MOTUC Feature – Customized Stinkor

The stench of evil arrived at my house last month with the Masters of the Universe Classics figure Stinkor! Click through for more pics and thoughts about this new(ish) MOTUC figure.

You may or may not have noticed, but most of the pictures of Stinkor in this feature are not of the factory-direct figure. I customized my Stinkor to match the original prototype. So this feature is not an accurate representation of the factory figure. At some point in production, Mattel swapped the left and right forearm pieces. This is not how the Four Horsemen originally sculpted the forearms.

In the pic above, the customized version is on the left and the factory version is on the right. To my eye, the factory version has a strange, unnatural-looking bend to the arm and it bugged me. I haven’t really been bothered by past part-swapping mistakes in this line (Roboto and Hssss’ shoulders), but this one really stood out to me as looking off, so I decided to fix mine.

That said, I can see how some people wouldn’t be bothered by the swap. When he is fully armed, it’s difficult to actually see it (see above pic) and the left arm looks almost passable to my eye. I could also understand how some might actually prefer the unnatural bend in the arms because it actually brings his arms closer to his side. One of my MOTUC pet peeves is that the arms sometimes stick out too far from the figures’ sides due to the thickness of their armor overlay pieces and the reversed forearms actually lessens the effect somewhat.

It’s a fairly simple custom operation. Boil and pop the forearms at the elbow, swap and then repaint the stripe. It was a little tough matching the off-white of the stripe, so I ended up doing a light white drybrush up the arm to bring it all together.

I’m glad I did it for mine, though I’m a bit annoyed I had to. I think the gloves look a lot better with the points sticking outward.

I’ve kept all my MOTUC figures factory clean up until now. I’ve had a weird complex about it, truth be told. I can “fix” a lot of paint issues I have with these figures, but there is something about a good, clean, factory paint job that I love, and I don’t feel like my custom works ever quite matches. Mattel has helped cure me of that little bit of collecting OCD. I think next I’ll add some of the metallic blue to Stinkor’s weapons that we saw on the prototype and maybe some hoses to his gas mask as seen on the 200x staction figure.

Stinkor® Bio

Real Name: Odiphus

Originally a Pelezean thief named Odiphus, Stinkor® was banished from his village after helping a great warlord named Prahvus destroy their defensive weapons. Wandering throughout Eternia®, curiosity led him to Tri- Klops’ lab deep within Snake Mountain™. There he caused an accident that infused his body with a horrid stench so powerful it drives away even Skeletor’s Evil Warriors. After demonstrating how his stench power could be used as a weapon of warfare, Odiphus was recruited back to Snake Mountain™ and armed with a Power Vest Gas Mask created by Tri-Klops® to funnel his stench directly at foes. Armed for combat and calling himself “Stinkor®,” Odiphus has the ability to stink and destroy with his odor of evil.

This bio hews close to Odiphus/Stinkor’s origins from the 2002 cartoon series. I like that the bio mentions Stinkor is able to control his stench through the “power vest” armor he wears. It makes me think that perhaps the vest can absorb the stench so that he doesn’t knock himself out or inflict damage on his allies if he doesn’t want to. I imagine that the gun absorbs, stores, and fires concentrated blasts of Stinkor’s stench at his foes. I figure his regular stench is akin to tear gas and the gun fires a knock-out blast.

Accessories

Stinkor comes with a bunch of good stuff including removable armor, a stink gun, removable gas tanks, a gas mask, an alternate armor valve doodad, and an alternate head sculpt. The vintage figure came with a repainted Mer-Man head, and, as you would expect, the MOTUC Stinkor comes with a repainted MOTUC Mer-Man head.

The vintage Stinkor only carried a shield. I guess he just needed to block attacks until his stench overwhelmed his foes. The shield is a repaint of the shield we got with the royal guards and the Grayskull weapons rack. It’s made of a stiff plastic and clips to Stinkor’s wrist solidly.

The tanks, gas mask, and optional valve doodad for the armor are straight from the 2002 staction design. The tanks can plug into the back of the armor at a peg and stay on solidly. The gas mask is sculpted to fit the alternate head sculpt. It clips on to the mouth and and cannot be used on the vintage head.

The optional valve doodad can be swapped out with the circle on the front of Stinkor’s armor similarly to how Bow’s heart armor detail could be swapped with a circle. It’s made from a soft plastic and swaps easily and solidly with the red circle piece. I don’t actually like the look, so I don’t really use it here (picture #3 in this feature shows the valve attached to the armor), but I think it’s very cool that they included it for fans of the staction figure.

The stink gun makes it’s first appearance in MOTUC and it’s a nice addition. The gun has a cool ’80s-tech vibe that fits in well with the established MOTU tech feel. It’s sculpted to fit into Stinkor’s right hand (there is a special groove for his thumb near the grip of the gun,) and I like the way it looks as a way for Stinkor to focus his stench. The mini-comics show him just sort of gesturing in the direction of his foes, and I think the gun is a lot cooler way to aim his stench attacks.

Sculpt

Stinkor uses the Stratos body with Chief Carnivus calves and Skeletor boots and new forearms, heads, and accessories. The vintage Stinkor was basically a Mer-Man repaint with new armor, but he is depicted as a furry creature in the comics, cardbacks, 2002 series, and staction and style guides, so I am glad that they decided to use the furry base body for the the MOTUC figure.

The new forearms are basically the Skeletor gloves with fur texture sculpted where appropriate. Stinkor also has a furry-neck overlay. I think they needed to add this since the original MOTUC Mer-Man was sculpted to go with a neck overlay piece and would not have looked right on a standard furry-body neck.

The new head sculpt is probably my favorite. It looks to be directly inspired by the staction figure’s head sculpt and is similar to the vintage head sculpt, but with prominent fur details and pointier ears. I like how his mouth is a little bigger and his teeth are a lot sharper. That, combined with the wide-open eyes, gives him a crazy, unhinged look.

The sculpt on the tanks is a study in classicizing a 2002 accessory. They took a fairly complex sculpt and boiled it down to the essential shapes and forms. There is still plenty of cool detail, though it just feels chunkier and more substantial somehow — perfect for these chunky figures.

I also found myself marveling at how cool the big curves are on the chest armor at the point where the armor covers the face. There are some interesting shapes in that armor I never really paid attention to, and the etched-in panel lines add some sharp detail. It’s kind of amazing to me how these MOTUC figures make me reconsider some designs I kind of dismissed out of hand before as uninteresting.

The shape of the gas mask and the etched panel lines tie the mask visually to the curves and panel lines in the chest armor, making it feel like it belongs with the vintage equipment.

Articulation

Stinkor has the standard MOTUC articulation layout. His furry shorts are made of very flexible plastic, so the hip articulation is not hindered. He also has full ab-crunch range of motion, which is a little surprising since his chest armor is so huge.

Paint

Stinkor is pretty plain as far as paint goes. His black fur is cast in black plastic and his stripes are white paint with a bit of dark overspray. The gloves have a semi-gloss finish to them that almost makes them look like rubber gloves. The prototype had some cool metallic blue details on the gun, shield, and pack that are missing here. That’s a shame because these feel a little too plain as is. I still like having all the blue gear on him since it’s a nice contrast for the orange of his armor, but I miss the highlights.

Action Feature

Stinkor is one of the few MOTUC figures that retains his vintage action feature. His vintage figure had patchouli oil mixed into the plastic and this guy does too. He is a little less smelly than the MOTUC Moss Man, but gives off a good stink once he’s within arm’s length. It was actually a bit much for me on the arrival date. I tend to play with the new figures a lot on the first day and I swear, my eyes started to water from the smell. Maybe I’m just too sensitive to the smell of patchouli. It’s funny because my kids will still walk up to Stinkor and give him a whiff so they can run away screaming “ewwww!” at his stench. That reminds me, the other day I was in line at Target and all of the sudden I smelled Stinkor! I immediately started looking around for the toy when I realized it was the woman who walked up behind me in line that I smelled. I was suddenly glad that my kids weren’t with me. I’m afraid what they will say about the next patchouli oil user we run into.

Stinkor was a figure I have gone back an forth on. I was excited when the prototype was revealed, but the reversed forearms cooled my desire for the final figure. I was glad to see that the forearm swap was not so noticeable in hand, but wasn’t fully happy with this figure until I did the arm swap.

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