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…)

One concept I just could never buy into was the idea of Man-E-Faces as an actor. If so, he’s an actor with a fairly limited range: he can play a guy in  big blue mechanical suit with a domino mask, a guy in a big blue mechanical suit with a robot face, and a guy in a big blue mechanical suit with a monster face (at least until this figure, which gives him three more options).

All right, so perhaps I’m being unfair – for all I know, the monster is the Laurence Olivier of his generation. And based on his first minicomic appearance, it looks like Manny was more of a wandering bard than a leading man (note that apparently his helmet was removable). If you think of him as a storyteller who uses his ability to create the faces of the speaking characters, the whole “actor” thing makes more sense.

Man-E-Faces was one of the most iconic characters in the original Masters of the Universe toy line (and a personal favorite). He also had a Millennium figure which, while a bit pre-posed, was nonetheless one of my favorites from the revamp. Let’s see how his Classics figure compares. (more…)