Since an updated version of Rio Blast will be making its way to us shortly, I was in the mood to look at the original version. Being an only child without any “toy friends” (meaning my playtime was mine and mine alone and that’s the only way I wanted it), I spent a long time being fairly oblivious to the opinions of others concerning the toys I played with. That is, until the Internet came along. It was then when I first found out that Rio Blast was widely regarded as an outsider to the Masters of the Universe line because he “didn’t fit in.” Since there was no Wild West on Eternia, a boot-wearing, quick-draw gunslinger apparently didn’t seem to make much sense when butted up against barbarians and demons and floating trolls.
“Doesn’t fit in” is about the worst insult that can be leveled against a toy, and Rio had apparently been bearing the burden of those insults for quite some time.
Lucky for me, I had no such qualms.
Rio Blast was a relative latecomer to the line with no cartoon presence and only an appearance in his own mini-comic and an issue of the Star Comics series, but he quickly became one of my favorites once I had him in hand because he embodied about three or four different lines at once: he was a Masters of the Universe figure who transformed and had more weapons than your average GI Joe. I’m sure there’s something in there about MASK and illusion being the ultimate weapon or something also. There was literally nothing about him that wasn’t awesome. Not only did he fit, but the line needed a cowboy. Every line got a cowboy. GI Joe had Wild Bill, Silverhawks had Bluegrass, Transformers had…
OK, most every line got a cowboy. Even if there was no Wild West on Eternia, there was always a need for a different archetype. Cowboys fit just as well as anything on a planet as large as Eternia. Especially if he came from another planet. Or something. I didn’t care. Because chest lasers.
The flip-out-gun gimmick never got old. In fact, I’m almost sorry they’re not going to exist on the updated MOTUC figure. While I am glad we’ll be getting a figure without large cavities, I’ll miss the simple pleasure of surreptitiously flipping guns out from the wackiest places. Rio Was a dude that you couldn’t outdraw and you couldn’t disarm. Even if you took his funky backpack laser away, he had a chest full of zap-pow that was just waiting.
I’m surprised I never wore the guns down to nubs with the amount of times I flipped them in and out.
Coming late in the line, Rio was an interesting look at where they were going in their thinking. If MOTU hadn’t stopped, what other wacky concepts would they have started tossing in? Who knows. But regardless of where one stands on the issue of “fitting in,” Rio as a standalone figure remains one of the cooler of the more gimmicky MOTU figures and, to me, broadened the world of Eternia with his presence.
And his chest flap is actually flush to his chest, something that 2014 apparently has problems with. Zing!
