I appear to be completely out of touch with the average Masters of the Universe fan. In my research for these reviews, I found I much preferred the girl-oriented She-Ra: Princess of Power cartoon to the earlier He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, in part due to my bizarre preference for “plot” and “characters” instead of “glorified toy advertisements” (the introduction of Trap Jaw has him literally discussing the toy’s accessories, for dog’s sake).

Recently I’ve taken to watching the Millennium/Mike Young Productions He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, a cartoon I’ve found to be surprisingly strong in terms of making the largely nonsensical MOTU mythos coherent and interesting. The characters tend to have a little more development and the ongoing story arcs are actually followed up, making this one of the best iterations of MOTU. Naturally, that’s the version fans seem to dislike the most, because, I don’t know, they’re allergic to quality?

Where the Evil-Lyn of the Filmation cartoon is just another of Skeletor’s henchpersons who (rightfully) hates him (with fleeting episodes of character development), the Millennium series offers her a proper background that is expanded throughout the series. Her father, The Faceless One, appears in an early episode that develops her character from a black-and-white notion of “evil” to a more mature shades-of-grey perspective. We see her willing to defect against her now-monstrous ex-lover Skeletor. It’s refreshing to have a powerful female presence in the male-oriented show, especially while her “good” counterpart, the Sorceress, does nothing while hanging out in Castle Greyskull. This new Battleground Evil-Lyn, or BAGEL as she has become affectionately known (by me), is mostly a repaint of the previous MOTUC blue and yellow Evil-Lyn in the Millennium cartoon’s colors. I wasn’t initially excited by  the idea of another Evil-Lyn figure, but some great design choices have rendered this more than just a repaint. Read on! (more…)

I love accessories. In my Toy Room I have more than three chests of drawers full of well-organised, catalogued, ziplock-bagged accessories from my decades of collecting. There’s something appealing about owning a miniature armory of tiny weapons, or scaled-down shopping trolleys and cupboards that wrestlers can hurl at the Simpsons, or little fake body parts that can be strewn around a gruesome horror display. (more…)

One of the absolute best things about the original She-Ra: Princess of Power cartoon is that Swiftwind is voiced by what appears to be a chainsmoking mall Santa. Instead of choosing someone warm and soothing and appealing like, say, Twilight‘s Robert Pattinson to voice the talking horsie,* it was decided that a better option for selling the new pretty pink pony toy to little girls was the voice of the nearest gravelly-voiced hobo.** This pays off in spades, especially when the damn thing gets some action unlike poor Bow and his mate pops out a kid. If this isn’t reason enough to get over the weirdness of being an adult male collector buying dollies to own the thing, then I don’t know what is.

One of the excellent things MattyCollector has done with these larger boxed toys is brought out variant figures of the central characters so that we can have one He-Man or Skeletor to display with the other characters and one to ride on their oversized magic kitten. I feel Battle Armor He-Man looks superior to regular He-Man on Battle Cat, and the MOTU promotional material tends to agree. (more…)

The Masters of the Universe Classics line is one of the greatest lines of action figures of all time. I don’t think one can debate this. If you strip away all of the problems with distribution, quality control, communication and Digital River, and focus solely on the toys, I don’t even think this is a question. Alongside Palisades’ Muppets, Toybiz’s Marvel Legends, and even Takara’s Masterpiece Transformers, MOTUC is an absolutely superb line of beautifully sculpted, wonderfully playable and awesomely detailed action figures to appeal to the child and adult collector alike. (Yes, MOTUC isn’t aimed at children, nor are the Masterpiece Transformers, but let’s face it, if kids could get their hands on them they’d love them, as long as they weren’t busy doing drugs and stabbing each other like most kids these days.)

Alongside Swiftwind, a new She-Ra figure was announced – an update of classic variant Bubble Power She-Ra – with improved leg movement enabling her to ride Bow Swiftwind. The first She-Ra figure lacked the articulation to do this, but with the new Bubble variant, she can easily climb on and wrap her tan, silky thighs around Bow Swiftwind as they take to the sky. For this reason, I’m reviewing the two figures together; it’s a silly idea to get one without the other, as without the new Bubble Power She-Ra Smokey has no rider, and without Swiftwind She-Ra has nothing to straddle except her hapless eunuch Bow. (more…)