MOTUC Evil-lyn conjures a storm–of controversy

UPDATE: I’ve bought a copy of ToyFare #150 and seen the pic, and my post below stands as-is, with one addition: the staff & head sculpt look great.

Also, in a Facebook comment, Mattel writes: “There are actually a few additional accessories that come with Evil Lyn, but we’re not ready to reveal them yet.”

The first photos of MOTUC Evil-lyn appear in this week’s ToyFare #150. Obviously I’m not going to post the pics here, and I encourage you to pick up the issue yourself if you’re interested (there’s also a reveal of two new DCUC two-packs, including a pouch-belt, black-bat-symbol Batman and a green-and-red Tim Drake).

[First, a caveat: I haven’t even seen the photos of Evil-lyn myself yet, and in terms of accessories I don’t know how complete ToyFare‘s information is.]

First off, the details: she’s yellow-skinned and her armor is colored like her original toy, not the purple of the 200X version. She comes with a full-length staff and a knife (presumably her 200X knife). However, there’s already a furor erupting over at He-Man.org over the fact the figure is apparently a straight repaint of Teela.

This is at odds with the way MOTUC has been handled so far. While the original figure was indeed a straight repaint of Teela, the original cross-sell art–which seems to have been the guiding design principle for the Four Horsemen thus far–is different, mostly around the “dress” area.

I have to admit, I’m pretty bummed out about this myself. I suspect the reason is that retooling the large one-piece outfit would be expensive, and it’s very likely we’re going to see a retooled 200X-style Evil-lyn down the road, so the decision-makers may have felt they could go the cheap route here. But it’s still quite disappointing.

I’m fine with the yellow skin and the knife. The staff I’m a little annoyed with. Is the top part of the staff detachable so you can turn it into a wand, to match the card art?

What bothers me is that Mattel and the Horsemen have done such a great job with balancing each MOTUC figure in terms of the look of the original toy vs. the original card art, offering both when possible (Mer-Man being the best example), but here they seem to have gone with a bad compromise. If they’re going to do a straight repaint like the original toy, then give us a wand, not a staff (if for no other reason than there are already so many staves in this line). We all know there’s going to be a 200X-style repaint down the line–the full-sized staff will make sense then.

Thoughts?