Sometimes when things get imprinted on your mind — especially when the imprinting was done at a young age — it’s impossible to shake them loose. Whether it’s your first exposure or just prolonged exposure, certain ideas become unshakeable.
Masters of the Universe is one of those properties that is slightly more fluid than other properties. The nature of its beginnings, where it seems like one hand didn’t know what the other hand was doing, meant that we fans have come to accept that there are a wide array of interpretations. He-Man was a barbarian. Or was he royalty with a “Shazam” fetish? Long hair? Pageboy cut? Short and wavy? Will the real He-Man please stand up?
In a very short time period, MOTU presented a very diverse array of possible interpretations, even within the same package. Toy Skeletor looked one way, but his card back and even the minicomic featuring him depicted him in a similar-yet-different light. Beastman was red … or was he orange? When the Filmation cartoon started, this brought in an entirely new set of visualization standards. So what do do we adhere to? Nothing. Everything. All of it.
The reason I bring this up is Super7’s recent NYCC reveal of Ultimate Editions of a handful of characters, something that I hope continues where appropriate. Five figures were shown off: He-Man, Skeletor, Faker, Teela and Ram Man. Most interesting for entirely different reasons (to me) is Ram Man, but I’ll get to those in a second.
These releases require no extra tooling, only a bit of shifting paints, which is a great way for Super7 to get a feel for MOTU, and for the collectors to break themselves in to a vastly different paradigm after years of Matty. So far the reaction has been cautiously positive. Sure, some people want more — battle armor, for instance — but I don’t feel like this is the place for armor changes, just for the superficial aesthetics of different heads. While I have all three of what are essentially the “parts-swap” figures, I have a feeling I’ll be buying them again, because you really can’t have just one (or two or three) of some of these figures.
Ram Man is the most interesting to me because he’s not a parts swap but a palette shift. This Ram Man takes a figure that has been out of stock for quite a while and presents him in a brand new color scheme reminiscent of his promotional card-back colors. Where the original action figure color scheme was red and green, the Ram Man in the card back was initially orange and red.
For many of us, we no doubt saw Ram Man in card-back form before we ever saw the man himself, so we imprinted on this figure as orange and red. While these notions were no doubt dissolved once the actual toy was in hand, and subsequent cartoon or comic interpretations resolved him to the more familiar red and green, it’s hard to shake those initial images. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it finally feels like we’re getting “the real” Ram Man, but it does go a long way towards dispelling this nagging doubt that’s been sticking in the back of my head every time I hear the words “vintage is done!”
When I hear that, a dim part of me always says “Well … no, we still need orange Ram Man, minicomic Trap Jaw and, of course, Meteorbs, and many more.” I know what’s meant by vintage is done — the toys — but when you see an image often enough it becomes a part of the whole. To me vintage is bigger than just the toys; “vintage” is concepts I was introduced to that still stick up there in the swampy goo that allows me to tie my shoes on the second or third try.
Ram Man in orange goes a long way towards finishing my own interpretation of vintage, and gives me hope that some other things that imprinted on me will find a way out, in some way. It’s a feeling that dates back to the initial Mer-Man way back in the earliest days of the line. Sure, the original toy head was fine, but getting that alternate card-back head … that was an instance of finally getting the Mer-Man I didn’t know I really wanted until I had it. Even if I wasn’t aware of it on the surface, I think I always knew I was waiting for that head. And then when the blue Mer-Man came out … oh yeah. There was that minicomic Mer-Man that cemented itself in my wee little mind back then.
The list is shrinking constantly. Is Prince Adam with a blue vest coming in the future? Zodac in white boots? And about that minicomic Trap Jaw …
It seems as if vintage is never really done, and neither is MOTU. I’m looking forward to what’s coming next.