Reviews > Snout Spout (Masters of the Universe Classics, Mattel)

I am not an animal

Snout Spout was one of the later, and weirder, entries in the Masters of the Universe line. His vintage figure appeared in 1986, a couple of years year after the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon had ended and just a year before the entire Eternian toy universe would over (until New Adventures, at least). He did make three appearances on the She-Ra cartoon,* but he didn’t do much and was even called by his prototype name, “Hose Nose,” in the first episode.

According to The Power and the Honor Foundation Volume 1, Snout Spout was conceived by Roger Sweet very early on in the line. Ted Mayer drew two illustrations in summer 1984, and those early designs would ultimately be used for the character in his minicomic, “Eye of the Storm,” despite the changes made to the figure itself.

I never owned Snout Spout, as I was deep into Transformers by the time he came out, but I did have a cousin who owned him and I always liked him. His design was amusing and appealing, and even as a kid I appreciated the fact that his hips were on ball joints and not that lousy rubber band construction.

Snout Spout’s goofy design made him a fan favorite, and he even got a Millennium-style Staction update in 2005 that turned him into a real badass, complete with hooves and a gigantic axe.

Snout Spout

Real Name: Jaxton

A peasant from Etheria, Jaxton was one of three athletes abducted by Hordak and cast into his experimentation matrix. There, like the others, Jaxton was grafted with cybernetic parts giving him both amazing powers and a bizarre form. After crossing through a Laser Gate to Eternia with The Evil Horde, Snout Spout escaped and joined with the renegade Masters of the Universe. Self-conscious about his appearance and called “Snout Spout” for his abilities to blast water from his cybernetic trunk, Jaxton often feels that everyone is always laughing at him. But when the Snake Men slither out and enemies attack, Snout Spout blasts them back with a super jetspray!

Design & Sculpt: As is standard for MOTUC, the design skews closely to the vintage figure. While the Millennium Staction suggested that Snout Spout was an actual elephant-man of some sort, the vintage figure looks like a regular human with a robotic elephant mask on (which is borne out by the above bio). New parts include the forearms, hands, boots, feet, pelvis, and head.

The pelvis is a bit of a disappointment in that it’s not a solid piece like Bow but rubbery front-and-back flaps like Optikk. I suspect this was done so that the belt could be customized, but the rubber doesn’t hold paint as well, and some of the black paint flaked right off my figure upon opening.

The head sculpt is what you’d expect from a Classicized version of Snout Spout–the usual strong Four Horsemen work.. The trunk is made from the same foam-like material as the recent DCUC Swamp Thing or the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, and it has a wire inside for posing. The foam allows for more poseability, but I have my doubts about its long-term durability. I would rather have had a stronger rubber with a smaller range of motion.

The armor comes in two parts: the silver harness and the red backpack. The button and water tank cap from the vintage figure have been worked into the backpack sculpt, but unlike Hurricane Hordak, it doesn’t look too obtrusive here. The backpack clips on to the harness and the clips are pretty small, so you may have some trouble getting the pack to stay on.

Plastic & Paint: Snout Spout is molded mostly in orange, but fortunately the wash is done well this time, preventing him from looking too toy-ish.

As mentioned above, the paint on the belt is prone to flaking. There’s some bleed around the edges of the gloves (the forearms are molded in purple and the orange is painted on), but the wash, as I mentioned, looks good.

Articulation: Snout has the standard MOTUC articulation: a ball-and-socket neck, ball-and-disc shoulders and hips, swivels at the biceps, wrists, waist, top of the thighs and top of the boots, and hinges at the elbows, abdomen, knees, and ankles; and the ankles have some “rocker” movement as well. Unfortunately, my Snout’s ankles are loose and he tends to fall over. A lot.

Accessories: Snout Spout comes with an axe and a new accessory by the Horsemen, a “combi-tool” (a.k.a. Jaws of Life, which is actually a trademarked name). I’m not sure how useful a combi-tool is in a world where every third person can bend steel with his or her bare hands, but it’s a nice accessory and even has articulated blades.

The axe features the familiar prongs on the back end, which were used to prop up the vintage figure when firing water. Of course, that’s not really necessary when the trunk is bendy.

Quality Control: Loose ankles, paint flaking off belt.

Overall: Snout Spout isn’t my favorite MOTUC character, but his figure has a good amount of new tooling. This is one figure where a Millennium-style head–or even a head based on the concept art/”Eye of the Storm” version–would have added a lot of value to the figure (you could even have made the trunk removable to save on tooling).

[raven 3.5]

* In the episodes “Small Problems,” “Out of the Cocoon,” and “Day of the Flowers.”

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12 Comments

  1. Dark Angel

    Well, if its like the craft foam they sell for children's art supplies, it definitely has a shelf life, particularly in hot. dry climates…dammit. I am going to have to open the stupid thing just to study this stuff myself…

  2. Well the foam is quite different than that Headless Horseman figure. It's also different from the DCSH Clayface from a few years back, who's also prone to tearing/rotting. Both of those were a type of soft rubber, not foam.

    It's possible the foam will actually hold up better over time than soft rubber, but I can't help but think hard rubber would have been the best way to go. Right now, I'm wondering whether the foam might actually last longer than the soft rubber in terms of decay, but be much more prone to tearing after repeated posing than hard rubber.

  3. Dark Angel

    Honestly, Poe, I think everyone is concerned about the lifespan of foam more than anything. Many have also expressed concerns regarding whether or not the paint on it will hold up. As I said, I haven't bothered to open mine, so I haven't studie the material myself, but I do have visions of that old McFarlane Headless Horseman figure with the unadvertised rotting knee action in my head…

  4. People really hate the foam, huh?

    @Jukka: Thanks for the clarification!

  5. Jukka

    Great review. Keep it up!

    In the Staction-line, I seem to remember that the 4Horsemen actually wanted the front-piece of the face to come off, showing that there was a human inside, but with lot of cybernetic-parts to him.
    And the Filmation He-Man cartoon ended in 1985. Only a year before. 🙂

  6. Dark Angel

    I've got quite the stack of unopened figures from this subscription…ah, well. At least BG Evil Lyn comes out next month…

  7. Goblin

    Ummm… I like his gloves….

  8. Braystreet

    There's a problem with my post, something to do with chronology, but I do say it's an homage to the biographies that Mattel puts on these.

  9. Braystreet

    Thanks for the speedy review, I was going to get this for my sister for Christmas. She's obsessed with elephants, covered in elephant tattoos, and we've got a running joke about her marrying a fireman so she'll have easy and affordable access to fire.

    I won't now that you've informed me about the nose. I want to get her something sturdy that'll last a few years, not something that'll break in a few years when it starts rotting.

  10. I can write something for ol' Hose Nose. I'll shoot you an email.

  11. Apologies for the lack of a fiction intro…I just didn't know where to go with this guy.

  12. Monkey boy

    I was actually considering snout spout, but foam trunk? Eh I’ll pass.

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