Well, after a decent wait, the first waves of Super7’s Masters of the Universe Classics are now making their way into hands everywhere. We will be taking a look at the Collector’s Choice side of things today, and handle the Club Grayskull figures (Filmation-styled figures) next week.
When I received tracking information from Super7, I had to go back in my payment history to see when I preordered these figures. There have been a couple of delays, and in the time between then and now, I had forgotten who was in the waves. I’ve pre-ordered yet another couple of waves since then, so I was a little mixed up as to who I should be expecting. There’s just too many toys coming out, man. I can’t cope!
Once I refreshed my memory, I remembered why I was looking forward to this wave for more than the obvious “more MOTU” reasons.
LODAR!
As soon as mini-comic characters were on the table, I had two must-haves. One was Geldor, a figure we received before Matty’s tenure with MOTUC ended, and the second was Lodar. Any time I made a wish list, they were there. Once Matty was done, it was all on Super7 to deliver his purple majesty, and they did so in spades with this first wave.
But there are three other figures in this wave, so let’s take a quick look at all of them. I’m going to start with my least favorite of the wave and press onward to most favorite, so that means we start off with Hawke.
“Least favorite” is probably harsh. To be fair, she’s a good figure, but it’s hard to compete in a wave like this. Hawke’s only real crime is in not being Lodar or a snake man or a weirdo alien guy.
Overall, Hawke accomplishes being Hawke very well. She’s on a sleek, well-proportioned body. One of the delays was in fixing a “wide hip” issue, which does indeed seem to have been fixed. She has what should probably be a boob crunch, but unfortunately mine ends up being only a boob swivel. If she’s supposed to get any crunching done there it’s nominal to nearly non-existent, but I don’t know if that’s a common flaw or if I just got a dud.
Hawke features the standard MOTUC aritculation, which is single elbows and single knees. The ankles feature the upgraded twists that are now standard on Marvel Legends figures, so she is capable of standing flatfooted in a wider variety of poses.
She comes with two heads. While the faces/expressions are exactly the same, there are two different hairstyles and hair colors. You have your choice of a redhead or a blonde. Technically this gives you the choice of Delora or Hawke. What’s the difference? Well, she’s either a sister or a wife, or … yeah, it gets confusing, so I’ll leave that research up to you. I haven’t decided which hair I’m going to keep on the figure. She’s blonde in most of the pictures purely because that’s the last head I popped on. The heads pop on and off easily. There were some issues with the rigidity of some of the past super7 MotUC figure heads that seems to have been fixed here. In fact, the hair actually bends if you press on it, which allows her to turn her head quite nicely.
Hawke comes with a sword and a smoke gun. The sword works fine because it’s a sword, and she looks great using it. The gun is less successful, mainly because of the limitations of articulation. It is fairly impossible to make her look good holding the gun the way it needs to be held. It’s not something that bothers me too much since it’s just going in the accessory container, but it does present a problem.
Up next, we have Quakke. 
Quakke is a New Adventures of He-Man character, and those are always welcome due to how nuts their designs are. Seriously, its like those guys that designed the New Adventures characters all chopped up a Jodorowsky comic and snorted it while listening to Einstürzende Neubauten,
Quakke’s schtick is creating Earthquakes with his mace, or his “Grabatron Meteormace.”
I dig Quakke a lot. I like the complete batshit look in his bugged out eyes, and the seismic readout on his chest is a neat tie in with his power set. His sculptwork updates the original toy quite well, and he’s sufficiently techy looking which is something I love about these NA Mutants. There’s a lot more hard science going on that offsets the more fantasy elements of standard MOTU. It keeps it fresh.
Quakke is well articulated. His chest armor and shoulder pauldrons are made of a very soft plastic so his arm articulation isn’t impeded like it could have been if they were harder pieces. He does get some ab crunch mobility, so he’s not completely dead in the torso region.
Unfortunately, Quakke’s lone accessory doesn’t work quite well. The Grabatron Meteormace (and I’m just calling it mace from now on) comes in two sections: the staff section and the separate meteor section. The meteor splits into two sections, much like the original toy. The problem is that in making it work like the original toy, the rock comes in very heavy, and it doesn’t want to stay put perfectly in the grip of the staff. There are three pegholes in the meteor for the staff to slot into, but they’re not a tight fit, and they end up separating the meteor a bit when you slide it in. I had to resort to some blu-tac to keep the meteor from splitting while being held in the staff. He can wield it fine, but outside of just standing there it’s overall kind of awkward.
While I like the idea of it, I’ve decided I’m skipping the staff, and that “my” Quakke is going to cause his seismic tremors through stomping this Tremorthrust boots. Yeah, that’s right. The staff without the meteor attached is fine, so it works well as some kind of electro-staff or just a plain grabby staff. Yes, I too think “grabby staff” is much more evocative than Tremorthrust boots.
Either way, I’d rather the hiccup be in the staff than in the figure itself, so that makes this a caveat-tempered success.
Next up, in second place, is the most terrifying of the four figures I’m reviewing.
I mean, dude just ain’t right.
Fang-Or is the newest of these four to join the Masters of the Universe mythology, but it feels like a character that wouLd have fit in just as well among the snake guy with the jutting neck, the snake guy with the flicking tongue or the snake guy with the snakes that erupt out of his face. Among that pantheon, “guy with giant fangs” is a perfect match.
Fang-Or suffers no quibbles like Hawke or Quakke. He’s pretty much a complete success from top to bottom. He’s well articulated, with a sufficiently armored snake body that moves quite well. I like the colors of his armor; the gold and burgundy slide right into the green of his body and fit like a glove.
Fang-Or comes with two heads: fangy and not-so-fangy. Even the not-so-fangy head has fangs, but they’re just not as … ”Damn son, those are some fangs” as his more fanged out head.
Both heads are appropriately terrifying with their dead yellow eyes and their wide open mouth. Despite the giant fangs, the head with the shorter fangs manages to be slightly more terrifying because it’s not so extreme. I wouldn’t want to meet either of them in a dark alley.
Fang-Or’s heads swap easily. Since his head is a slighty softer plastic, his fangs are flexible as well, which means there is less chance of them breaking.
Fangor comes with a pet winged serpent, which is the only thing about this figure more terrifying than the figure itself. The day snakes start to fly is the day I dig a hole, crawl into the hole and then pull the hole in with me. He comes with a giant oddly shaped sword that looks like it would hurt in so many ways. As he is the Snake Men’s mechanic, he comes with a hammer, a wrench and a screwdriver. Have you ever seen a snake with a screwdriver? Me neither, but here we are, thank you very much MOTUC. His tools even have a snake theme to them. The hammer is a snake. The wrench is a snake. The screwdriver … is a screwdriver.
Fang-Or would easily be my favorite of the set, if not for the last figure. Fang-Or’s only crime here was in not being Lodar.
With that said, up next is Lodar.
I needed/wanted Lodar to be great, and luckily, Lodar turned out pretty great. Lodar looks like he took a sideways step out of Mad Max and ended up on Eternia, and that is awesome.
Lodar ends up being a sleek figure without a lot of that “MOTUC bulk” that the figures have. Being a more athletic-looking character I was worried that he might look a little off, but he ends up looking streamlined and nasty. Since he’s not overly armored, he doesn’t have much to impede his articulation, so he moves quite well.
My first impresson was that the purple of his torso and arms was a bit too bright. It was a little more muted in the mini-comic. After fiddling with it for a few minutes it quickly became less of an issue. I guess technically it could stand to be a bit more subdued, but then the bold colors fit so well into the MOTU world that I have a hard time arguing with them.
Lodar comes with his mace and a set of shackles for He-Man or any assorted Eternian do-gooder that happens to wander into Lodar’s lair. The cuffs slip onto He-Man’s wrists well and the chains look nice and bulky. It’s a neat addition, one that didn’t have to be included but their inclusion adds enormously to the overall package.
As happy as I am to add each and every new MOTUC to the collection, it’s especially rewarding to be able to add a figure like this, that was featured in only a single media source three decades ago. It’s not a figure you ever think you’re going to get. As I have said many many times, those old mini-comics were the basis for so much of how I view the Masters of the Universe world, so any chance to add either a mini-comic variation or a full-on mini-comics originated character makes the kid in me happy, especially when they turn out as well as this one did.
So overall this was a nice set, barring some minor accessory issues here and there, but those issues are quickly smoothed over.
Join us next week as we take a look at the four Filmation-styled figures from Super7. Thanks for reading!