May is almost over, so what better time to take a look at the MOTUC April Subscription figure: Snake Face? A month ago? Good point. I try to get these done earlier, really I do.
Snake Face™ Bio
Real Name: Cyltho Ssstavvve
Originally a minor training officer in the Unnamed One’s Serpent Army, Cyltho Ssstavvve drew King Hssss’ attention after he was enchanted with the ability to turn his enemies to stone by the Great Black Wizard. Quickly brought into Hssss’ inner circle, Snake Face™ often acted as the Viper King’s second in command during the Great Wars with Grayskull™. He was trapped with the entire Snake Army in the Void for five millennia, but eventually was called forth by King Hssss™ to do battle once again after their release – this time against new enemies – He-Man® and the Masters of Universe®! Snake Face™ slithers after his enemy, then turns him to stone!
I don’t recall any written material that gave Hssss a second in command, so that’s an interesting addition to the lore. In the 2002 show, I got the feeling that Rattlor was number one, but they didn’t use Snake Face too often.
I do like that they keep working the Great Black Wizard into the bios and would love to see some detailed art for the character or some background on where they came up with this guy or what they had planned. Is he purely a deus ex machina device? I’m intrigued.
Accessories
Snake face comes with the standard Snake Man staff, a new shield, armor with swappable plates and snakes, and an alternate head sculpt.
The staff is the regular snake staff repainted and is made of a sturdy, hard plastic so there is no warping. The shield is also sturdy plastic with a strong arm clip. I kind of wish they had gone with a more 2002 version of the Snake Face shield because I like the look of that one better, but I didn’t really expect that for MOTUC.
I do wish there were a little more paint to bring out the nice scale details on the shield. The swappable armor/snake parts are meant to mimic the opening function from the original toy and I think it works well.
The snakes/armor plates are made of a stiff plastic with pegs that swap easily and securely into holes in the softer plastic armor. The second head has snakes permanently popping out of the mouth and eye sockets to mimic the action feature and I think it looks as good as Snake Face ever has in any media or MOTU toy I’ve ever seen.
The armor itself is a little odd. It’s made of a very soft plastic, but it is loose. Fortunately, when you pose Snake Face’s arms at his sides, he can actually hold down his arms better than some other figures with thicker armor.
Another neat feature, and I’m not sure if this was done intentionally, is that you can utilize the ab crunch on Snake face and since the armor is loose, it can repositioned to cover his belly up a bit more than other figures with this type of armor. The problem comes in when you are posing him with his arms up, the torso looks a little oddly wide.
Sculpt
Snake Face uses the existing Skeletor legs, Clawful/Whiplash/Buzz Off torso and has brand new head, armor, arms, and undies. All the new stuff is exquisite in it’s scaly detail.
The head was always a weak point for me on the original figure, but here it looks quite menacing. It’s all so great and detailed that the regular old Skeletor parts kind of suffer in comparison, especially when you consider the line of demarcation between mostly new and old parts is a bright purple pair of Dick Grayson Robin-style scale mail short-shorts.
It’s mostly vintage accurate, though, so I can’t fault them too much for that and the upper body is so cool. The tiny snakes on the face and the armor also have a ton of great scale detail packed in there which is pretty remarkable when you consider how small those snakes are.
Articulation
Snake Face features the standard MOTUC articulation. His shorts piece and armor are both flexible enough to allow for the full range of articulation.
Paint
Snake Face has a cool two-toned paint job with a gray body with green drybrushed highlights. The eye paint on the non-snaked head is slightly sloppy, but otherwise the paint is pretty precise.
The only addition I would have like was a wash or perhaps some airbrushed shading on the snake shield to bring out those details more.
Final Thoughts
Snake Face is not a figure I remember from childhood, so I have no nostalgic connection to the character.
I have actually been dreading this one as it’s one of the Snake Men designs that I thought looked absolutely wretched in the vintage line.
The idea of a male Medusa seems a little off to me, and the face sculpt on that original figure always looked really soft and odd and disproportionate to me.
The gimmick of the snakes popping out of the chest and face was probably fun for kids, no doubt, but I feel like it definitely hurt the aesthetics of the sculpt. Upon seeing the prototype at Comic-Con, however, I was totally sold on him.
The 4H worked their magic and straightened out the proportions beautifully, and the sculpt is about as sharp as it gets in this line. All the scale work is excellent and the action feature is done in a way that doesn’t hurt the overall look.
There was a brief moment of fear when the Snake Face prototypes started hitting eBay with armor outrageously oversized. Fortunately, the armor can squeeze down pretty well and while not prototype perfect, it looks pretty close.
Previous Features:
- King He-Man
- Fang Man
- Ram Man
- Jitsu
- Netossa
- Granamyr
- Eternos Palace Randor
- Snake Men Two Pack
- Sir Laser-Lot
- Vykron
- Snake Man-At-Arms
- Stinkor
- Spector
- Draego-Man
- Thunder Punch He-Man
- Kobra Khan
- Fisto
- Fearless Photog
- Demo-Man
- Battleground Evil-Lyn
- 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
- Faker
- Stratos
