My subscription Moss-Man arrived yesterday from Mattycollector.com and I was so surprised by how much I loved the figure I was compelled to take pictures and write a quick review.
I have to say I was quite shocked to receive this figure so quickly. After recent posts from Mattycollector regarding possible delays in shipping time, I was stealing myself for a long wait for Mr. Green here. Quite frankly I wasn’t too fussed over the possible delay.
Mossman has never been a favorite character of mine. He wasn’t on the cartoon much, none of my friends had him when we were kids, so I don’t think I ever saw a vintage one in person. The prototype looked nice at SDCC last year, but quite frankly he was overshadowed (in my mind) by the tremendously awesome Battle Cat and Trap Jaw prototypes. How can a Green Beastman compete with that? So while I was happy to buy one, I wasn’t exactly doing cartwheels about it.
As you probably already know, Mossman is a beastman repaint with green Flock covering most of the body. He also has the longer loincloth of King Grayskull and comes with an alternate headsculpt, a mace, a bandolier sculpted to look like it is made from a vine and a knife that fits into the sheath on the bandolier.
The body is mostly a dark greenish brown plastic which is visible only in the sections that aren’t flocked because it would interfere with the articulation. It’s a great effect because the unflocked areas don’t jump out at you as much with this darker base color. It’s a surprisingly good transition, which is nice because the whole flocking saga surrounding this figure seems to have come to a satisfying end.
If you want a more vintage look, you can take the bandolier off and plop the Beastman head on there and you have a pretty darn close match up to the vintage figure. There is a small issue with the Beastman headsculpt that annoys me a little. The head was designed to be jutting forward to accomodate Beastman’s armor, so his head doesn’t sit normally on his neck. The jutting jaw and agressive expression on his face makes it a little hard for me to reconcile the figure with his cardback bio of placid nature god, but hey, that’s what the second headsculpt is for right? YMMV.
The accessories are pretty cool. The bandolier’s vine detail has a great organic look to it and the mace has some great sculpted texture to give a wooden feel. I’m a sucker for knives and swords with sheathes and guns with holsters on my action figures, so the removeable knife is a nice touch. If you want, you can also hook the mace to the bandolier. I like the ability to store all the stuff the figure has if need be.
Now would be as good time as any to mention the smell. Wow. The pine scent air freshener smell is pretty overpowering at first. I have either habituated to it now or it is fading because it doesn’t seem as strong. Probably the former. I swear I could smell the figure through the box it came in!
The articulation is pretty standard MOTUC. I did notice that the joints seemed a lot more solid than they did on my original Beastman figure – no loosey goosey hips or ankles. The only part I would look out for is the flocking around the ab crunch. I had a little bit of it sheer off near the joint due to posing. You can also ‘flatten’ the flocking a little bit if you leave the abs crunched for a while. Still looks good and overall the flocking does not seem to interfere much with the figure’s movement and seems really durable. It’s also just kinda neat. The flocking isn’t a flat green, there’s a few different shades in there.
Overall, I’m quite pleased with this figure. He’s a lot cooler than a green beastman has any right to be (though I can’t look at the Beastman head without thinking ‘Mean old uncle Mossy’ – thanks guys). The part of the figure that worried me the most (the flocking) turned out to be part of what makes the figure cool to look at and pop on the shelf. He’s pretty unique despite the re-use and I’m glad to have him.
