Power-Con is in full swing, and already some huge, huge news has been dropped: Castle Grayskull is coming.

Well…maybe. Here’s the info from TNI:

Today at the Masters of the Universe Power-Con convention, Mattel made an announcement about releasing a new Castle Grayskull playset. based on Mark Taylor’s original design and cost $200. Pre-orders will start in the fall on MattyCollector.com. A minimum number of pre-orders will need to be met for them to actually go through with releasing it though. This was just approved and more details will be made available at Toy Fair. The playset will not have electronics so they will be able to ship it internationally as well.

UPDATE: This will be a non-sculpt pre-order which means people will have to order sight unseen.

Here’s the Mark Taylor-designed prototype (I think):

They also revealed three new figures, Snake Face, Karatti, and Octavia  (booth pics at TNI):

BTW, the convention exclusive item was a set of Keldor’s swords that don’t split apart.

UPDATE: Okay, so I just wanted to get the info out there before I went to see ParaNorman (great flick by the folks who did Coraline – really quite dark and a bit somber, too, though still funny). So here are my thoughts on everything.

Castle Grayskull is great news for fans. Frankly, after the “failure” of the Wind Raider, I’m a bit amazed this was greenlit by the high muckety-mucks, but the pre-sale requirement presumably made it a much easier sell.

Will I pre-order one? Honestly, I don’t know yet. Subscribing to 2013 was a hard decision for me this year. Thus far I’ve been a completist (except for some of the DC vs. MOTU 2-packs), but I’m not even sure I’ll get Granamyr in December. Grayskull would be quite a hit on my toy budget on top of the $600+ MOTUC is already taking.

S.H.MonsterArts is eating me alive right now and, somewhat to my surprise actually, the line shows no sign of slowing down. I may be coming to a decision point on what I want versus what I can afford. This isn’t a place I’ve been very often in my life; I’ve usually managed to muddle through, often with a few months of credit card debt and some toy selling to cover expenses. But now I’m not sure I can do that anymore.

That said, I’m not too worried about the “sight unseen” aspect of the pre-order. I’m sure it will look great. The problem, of course, is whether there will be any major quality issues. Those would probably not be evident in photos.

Snake Face – We knew he was coming, but he’s still cool.

Karatti – …who? I had no idea who this guy was – I had to look him up. I think he’d appeal to me a lot more if he had sickly, radioactive yellow/pea green skin of the vintage figure instead of plain green. Hopefully they change the paint for the production figure.

Octavia – A most-wanted Filmation figure, Octavia looks great. It appears her tentacles will be ball-jointed but not, I suspect, bendy (if someone has heard otherwise, let me know).

Convention Exclusive – Non-splitting Keldor swords? I guess that’s kind of neat, but it’s definitely not the must-have item I was worried it might be.

UPDATE 9/23 8:15pm: Mattel has snuck Clamp Champ’s clamp into the display case. About damned time.