott Nietlich and the 4 Horsemen put every bit of
themselves into making this the best Castle Grayskull it could
possibly be.
OVERALL
Am I
happy I bought this thing? Of course I am. We will never see a better
Grayskull than this one.
4
out of 5
Castle
Grayskull is still available from MattyCollector.
I can’t imagine that it sold as well as Mattel was hoping because
it is a three hundred dollar toy that might be pretty awesome, but
does not stand on its own. In order to fully appreciate it you also
need to invest several hundred dollars in the rest of the associated
line. This is not an impulse buy.
I
suppose there are pipe dreamers out there who would like to believe
that Snake Mountain is a possibility (I’d love
to believe that), but I don’t think that it is. Not just because of
the massive success that the Castle would have had to experience, but
also because Snake Mountain would require some major reworking to be
an appropriate playset for Masters of the Universe Classics.
Really, really cool idea. I love the Power point slides as it was very easy to scroll through. I reviewed Grayskull back in early December, but I agree with most of your points: little elements like the Dungeon sticker and such really brought this down a bit.l I definitely think there could have been more small details, too. I definitely get what you mean when you say that the 4H were probably very limited by Mattel. I remember one of the Roast Gooble Dinner podcasts where the 4H discussed leaving out minor details because they knew that those would probably not get the proper paint apps they needed.
ReplyDeleteOh,and the hole being used as a toilet? Hilarious!
I actually bought the sewer grate cover from BadVermin customs and think it tremendously improves the castle.
I need to poke around and check out all of the various third party add-ons for the castle.
DeleteReally enjoyed browsing through the PowerPoint. Cool Idea!
ReplyDeleteThanks - glad you enjoyed it!
Delete