Oh, Hordak. While I’ll admit you have a cool design, I never liked you nearly as much as I did Skeletor. You make pig noises and turn yourself into goofy objects. And yet, you are so incredibly popular that you got a MOTUC figure in the first year of production, and still, still your fans are not happy!

The quibble in question is Hordak’s ab joint. The original Hordak had a single large piece of armor that covered his entire chest and torso. If the MOTUC figure had that same type of armor, he would have no ab joint. The Four Horsemen devised a way to save that point of articulation by raising the bottom of the armor and then sculpting a lower ab joint molded in black to give the appearance of a second piece of armor below the chest plate.

On Facebook, Mattel posted a brief Q&A with the Four Horsemen as to why they did this.

A lot of fans have been asking about the design of our upcoming Hordak figure. We asked the Horsemen to provide a little insight to pass along! Specifically, fans have asked about the design of Hordak’s armor and why it was done as a half piece and not a full frontal peice of armor. Here is what Eric and Cornboy had to say:

HORSEMEN: “This aspect of the design was something that we put a lot of thought into. We weighed out a lot of options, taking into consideration things like accuracy, articulation, tooling expenses, removable vs. non removable armor, and how the choice will work throughout the line. In the end we chose to do a two piece armor system to preserve the overall look of the original while retaining a full range of motion.

We created a new armored lower torso that will be used on certain characters while we may use the more sculpted look of the muscled stomach on other figures with more fitted looking armor. We are going to use this system in a variety of ways that should make most people happy. In cases like this a lot of the decisions that we make in the design process come down to which approach will make the most people happy. Of course we can never please 100% of the fans, but we can certainly keep trying.”

– so there you have it! Look for Mer-Man on sale April 15th, Zodak in May and Hordak in June only available on MattyCollector.com!

Predictably, some collectors still aren’t happy. Since I can probably take or leave Hordak, it’s not a big deal to me (come back to me when we get to Trap Jaw and I’m sure I’ll have some opinions), but I’m curious as to your thoughts. I’m sure the Horsemen would be interested to know what fans think of this compromise.