Due to the Demo-Man delay issue, this December 2011 quarterly variant figure arrived the day after my first January 2012 figures arrived. Most times toy delivery delays don’t bother me, but man, this delay drove me bonkers. Sometimes delays can kill my enthusiasm for product, but fortunately the delay only heightened my anticipation for this figure (and Demo-Man). Click through for some more pics of this new version of Evil-Lyn.
Battleground Evil-Lyn® Bio
Real Name: Evelyn Morgan Powers™
Cast aside by her secret husband after his transformation, Evil-Lyn® sent their infant son into the future and plotted to overthrow Skeletor® by releasing his enemies from their dimensional prisons. In a series of miscalculations, she helped free the Snake Men™, Hordak® and Gygor™ – increasing her adversaries threefold! After Randor and Miro returned from Despondos™, the Three Towers rose and Evil-Lyn® found herself again allied with Skeletor® during the Second Ultimate Battleground. At the end, defeated and stripped of her powers by the new Sorceress® of Grayskull™, Evil-Lyn® used the Cosmic Key™ and the Power of Central Tower to return to the future to find a new life with her long lost child – The Son of Skeletor®!
This is an interesting bio to say the least. I do like the idea of Teela as the Sorceress finally beating Evil-Lyn. I always had them fight each other in my childhood battles (probably since they were the only girls), but thinking about it now, Teela the warrior was outmatched by the talented sorceress Lyn. I like to see the underdog rally for the final win. I had not not seen a ‘Son of Skeletor’ (SOS) coming as I have a hard time imagining Evil-Lyn as somebody’s mother or Keldor getting married. It’s all a little soap opera for me, but hey if they make a SOS figure and he looks cool, I’d take it. When I first read that bio, I immediately thought we would be seeing SOS as one of the 30th anniversary figures, but so far no.
Accessories
Battleground Evil-Lyn comes with two head sculpts, a repaint of her original staff with an alternate orb, a repaint of her original knife and a removable cape. The first head sculpt is a repaint of the original MOTUC Evil-Lyn head sculpt and while that is one of my favorites, this repaint blows it away due to a more subtle paint job on the eyes. The second head is the long requested helmet free head sculpt revealing Lyn’s shock of white hair. That’s something I’ve been looking forward to having for a long time and I’d like one to match my vintage colors Lyn as well.
The staff comes with both purple and glow in the dark orbs. The purple orb is pretty nice, but I don’t much care for the glow in the dark one. It’s a cool idea and sounded interesting to me when announced, but a little underwhelming in practice. I mean, in the dark all you see is this glowing sphere and it’s kind of dull. It doesn’t throw enough light to make the figure look cool in the dark, not that I would expect it to at that size. I did hope that I could at least get a cool photo out of it, but this was the best I could do:
Personally I think I would have preferred the shorter ‘wand’ handle to this. I do like how the knife looks in this color scheme, though.
The cape is made from a soft material that drapes over her shoulders nicely and does not hinder articulation. I’m kinda shocked at how much such a small addition changes the look of the figure for the better. The cape look is something I do like about the Filmation Lyn, even though I’m a vintage toy version of Lyn fan. Again, I’d like one for my vintage colors Lyn at some point in a weapons pack.
Sculpt
Battleground Evil-Lyn is mostly a repaint and while this has been a problem for a lot fans, I’m good with it. First of all the Teela body is one of the best sculpts in the line, secondly the repaints here do nothing but improve on what was already there and I’m not even a fan of this color scheme. The new additions include the cape, the helmet-free head and some new rotating gauntlets. Evil-Lyn also has Catra’s claw hand sculpt that works perfectly for me as an evil ‘spell casting’ hand. This is a great addition to the figure and one of the few things missing from the original MOTUC Evil-Lyn (one of my favorite figures in the line thus far) so I’m elated to see it here. When they get to Castaspella, I would like to see them make a nicer spell casting hand. The claw works great for the evil ladies, but I don’t think it would work for the goodies.
The head sculpt sans helmet is something I was really looking forward to that was slightly disappointing. I’m not sure if it’s the sculpt or just a paint issue, but the eyes and expression on the new head seem a little more severe and not quite as sultry as the original’s. There seems to be less eyelash and eyeshadow on the new head sculpt and she doesn’t quite have that heavy lidded “Malificent” feel I love in the original. It’s just slightly off. That said it’s still pretty darn cool to have this version and it’s very nice, just not quite as nice as the original.
The new forearms look just like the originals, but are articulated so you can choose the orientation of the gauntlets. That’s a nice feature as the original gauntlet placement design on this base figure always seemed counter to what you would expect. I do think the arms look a little more natural with the gauntlets posed in their original position, though. As I said earlier, the cape sculpt is pretty much perfect and spices up this repaint quite a bit for my taste.
Articulation
The articulation is what we’ve come to expect from this base body with standard MOTUC articulation minus the ab crunch. Fortunately the dress piece is soft plastic that doesn’t hinder the figure’s hip articulation very much.
Paint
As I mentioned earlier, the paint job on the original Lyn head sculpt is fantastic. The eyes are perfection and the helmet is painted this amazing gloss black that catches the light beautifully. The detail paints are pretty sharp and the silver paint they chose is super shiny. I don’t see a lot of shading or drybrushing, though I didn’t miss it until thinking about it for the review here. Another interesting thing about the paint job is that Lyn’s skin is cast in gray plastic. Usually I prefer a painted plastic for skin tone, but the plastic used here looks great.
When I’d first heard rumurs that a 2002 colors Evil-Lyn variant was a possibility for MOTUC, I did not see this figure in my mind’s eye. I imagined that the 4H would sculpt her ‘bone’ dress similar to the costume of the Faceless One, so when this was shown at comic-con I was a little surprised. I was also surprised to find that I didn’t care as I loved the look of the prototype. I do understand why some fans are disappointed, but I’m not. The final figure follows through on the promise of that prototype for me, (one or two little nitpicks aside) and actually makes this vintage Lyn fan like the 2002 colors far more than I ever did before.
Previous reviews:
- Star Sisters
- Class of 2011
- Class of 2009
- Icarius
- Hurricane Hordak
- Man-E-Faces
- Megator
- Queen Marlena
- Clawful
- The Faceless One
- Battleground Teela
- Catra
- Panthor
- Battle Armor Skeletor
- King Hssss
- Bow
- Palace Guards
- Vikor
- Class of 2010
- Buzz-Off
- Grizzlor
- Roboto
- Chief Carnivus
- Whiplash
- Count Marzo
- She-Ra
- Keldor
- Optikk
- Evil-Lynn
- Moss-Man
