SCULPT – Kobra Khan’s sculpt features a lot of brand new parts as well as a great reuse of old parts. His forearms are completely brand new, giving this scaly-spiky look to them that looks really great. His right hand is sculpted to hold his blaster, while his left hand is sculpted in a clawing position, and is actually reused from the original MOTUC Skeletor figure.

He also has new boots that have the same feathery sculpt as the vintage figure’s. It really is well done, and almost makes him look a little dinosaur-like with the feathers which I like. These same boots are also the same style as the vintage Skeletor figure’s, which is awesome. His new loincloth piece has a neat snake themed belt and large scaly trunks.

His torso is completely new, and not just a new armor piece over the standard buck. In order to recreate the vintage figure, he has a really amazing, intricate scaly design to the torso that’s actually quite beautiful. There’s a lot of depth and overlapping details here and you can tell the Four Horsemen took great care in sculpting him.

His head sculpt is just what I would have imagined it would be. It looks more realistic and natural than the ridiculous vintage figure’s, due to the water squirting play feature. That was obviously nixed for the new figure, so instead we just get an awesome snake head with his mouth open as if he’s about to spit his venom into someone’s face.

The same scaly texture on the torso is also on his head, and his eyes have this deadly, almost lifeless look to them that you would expect from a snake. His mouth has a lot of ridges, and goes really far back into his mouth creating a great sense of depth. I do wish there was more scale detailing in the rest of his body, because it is pretty distracting to have it end up abruptly on his torso.

PAINT – The paint scheme on this figure is mostly green with some brown accenting. Naturally, most of the figure is cast in the appropriate green color with the accenting painted on. There’s some airbrushing all throughout the body to help bring out the sculpt.

The boots are a burnt sienna color with a nice wash applied over them, and his toe claws painted black. That same burnt sienna is used for his loincloth, and his belt is painted an almost neon green. On his torso, he has a strip of scales going down the middle painted a different shade of green than the rest, and a strip of scales on either side of that painted brown. It really helps break up all the green on him and makes for a visually appealing paint scheme.

His head is cast in the same green as his torso. He has bright green lining around his eyes, and his eyes themselves are white except for a small black horizontal slit in the middle. The inside of his mouth is red, and there’s not much variation here, but all the paint on hims is smooth and there’s no sloppy edges, or bleeding, or any paint flaws I can discern.

ARTICULATION – Kobra Khan has the standard MOTUC articulation model. Ball jointed head, ball jointed shoulders, bicep swivels, single elbows, cut wrists, ab crunch, waist swivel, ball jointed hips, thigh swivels, single knees, boot rotators, and hinged rocker ankles.

Almost everything works as you would expect it. Something I was surprised about is that his elbow joints are severely limited. What you see in the photos to the right is as far as they can bend. I have no idea why they can’t bend as fully as every other MOTUC figure, but they can’t. Something in the sculpt stops them from being able to bend all the way. It’s pretty annoying, but doesn’t completely ruin the figure. Everything else works great, and all the joints on him are nice and tight. No loose ankles or anything like that.

ACCESSORIES – Kobra Khan comes with three really great accessories. He comes with a recreation of his vintage blaster, an alternate head displaying Khan with his hood flared out, and his little lizard buddy from the 200X cartoon series.

With the vintage figure, Khan shared the same blaster as Zodac, and it would have been really easy to give the new Khan the exact same blaster. However, the Four Horsemen went ahead and actually made the head of the gun a little different to make it unique. I Think that’s very cool. Khan can only hold the blaster in his right hand though, since his left hand is in a more opened, clawing position.

His lizard buddy is designed to rest on his shoulder and has grooves on the underside of him that line up with the scales on Khan’s shoulder. He fits great and looks awesome resting atop Kobra Khan. And he can fit on his shoulder with either of Khan’s heads being used. I was worried at first that his alternate head might get in the way of the lizard buddy, but with some finagling he actually still fits.

The alternate head is absolutely gorgeous. The face is the same as the normal version, but he has this magnificent cobra hood flared out that really makes him look menacing. Kobra Khan has appeared with this hood flared out in every figure incarnation except the vintage one. I have no idea why Mattel didn’t originally go with this look for the vintage figure, because it really does make him look more cobra-like. And with the excellent job the Four Horsemen did in rendering the alternate head, he looks quite fearsome. I’m definitely displaying Khan with the alternate head.

It would have been cool if he came with some sort of effect you could plug into his mouth that made it look like he was spitting venom, but I’m sure if they included that they would have had to cut one of his other accessories, so I’m ok with it. I’d rather have the alternate head and his little buddy.

FUN – Kobra Khan is an anthropomorphic snake. What’s not fun about that? Sure, he doesn’t have the same water squirting function as the vintage figure, but I honestly don’t miss it. There’s no way they could have given it to him here and still made an action figure that fit in with this line. With what he does have (his articulation and accessories), he really does make for a fun figure. For modern collector figures, it’s hard to create a purely fun figure, but I guess that’s the beauty of Masters of the Universe.

QUALITY CONTROL/THINGS TO WATCH OUT FOR – Not a thing. Kobra Khan is a solid figure.

OVERALL – Kobra Khan is a great example of what a Masters of the Universe Classics figure should be. He’s a great recreation of the vintage figure with modern sculpting and articulation applied. Now saying that, I do wish his sculpt mad more scale detailing on him, but it is meant to be a recreation of the vintage figure and for the most part his sculpt is excellent, and his paint job is well applied.

He comes with a good amount of very character appropriate accessories that give you lots of display options. His articulation allows for a lot of different poses. About the only other complaint I’d have is that his elbows are restricted too much and it is quite annoying. Other than that, I think Kobra Khan is an excellent figure and makes a fantastic addition to any MOTUC collection.

Despite the gripes I have with this figure, he does look awesome alongside the other Snake Men and helps bolster King Hisss’ ranks, which is a very good thing.

FINAL SCORE: 3.5 / 5

Where to buy: He was originally sold on Mattycollector.com and is now sold out. You can still buy him at the following online retailers, at secondary market prices.

• Amazon has him in stock.