MOTUC Review – Hurricane Hordak

Mattycollector.com Horde Month kicks of with the shiny new Hordak variant, Hurricane Hordak!  I love the Horde, but  I don’t really have the connection to the characters from my childhood like I do with the Evil Warriors.  I think I had moved on to the next toy line (was it M.A.S.K.?  I can’t quite recall what it was I moved on to) by the time of their introduction to the MOTU world, but I’ve gained an appreciation of the Horde through the She-Ra cartoon and the MOTUC line.  A big feature of the Filmation Hordak was his transforming abilities, including the ability to change his arm into a cannon, so you can imagine I was looking forward to a cannon armed Hordak in MOTUC.

Click through for more pics and thoughts about this brand new Masters of the Universe Classics bonus figure!

 

Hurricane Hordak Bio

 

Real Name: Hec-Tor Kur™

After being released from exile in Despondos™ by Evil-Lyn®, Hordak® returned to Eternia® with his ageless army to once again claim its hidden magical properties for his own. Finding his former pupil Skeletor® on the throne following the apparent “death” of King Randor™, Hordak upgraded his armor with a Hurricane Blaster which he used to challenge the Evil Lord of Destruction™ and drive the Snake Men™ back into hibernation. After ripping through the walls of Snake Mountain™, Hurricane Hordak casts off his battle shield and advances on Skeletor whirling his thunderball mace!

This is one of those bios that gives you some real broad strokes as to how the conflicts on Eternia play out between the warring factions with Skeletor on the Throne of Eternos and Hordak banishing the Snake Men.  I find it interesting that similar to Battle Armor He-Man and Battle Armor Skeletor, the bio mentions upgrading armor, though it doesn’t specify how he did it.  I’m assuming it’s a technological upgrade as Hordak was a more technology based character on the She-Ra cartoon while on the 2002 and MOTUC stories he seems to have some kind of magical basis (bonding a demon to Keldor, for example).

Accessories

Hordak comes with removeable armor and three ‘whirling’ attachments to his right ‘cannon’ arm including a bat shaped blade, a four pronged blade claw and his Thunderball mace.

 

 

The weapons are all cast in a solid red plastic and I didn’t have any warpage issues with them.  I knew there aren’t action features in this line, but I assumed that they would all spin on the arm if you gave them a flick with your hand, but only the mace spins and that’s a little hit and miss on my figure.  Sometimes it really spins and other times it’s kind of a weak spin.  They attach to the cannon arm the same way Trap Jaw and Roboto’s attachments work and are interchangeable with those other figures’ equipment.  It’s not a feature I’m probably ever going to use, but it’s nice that they included the option.

The armor feels like it’s made from the stiff torso plastic, but it’s very thin so it can be bent.  I think it’s one piece with a hinge at the shoulders and clips at the sides.  I started taking it off and heard this cracking sound and just decided to leave it on.  I’m going to err on the side of caution with this figure.

Sculpt

Hurricane Hordak re-uses quite a lot of the original MOTUC Hordak with a new armor sculpt, new right forearm and cowl.  The armor sculpt has a sharp ridge at the collar bone where I believe the front and back of the armor are hinged.  The cowl has an indentation to fit over this ridge.  This makes the collar more stationary than it is on the original Hordak and impedes head articulation  a bit.

The ‘cannon’ arm has some nice rivet detail and makes for a great looking filmation style gun arm all on it’s own.  The back of the armor features an homage to the original figure’s action feature in the shape of a large red ‘dial’.  The dial here is so large and sharp I can buy it as part of the armor’s decoration.

Articulation

Hordak features the standard MOTUC articulation scheme but it is hindered at the neck as stated above and the ab crunch has a more limited range of motion than usual due to the armor design.

Fortunately, he has the most flexible loincloth yet for a figure with the longer ‘Pre-Ternia’ version so his leg movement is better than the original Hordak.

Paint

The paint is probably the most controversial aspect of this figure.  He was originally shown with a more flat gold paint job like SDCC exclusive figure He-Ro and a few fans have expressed the desire that Mattel had kept that more standard paint job.  I really like the look of the vac metal they used but, I was a little worried about it staying this shiny.

I had a lot of vac metal toys as a kid, including quite a few C-3PO figures.  Chipping wasn’t the issue (though it did happen) so much as the gold fading out to a weak silver.  My Hordak took a few falls on this Snake Mountain set which has a hard rock like texture floor and fortunately did not pick up any chips, so the Vac is a little tougher than I thought.

I did notice, however that a bit of the black they used to paint the bones around the shoulder of the armor did scrape off, so I would suggest buyers treat those areas where Mattel painted over the Vac Metal with extra care.

Hurricane Hordak is a nice looking figure, but he doesn’t quite meet my needs.  I was really hoping that I could mix and match parts easily with the original to create a filmation style Hordak when I wanted one.  My fears about damaging the paint on Hurricane Hordak has discouraged me from doing the parts swap which is kind of a bummer.  I will be treating this figure with kid gloves to make sure it stays as nice looking as it does now.

Turnarounds

 

Previous reviews:

• Man-E-Faces
• Megator
• Queen Marlena
• Clawful
• The Faceless One
• Battleground Teela
• Catra
• Panthor
• Battle Armor Skeletor
• King Hssss
• Bow
• Palace Guards
• Vikor
• Buzz-Off
• Grizzlor
• Roboto
• Chief Carnivus
• Whiplash
• Count Marzo
• She-Ra
• Keldor
• Optikk
• Evil-Lynn
• Moss-Man