Masters of the Universe Classics Feature: Hover Robots

Skeletor finally gets his army builder set this year in MOTUC and subscribers had a brief window to buy some this past week. I grabbed a couple sets, so let’s take a look at Skeletor’s Robot Knights: the Hover Robots!

Hover Robots™ Bio

Real Name: N/A
During his campaign of terror against King Randor’s Masters of the Universe, Skeletor often utilized Robotic Hover Drones to carry out his evil stratagems. Based on a design he pilfered from his dark arts teacher, Hordak, Skeletor’s drones were more agile than his mentor’s and carried a built in hover field to increase their mobility and durability. Hover Robots will effortlessly carry out any order—including self destruction! These techno-bots of terror carry a variety of weapons, including laser riffles, blade blasters and net lassos. Often on the front lines of battle, Hover Robots confront the Masters of the Universe in endless combat.

I think the idea that the design was stolen from Hordak is there to explain the resemblance to the Horde trooper. That works for me.

What You Get

Each package includes three Hover Robots, three stands, three sets of buzz-saw and claw hands, and a sticker sheet. The stands are translucent, solid plastic, and plug solidly into the bottom of the hover robot. The alternate hands pop in and out of the arms easily, but are nice and solid.

The stickers are a fun idea to add different battle damages to the figure. I think the most effective sticker is the blast marks. You can see the outline of the stickers pretty clearly up close, but they work well at a distance.

Sculpt

The sculpt is Filmation perfect, though the ‘bot does seem a little small compared to some shots in Filmation. I’m still okay with that since scale is not very consistent in that cartoon.

Articulation

The Hover Robots have the following articulation:

Swivel head and wrists, and a swivel connection to the stand
Swivel/Hinge shoulders and elbows

The movement is as much as I need from a Hover Robot. The only thing I could suggest to improve movement would be a ball and socket joint at the stand. It would require a new stand, but would lend a bit more of a floating feel to the posing.

Paint

Paint is very nice here in that the silver parts are a very shiny reflective silver paint.

The base “metal” of the main body is cast in the solid gray plastic and has a slightly more metallic version of that color to highlight some of the details.

The yellow eyes have a little bit of bleed here and there. I think a wash would have been nice to highlight some of the panel lines. The chest piece has a little lenticular sticker that has a neat effect and gives an illusion of energy coursing across that panel.

Overall

The Hover Robots were near the top of my list of possible army builders for Skeletor because of their frequent Filmation appearances.

The 3-pack makes for a pretty nice little army in just one package. I got two and I think I’m done, perhaps one more will be good. I’m a big fan of army building, so it’s nice to get a bunch in one shot.

Hopefully, there will be plenty more of these figures available at the end of the year when they go on sale again. The past convention exclusives have been pretty easy to pick up, so I’m not too worried.