Review > Weapons Pak (Masters of the Universe Classics)

This won’t be my standard review, for obvious reasons. Mostly just pics and some discussion. I’ll go through and talk about each new weapon or weapon set, and you can check out the accompanying pics.

I didn’t take photos of every weapon/accessory with a figure, mostly because I found about half the contents of the pack uninteresting, but I did take a photo of the remaining accessories at the end.

Tri-Klops “Original Art” Sword: This is my favorite item from the Weapons Pak. While Tri-Klops‘ green sword is iconic, I really like the way the gold-hilted, silver-bladed weapon looks. The colors are based on the original cross-sell art, but a large part of that appeal comes from my love of the original “Terror of Tr-Klops” mini-comic, where Trike is shown to be a major badass.

Gray Lochaber Axe: While I appreciate the fact that Mattel matches weapons and accessories in the same molded colors as the originals, I much prefer Scareglow with his realistically-colored Lochaber axe. It makes him go from a bit goofy to rather sinister.

Brown Beast Man Armor: A homage to the original 1980s Weapons Pak. As I see it, there are two decent uses for this armor. The color scheme is pretty decent for Moss Man, particularly if you want to use the vintage head (which otherwise sits on the body kind of oddly, since it was designed to work with the armor and make it appear like Beast Man is hunching over). However, I’m not sure I can recommend that–the bicep armor is a bitch to get on and you’re pretty much guaranteed to tear some of the flocking off.

Alternatively, you can put it on Wun-Dar (or any other He-Man figure) to make him look particularly barbaric. However, due to the aforementioned “hunching” issue, Wun-Dar’s head doesn’t have much range of motion.

Silver/Blue Pistol & Short Sword: These weapons originally came with Man-At-Arms. Here they’ve been given blue and pink highlights and are intended for Trap Jaw‘s pre-dejawification alter ego, Kronis. They’re a nice touch, though part of me wishes they’d just had black highlights so they weren’t so Kronis-specific. Since one of Wonder Bread He-Man’s traditional (if inaccurate) weapons is the Grayskull short sword, a black version would have looked great with Wun-Dar. Instead I have to try and track down an extra one from MAA.

Gray Rifle: Again, the rifle that came with Webstor was bright orange. This one’s just gray, which is a lot more normal-looking for a gun. Black would have been even better, but I think the idea here (along with the Lochaber axe) was to mimic the original Grayskull weapons, which were gray.

Silver Horde Crossbow: No, it’s not “white,” like that of the original Hordak. Frankly I think the silver is better than white–it’s a bright enough silver that it looks white without looking weird, because whoever heard of a white crossbow? On the other hand, whoever heard of an electric pink ray gun…

Blue He-Man Axe, Sword and Shield: Meant to evoke some of the original Weapons Pak items, these are nice, if a little boring. They do have a few different paint applications, which is appreciated. Good for Faker.

Red Beast Man Whip: It’s a whip. It’s red instead of black.

Red Stratos Armor: Hate how the carpet doesn’t match the drapes on Stratos? Now you can fix that. Why is this here? Are we going to get a Stratos with blue wings at some point, so we can make the vintage variant?

Techno Power Sword (Cartoon Colors): A more 2D-colored version of the techno Power Sword included with Man-At-Arms, with green highlights. I prefer the silver version, but this one is pretty cool too.

Silver Mace: Ugh. While this is meant as another homage to the original Weapons Pak, the sculpt of the mace was very specific to Moss Man, made to look as if it was made of wood. A silver version makes no sense at all.

Electric Pink Zodac Armor, Gun, and Staff: The original Weapons Pak had a black Zodac armor and gun, but since they used that on Wun-Dar, they decided to give us…an electric pink set. Why electric pink? Seriously? Three spots in this set were taken up by these fashion atrocities. Why not something more interesting–maybe silver, or white with a red “W,” or really anything other than electric pink.

I know there’s supposed to be a certain amount of nostalgic fun in this, but I’ve already tossed these things in the accessories box, never to be seen again (except maybe in an It Figures).

Overall: So you get a handful of great items, a few OK items, and a few really lame pieces. For me, the Tri-Klops sword, gray rifle and Lochaber axe, and Kronis weapons make the set worth it. The blue He-Man weapons are OK, though I’m not currently using them.

But while those items earn the set 1.5 ravens from me, there are many other problems:

• Every single item is stamped with a very visible trademark. You can see it on the Scareglow pic above; it’s ugly and obtrusive. I suppose the reason they did it was to prevent easy bootlegging of the accessory pack (or to make sure collectors didn’t think genuine Weapons Pak items were bootlegs), but it’s very annoying.
• The decent price of $12 was offset by the ridiculous shipping costs. I suspect the high shipping was due to the wide size of the packaging. This could have been fixed with a different shape for the set, or perhaps fewer weapons and a lower price for the set.
• Mattel went out of their way to call this the “Ultimate Battle Ground Weapons Pak,” tying it in with a historical event in the MOTUC lore they’re building. And yet, the gigantic packaging had no bio at all! The Eternia poster gets a bio, but not this?

Mattel could have done a lot more with the Weapons Pak with just a few different choices. Many fans would have been happy just to get an extra regular Power Sword for Battle Armor He-Man or a purple “Skeletor” version of the He-Man axe. Instead, we get electric pink Zodac armor. Say I have no sense of humor if you want to, but overall this set is a disappointment.

[raven 1.5]