I’m going to be brutally honest here — there are aspects of collecting Masters of the Universe Classics that make me tired. Don’t get me wrong, I love the toys and I love the line, and the fact that it exists is wonderful thing. But I get tired of hearing about Toy Guru and people’s opinions on Toy Guru. I get tired of people finding something wrong with every single figure. I get tired of the endless complaining about Matty’s horrible incompetence. The problem with that is that there are people right now that are saying, “We wouldn’t have so much to complain about if there wasn’t so much to complain about.” Which is fine, I guess, in a circular logic sort of way. Hey, if you want to wallow in the negative, go nuts. Sure, things aren’t absolutely perfect, and people passionate about a property can get all keyed up about things. But I don’t collect toys to be miserable. So I’d rather think about the things that do excite me
Now that I’ve probably driven away 3/4ths of the readers, I want to get to the eventual point of the article, and the thing that makes me genuinely excited about this line: post-vintage.
There’s a significant amount of people that have been biting their nails and furrowing their brow over the fact that they may not get all the vintage toys in updated form. Because that’s why they’re into it. And that’s cool too. But they tend to see everything that isn’t vintage as a waste of a space. Personally, I love the vintage recreations, and share the same view that getting brand new updated versions of those well-loved versions from way back when is awesome, and having a full set will be the culmination of something beautiful. When I think about the fact that I’ll have the versions that I was really playing with in my head all those years ago, the ones that were articulated and realistic — that’s damn cool. So I get it. But my MOTUC fury doesn’t stop with vintage. There’s a potential here for something that none of us got as kids: a toy line that doesn’t end.
There’s a truth that you come to grips with when you’re a kid, even if you don’t want to. It’s a truth that endless fruitless trips to the toy aisle eventually lets you in on, and that truth is that a toy line doesn’t keep going just because you want it to. That fourth wave of Super Powers? Not happening, and the third wave might as well not have existed. That third wave of Secret Wars? No such thing. COPS are done. MASK is through. Even toy lines that somehow manage to continue on become a pale parody of themselves, like when GI Joe suddenly got all neon and fluorescent and incorporated Street Fighter characters or something.
But Masters of the Universe is getting a second shot. Vintage will end, and everyone that was made will be made again, but that doesn’t mean the end of anything.
It can keep going.
First, there’s plenty of life in the various media to stripmine. There are cartoon characters that have never been made and mini-comic originals that we still don’t have. The various books or magazines still have viable character choices. They’ve already proven themselves a great font of character, giving us choices like Plundor, Goat Man, and Geldor. The cartoons generated plenty of one-off characters that could revitalize a post-vintage line. Beyond that, there’s concept characters that the original minds working on the line never saw in plastic form, many of which are just a half-step away from being as awesome as anything that was legitimized on the toy shelves. I never got that Power and Honor Catalog, but from what I’ve seen there’s a lot in there that could be finally given its due.
But once the cartoons have been picked over, and the comics and the Princess of Power and New Adventures lines have been seeded into the line, what’s left?
Plenty.
There’s already hints of what might be coming up with all of the talk of “Son of He-Man” along with — oh god, it hurts to even say it — ”Skeleteen.”
Side note on Skeleteen. Stop it with Skeleteen. That is a horrible, horrible name.
Horrible.
There’s resistance to the Son of He-Man stuff, and I get that, because it can end up going horribly wrong — for instance, there could be a character called “Skeleteen.” But anything can be done and done well. I think my main problem with digging into the Son of He-Man stuff is it’s not that far removed from what we have currently. Calling a kid “Dare” and dumping some teenage angst on him doesn’t add much to the overall mythos, and it can end up being way too “James Bond Jr.”
I’m more in favor of just adding on to what we have. More villains. More good guys. If you have to go to the future… then really go to the future. Kick it into high gear and make the line more about the “Masters of the Universe” than it is about one dude with muscles. He-Man is a fun character and has obviously always been the centerpoint and mascot of the line, but I think basing everything around him can lead to a certain level of stagnation. I know that may be heresy to those who see the line more as “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” but a toy line — especially one like this — has to evolve, or it will die.
I’d be way more interested in a time on Eternia that’s a lot further away than a single generation. This line could grow into a huge, imaginative line that deals with an Eternia thousands of years later. The familiar things like Power Swords, Grayskulls, and world-threatening evils can continue in some fashion, but I’d love to see the concepts evolve. Or it could go backwards and open up the time when all those fun vehicles were first created, like the Battle Ram and the Talon Fighter. What kind of battle went on back then? That’s what I’m interested in. I want to see the characters that populated those times, and I’d like to see what some fertile imaginations can come up with to populate these times. Let the Horsemen go nuts and forge ahead with their own vision of MOTU once vintage is over; they’ve already proven to be great designers and clearly have a handle on what MOTU is. Bring in those great Fuerza-T mash-ups and incorporate them into the line somewhere. There’s probably a great story behind the beginnings of the Horde Empire and who went against them — I’d like to see that. All new villains with insane designs and unique heroes from all corners of the universe to fight them? Sounds awesome.
And the great thing about this is that you can completely ignore anything about the story itself and just add more and more cool toys to the collection. They can be in the past, the present, or the future. The loss of vintage will be a bittersweet thing, but it could also unleash the potential in a line to really embrace truth in the name that was hung on it three decades ago: Masters of the Universe.