Clear red Hordak appears on Mattycollector & is quickly spirited away

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So, for a brief period today, a Horde symbol appeared on Mattycollector. Clicking on it led you to this page:

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Image from Hellz Hoardax

Once word got out, it sold out almost instantly. The text reads:

Congratulations! By magic or by luck you’ve found a secret figure! Now you see him… but this master of manipulation can disappear at any moment, so act quickly! This all-clear figure features painted red eyes. chest emblem and removable armband, and comes with a fan-demanded Hordak crossbow in vintage white. Trust us, this visitor born the dark dimension is up to no good…but you’ll have to get the figure to see his complete bio. Straight from the 2013 mini-comic, “The Secret Origin of Skeletor,” this highly collectable figure is not available with Club Eternia subscriptions or even during regular monthly sales, so make sure you check back often to try to catch him the next time he decides to project onto this page!

I’ve stopped being anything resembling a completist on this line, plus I generally dislike clear figures (unless the character is usually clear, like someone made of ice), so I’m not personally annoyed by this. As far as I can tell, there was no announcement – no cryptic hints on the message boards, no ARG-like stuff, nothing. So the first thing most fans will know about this thing is that it’s unavailable to them. I suspect there will be a few people out there who, upon discovering they can’t get the figure, will be at best, a bit bummed, and at worst, brimming with fiery rage.

Fortunately, it sounds like he’ll be back, and you can bet there are hundreds of people who have bookmarked that page and will be refreshing it hour by hour from now until who knows when, so hopefully anyone who really wants one will eventually get it. In the meantime, feel free to hate The Fwoosh‘s VeeBee, who got one.

EDIT: A tip of the hat to Hellz Hoardax for his work on this story as it broke.

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9 Comments

  1. Ditto on what RZ said. It is called toy collecting, not toy getting everything you ever wanted immediately. This is a fun idea by Matty and eventually I'm sure anyone that wants a spirit of Hordak will get it.

  2. _RZ_

    Really surprised about all the completists commenting here and elsewhere about this. Are people angry because they want one of everything? Or because it's something others got, and they weren't able to? It feels more like Sour Grapes than people actually wanting another Hordak variant. I could see getting angry about this if you were a true, true completist on this line, and had (or were planning to shell out the coin for) the Spirit Grayskull, the Bronze Grayskull, and the Silver She-Ra. Or if you were super-hardcore 200x completist. But most people I see angry are kind-of completist: they don't want to pay the bucks for those three figures, but want everything else. Is that really a completist? Is "completist" a term we fans throw around too much? Are these people really just "as close as I can afford" like fans of many other lines? Or is a "complete MOTUC collection" one without these three (maybe now four!) figures? Please don't take offense guys out there. I am genuinely curious, as I think "complete" is everything, including the Bronze and Spirit figures.

    Why not do what the He-Man.Org guys are doing and form a little team? The minimum order is six I believe. I don't post in forums really, so this isn't an option for me, but I recognize many of the names here from various forums, why not try that way?

    That's why it's called "collecting" and not just "buying"- the hunt is a big part of the enjoyment. If this was something else in the sub, I think people would complain like they did about the quarterly variants, or Fang Man, Netossa, Spector, Strobo, or any repaint- they wouldn't want it and would complain about it. I think this is kind of fun, and it benefits Matty in site hits (which is stupidly important to them for some reason that I can't figure out, bragging right?) and keeps fans on their toes. Besides, in 2020, when there are no more new MOTUC figures coming out, and you still love these toys as hard as you do (I know I will) – what are you going to hunt for? Spirit figures.

    Bring on Spirit Man At Arms, Spirit Stratos, and Spirit Mechaneck. I want everyone who is dead to haunt Spector. 😉

    • dayraven

      the problem here is the comparison to hunting… which carries with it an element of preparation on the part of the hunter, along with a reasonable expectation of success. if the hunt were the allure, then what's the subscription about?

      i don't smell sour grapes at work here at all, what i am generally reading by most here and other locales i frequent (admittedly, not the Org) is frustration that a fig popped up out of nowhere with no prior warning, and a fear that this could become something of a new normal. that's fair. when marvel legends or DCU had a chase variant, you knew months head of time, not 4 hours too late. if you're reading differently elsewhere, that's fair, but not everyone perturbed by this is put off by lack of personal ownership.

      subbers in particular, they're entitled to be pissed, since the sub was partially sold on the premise that they would receive early access to buy non-sub-included items, and despite's scott's assurances, if you didn't get first access, you didn't get it early at all; you got leftoevers. he has said that subbers will get "Early Access" later but that's moronic. early and later are mutually exclusive. but for non-subbers as well, first they've gutted day-of sales, and then we get ether variants (trademarked term) that just kind of tell the general public "we'd prefer if you didn't own these toys" and as far as mattel's hits, hit rate is an important parameter for any web business, but i would think it would behoove mattel if they had more actual product in stock when people show up during those web hits. that's the other thing that's so jarring about this EV hordak, it runs counter to the existing "one day per month, one set time of sale start" business model that they've employed since the early days of matty collector. if they want daily or hourly page hits, they'd better have a plethora of in-stock items for sale. doing otherwise discourages new users/customers.

  3. stack32

    Yeah, I think some people have a strange definition of "fun".

    • Harrig

      Blind bag toys are "fun" too. perhaps they could just send random blind bag figures to subscribers to keep it fresh.Then if you get, say, 12 Jewelstars, it could be considered an army builder, or you could have "fun" trading them on ebay!

    • dayraven

      you know what else in fun? sleeping in on matty buy day, then spending that money that could have gone towards cherry nyquil hordak on some glyos swing joints, a cold coffee at my local bean slingers, and settling in to build some new figs while watching hot tub time machine. any chance i get to support small business over big corporations, i like to… and mattel goes out of their way to give me those chances.

    • Harrig

      Normally I respect your opinion… and this is no exception. (except I'm not into glyos)

      At a point where is is getting harder for most people to keep an interest in the line it does seem like a really weird way of keeping people on board, especially with a hard to like subscription method.

    • dayraven

      you don't have to like the glyos stuff, they were just an example… but there are a ton of 7th aisle manufacturers these days making some cool toys, give one or more a try w/ the "saved" matty money… i've yet to buy from every small time producer yet, but generally 's good. my only real point was, there are still cool toys out there for the getting from people who aren't mattel.

  4. Harrig

    One of Scott's replys to a poster on the Matty collector Forum asking about why the figure was not announced etc was "To keep things fun and actual surprise fans. Toy collecting should be fun after all!" If an adult collector actually wants one of these things, this sounds like one of the least fun ways of getting hold of one!

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