Well, if ever there was an article where the title pretty much summed up all you ever needed to know, this one was it. So how about we all nod in agreement and go back to looking at people falling while trying Parkour on youtube, OK? Agreed!
Crap, you’re still here. Well, let’s get on with it then.
I’m sure after reading the title, you had one of two thoughts. I know this because I’m psychic, and because the Internet seems split right down the middle on the Meteorbs. There seems to be one side that is all for them, sometimes enthusiastically so, and the other side is in the “not just no but hell no” camp. If you thought to yourself, “I’m not paying for this shiitake mushroom in my sub,” then this article is aimed right at you. Like a gun. A love gun. A sex pistol. Okay let’s go with love gun; it’s much less creepy.
I never had any Meteorbs as a kid. Not that I didn’t want them, but I wouldn’t have been able to get them even if I were crazy about them. I never saw them. The only thing I can think of is that my stores put them in a different area than the regular MOTU figures because they didn’t think they were actually part of the same line or something. And granted, there was something… different… about them, so that was very possible. Or I just could have been unlucky. Hell, maybe a store happened to be carrying them at the moment when I was more into GI Joe than I was Masters of the Universe, as it happened. I was a fickle kid and stranger things occurred.
But the fact is, now, nearly thirty years later… I want some Meteorbs. Because they’re Masters of the Universe characters. It doesn’t matter if they were made for another line and shoehorned in. It doesn’t matter that they’re not muscle-bound dudes who are named after their ability. They are Masters of the Universe characters.
Because “Universe.”
Universe is a big concept… a big place… a big idea. There’s a lot of stuff in a Universe. Are you really going to tell me in a Universe with rock people that there’s no room for a form of life that’s half-meteor half-something else?
I laugh inside my tummy at this notion!
Never mind that things that transform from one thing to another are conceptually the coolest thing on the planet. Granted “rock to tiger” is not as scintillating concept as “car to robot,” but still… transforming things!
When I read the general reaction to the Meteorbs — a reactiion that does seem to trend towards the negative — I sincerely hope that Mattel isn’t listening. Because I think this is a case where if the Horsemen are really allowed to go nuts and create something true to the original, but updated with all the toynology we have at our disposal now, that a lot of heads will be turned, and a lot of rigid opinions will shift. They’re constructed in such a way that ingenious fabrication will lead to enough reuse between the meteor shapes that tooling costs can be kept down. A sub will never make it off the ground with the amount of naysaying, but two 5-packs probably have much more of a chance. Five good, five bad.
I’ll be honest… I go into this knowing I won’t change minds. While there’s a large contingent of “BRING ME VINTAGE OR BRING ME DEATH” collectors who want all the original characters, even those staunch and vocal outcriers seem anti-Meteorbs. Or at least they’re “meh”teorbs about it. Haha… Internet slang.
While The Meteorbs showed up early in the Star Comics run, and I enjoyed that title well enough, there was still a… well, let’s just go ahead and say “Star Comics” quality to that title, which was also very Filmationesque. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but there was a “lighthearted morality play” essence to it, where I was way more Alcala in my leanings. That comic didn’t make me a Meteorb fan. It was this one image that did it, in the pages of the He-Man Magazine:
That is by Earl Norem, who presented a realistic, gritty take to every MOTU image that poured from his paintbrush, and, along with artists like Texeira, Alcala, and others, he made this Universe these people lived in seem cool. That picture of these badass, steaming, flaming rock-animal hybrids (or rock-robot in Cometroid’s case, I guess) seared itself into my brain and would have erased any doubt I had that these creatures belong staunchly in the confines of MOTU. If the idea of that doesn’t grab you, if the pure, undiluted heavy-metal fury of a meteor that turns into a robot fighting a meteor that turns into a gorilla alongside a demon with a skull for a face and a muscle bound barbarian… well, I just don’t know what it’s all about. But I do know that we can get every vintage creation, we can get some long-missing mini-comic characters, we can get cartoon characters and never-before made Princess of Power creations, but without the Meteorbs, this line will never be truly complete.
