There’s a lot of conventions out there, and that means the reveals keep popping up. This time Stan Lee’s own Comikaze Expo brought a pair trio! of brand new Masters of the Universe Classics figures for us to drool over. Or whine about. Depends on your point of view, I guess.
It’s no secret that the fanbase behind MOTUC can often widely diverge where Princess of Power and New Adventures come in. Many manly men think the Princess of Power figures will assault their virility, and others think that New Adventures doesn’t deserve to exist, as if it’s not “true” He-Man stuff. I’m pretty much on the poppycock side of that argument, as in that’s all poppycock, since I’m way more interested in building this universe with as much random, bizarre diversity as possible. Woe betide the pale imagination that cannot find room in its infinite corridors for a colorful chick with butterfly wings in their MOTU world.
Let’s start with that aforementioned POP offering first: the butterfly chick that goes by the dainty sobriquet of Flutterina. No, no, I get it; if you’re not completely secure in your masculinity, I guess a character called “Flutterina” might make you lift one eyebrow and bunch up the bottom half of your face as if you smelled something weird. Personally, I’ve really enjoyed the POP offerings so far. I’ve even been a vocal proponent of the gigantically hated Star Sisters. Here’s the thing about these characters: I love color. I love the big, bold, colorful costumes of the Silver Age of DC and Marvel comics. But all too often nowadays colors are muted, toned down, and essentially neutered due to people’s insistence that they need their superheroes to be realistic. Well, that’s a whole other article, but I love the fact that there’s this little niche of toys that aren’t afraid to be as in-your-face colorful as possible, utilizing not just the presupposed “manly” colors, but tossing in every pastel chalk color you can think of.
Because of this, and because of the fact that the MOTUC female body is one of the best female bodies out there, I’m completely unafraid to be a fan of these updated versions of girl’s toys.
Flutterina looks to have a great face sculpt. I’d totally hit on her if I saw her downtown. Even if she had big wings growing out of her back. Hell, especially if she did. Speaking of the wings, I’ve read a lot of complaints about them, but the wings don’t bug me that much at all. I’m not sure if these are the final versions or are just mock-ups and something more will be done to them, but if not, I’m still fine with them the way that they are. She looks exactly like I’d expect her to look. I bet she’s hardcore — a bullet with butterfly wings. Yeah, I just wanted to use that reference here. Moving on…
Flutterina is cool, but the show has definitely been stolen by “Intergalactic Skeletor”, or just plain and simple “New Adventures Skeletor.” 2013 brought us new Adventures He-Man, so 2014 will bring the main bad guy.
I was really curious about how they’d pull off Skeletor’s New Adventures look. Most NA media portrays Skeletor as having these really weird-looking actual eyeballs in his bony face, and, I have to admit, I’m not a big fan of that. That’s not to say it couldn’t have been made to look good, or that the figure would have been terrible if that had been the way this version was tackled, but I am glad to see that the figure has eschewed eyeballs for just a hint of red pupil buried deep in the familiar hollow eye sockets.
Skeletor looks like he jumped right off the cover of an ‘80s metal CD. Every single part of this figure shouts “bad-ass!” in as high a voice as possible. I’m pretty sure this figure doesn’t just get delivered to your house, but gets rocketed through your front door by a stealth bomber only to explode in a pyrotechnic shower of sparks. I’m practically befuddled how anybody could not dig him. While the New Adventures cartoon and toys were only barely on my radar when I was younger — when I first saw the toys back when they were in stores I didn’t know that they were part of the actual He-Man property and thought they were knock-offs — the NA has consistently been producing some of my favorite figures because of the no-holds-barred insanity of their designs. Optikk was an early favorite, Slush Head and Karatti both quickly grabbed my attention, and now New Adventures Skeletor is staring right at me and stealing my soul with a matched pair of harmonized guitars.
Plus, he comes with a battle-damaged head for Faker, so you can either replace the head on your regular Faker or you have a cool extra head to put on your Battle Armor Faker with a scratched up chestplate. That’s probably what I’ll be doing with mine.
BRRRREAKING NEWS!
OK, so it won’t be breaking when you read this, but this column was mostly done when another character had not yet been revealed on Sunday. And that character is Broom, the ride of Madame Razz. He was shown alongside the already-shown Loo-kee. Whether these guys will be coming in a set, as pack-ins or what, I don’t know. I’m already reading some disgruntled reactions, so my response to that is brief and fairly pompous, so grab your girdle and hang on: it’s a pretty poor imagination that can’t find the cool factor in a talking broom.
There, I said it.
So while the Comikaze only had a pair trio of figures to show off, they’re nice niche-fillers that expand the ranks of the New Adventures and Princess of Power offerings. I’m pretty happy with them. Are you?
For more pictures of Fwoosh’s coverage click here!