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DC Collectibles just revealed on G4, their first in a line of upcoming DC 3 3/4 inch action figures.
Continue after the jump for more info on these figures and a better look as well.
SORCERESS
Heroic Guardian of Castle Grayskull™REAL NAME: Teela’na
Growing up in a small Eternian village, Teela’na helped defend her people from a Horde Scout ship that had discovered her planet on a magic locating mission. Recognized for her loyalty, courage and wisdom, the current aging Sorceress® chose Teela’na to take up her title and defend Castle Grayskull’s secrets for the next generation. During her reign as Sorceress®, Teela’na not only cast the spell to clone the Sword of He, she was also cloned herself by Skeletor® who desired a magic-wielding bride to pass on his legacy. With the help of Man-At-Arms®, Teela’na saved the cloned child. And it was through her undying love and devotion to this baby girl that Teela’na gave her up to Man-At-Arms®, awaiting the day when her daughter would become the new Sorceress® and Guardian of Castle Grayskull’s secrets.
The Sorceress is arguably one of the most important characters in Masters of the Universe history. As her bio states, she is the guardian to Castle Grayskull. She was featured in just about every episode of the cartoon, and had a huge role in the MYP 2002 series as well. Fans have been waiting a long time for her, and now that she’s here has she been worth the wait? Keep reading to find out!
Sorry it’s been so long since I posted new customs. I get so involved in the actual creation of customs that sometimes I get backlogged with stuff I need to actually post on the site! I’m working on that though, and you should be getting at least one new custom a week from now on. This time though, since I’m so backlogged, you get four! Two G.I. Joe related customs, and two Marvel Legends related customs. Just click on the pictures below to go to their individual pages.
First up is an orange metallic repaint of the G.I. Joe Rise of Cobra Neo Viper Officer. Second for today is a version 2.0 of my custom Space Neo Viper concept, complete with a new spiffy jetpack. Then we have a custom Marvel Legends style figure of Ms. Marvel as Binary, and last up we have a custom Marvel Legends Moondragon figure.
Thanks for looking, and I hope you enjoy the new customs.
FISTO
Heroic Hand-to-Hand FighterREAL NAME: Malcom
The older brother of Duncan™, Randor’s first Man-At-Arms®, Malcom served under King Miro™ during the Great Unrest but was wounded in battle and stricken with magical amnesia. Wandering through Eternia®, he settled in the Mystic Mountains in a mining settlement, unable to piece together how he lost his battalion. His life changed when the Snake Men™ attacked his town and he helped save the Masters of the Universe® from their trap. But in doing so, Malcom shattered his right hand. In gratitude, Duncan™ replaced it with a robotic strong arm. Now known as Fisto™, he has made up with his brother and fights as a heroic member of the Masters of the Universe® smashing evil with his giant knuckles!
First of all, let me say that I hope I don’t attract the wrong kind of traffic to my site just by having the word “Fisto” on my main page ha ha. With that said, Fisto was one of my most anticipated figures in the line. I don’t know why, I’ve just always loved his design. It’s fairly basic as far as Masters of the Universe characters go, but I just always really dug the body armor and the stern expression, the rugged beard, and of course the giant mechanical fist. Not to mention that thanks to the 2002 MYP cartoon, it’s in canon that Fisto is Man-At-Arms’ brother. Why not, right? They certainly look like they could be brothers. I’m glad the MOTUC bio took the 2002 cartoon’s Fisto storyline as inspiration.
The figure itself also took a lot of inspiration from the 2002 cartoon, but I’ll talk more about that in the actual review. Keep reading to find out my thoughts on Fisto.
Rizwan asks: So you don’t have the licence for ThunderCats toys. Given the situation, planning to pursue it?
Sorry, we can not comment on the acquisition of any property.
Ismail Kaddoum asks: Dear Matty,
Will there be any other Dark Knight Rises Movie Masters other than the original 6(to complete the Bat-Signal) and the SDCC exclusive?
Mr. Freeze is the second figure to be released by DC Collectibles (formerly DC Direct) in its Arkham City Deluxe figure line. He was actually released just this week, the same time as Killer Croc. A lot of fans have wondered, and rightly so, why a character like Mr. Freeze warrants a deluxe price, when he’s practically a normal sized character.
Last year, at New York Comic-Con, someone at the DC Direct booth actually explained it. It turns out that Mr. Freeze was too expensive to put under the basic figure SKU (stock keeping unit – a number or code used to identify each unique product or item for sale in a store or other business). Like everything else, toy lines have budgets. They have a certain amount of money allotted to them, and only have enough budget for a certain amount of SKU’s.
At the time they were working on the Arkham City line, they had the budget for two SKU’s. The basic figure SKU and the Deluxe figure SKU. Due to Mr. Freeze’s larger than normal size (his design dictates this, due to his freeze suit adding height to him), mixed with other elements such as his accessories, he just came in too expensive to be put under the basic figure SKU. So they were left with two options. Either cancel him outright, or place him in the deluxe line. Since they couldn’t just create a new SKU specifically for Freeze, or raise the price of him as a basic figure (they all have to be the same price under one SKU), those were their only options. And they did not want to cancel Mr. Freeze, since to many fans he was the best boss fight in the entire Arkham City game, and many fans have been waiting for a really good Mr. Freeze action figure. So they put him in the deluxe line and now here we are.
Many fans have been criticizing this decision though, thinking that DC Direct is just abusing the deluxe price, but if you look at every figure they’re going to be releasing in the deluxe line, Mr. Freeze is the only one arguably not a deluxe. If they wanted to abuse it, they could have just made every single figure in the line a deluxe. But toy companies are not out to alienate its market. That’s just bad business. I hope the above helps explain to some the decision to make Mr. Freeze a deluxe figure.
Enough of that though, you guys came for a review and pictures right? Well let’s get to that, shall we?
There’s no denying that DC Direct has been on a role lately with their Arkham city toy line. They really upped the ante back in 2010 with their Arkham Asylum toy line, making two waves worth of characters that were really the first DC Direct figures I was ever truly interested in. But the fact that the game was amazing I’m sure helped sway me into buying them.
Now, in their second wave of Arkham City figures, we’ve seen more detailed sculpts, new articulation (for DC Direct anyway), and a name change for the company (switching from DC Direct to DC Collectibles). And now we have the inclusion of the Deluxe line of Arkham City figures, specifically meant for the larger characters. The first character in this new sub-line of figures is Killer Croc. Fans have been wanting a figure of him ever since Arkham Asylum, since that’s the game he was predominantly featured in. But now that we have him, we’re going to take a closer look.
So is DC Collectibles’ first foray into the Deluxe Arkham Figure a hit or a miss? Read on to find out.
SNAKE MAN-AT-ARMS
Transformed Master of WeaponsREAL NAME: Duncan of the Viper Clan
Duncan heroically served King Randor throughout their battles with Skeletor and the Snake Men as Eternia’s chief war strategist and weapons maker. Exposed to the Serpent’s Ring, Duncan was magically transformed by King Hssss into a Snake Man permanently. Under this evil spell, he used his genius to create great and horrific machines of war for the Snake Men as they battled for control of eternia. Eventually, Duncan was forced to battle against Clamp Champ who had since replaced hima s Royal Man-At-Arms. In their epic final duel during the Second Ultimate Battleground, Duncan was mortally wounded, but not before momentarily recovering his humanity thanks to a spell cast by his daughter Teela, the new Sorceress of Grayskull.
Welcome to my very first Masters of the Universe Classics review. I hope to get to many more in the future, even past ones (mostly as an excuse to give you guys some pictures to look at). The figure starting off this trend is of course Snake Man-At-Arms. Duncan’s tranformation happened in the MYP (Mike Young Productions) 2002 animated series, towards its end. Mattel used this fan requested variant as an excuse to go all out, giving us a true Masters of the Universe Classics 200X Man-At-Arms, down to the armored detailing on his suit, and the muted paint scheme. To sweeten the pot with collectors, they made Snake Man-At-Arms one of the 3 figures this year to include a new mini-comic. Smart move on their part.
Join me after the jump to find out if this is just another variant, or a well deserved figure in the line. And don’t forget to scroll all the way down to the bottom for a short photo series by me, showing how Duncan met his unfortunate fate as a Snake Man!
Alright guys, it’s that time again for Ask Mattel! All questions are due by 11:59 PM CST June 30th, 2012. These questions are for the July 15th Q&A with Mattel. If you have any questions at all regarding any of Mattel’s brands leave them in a comment below and I’ll do my best to make sure Mattel gets them answered.
The Green Lion with Pidge is the latest set from the Voltron Classics toy line. It gets more exciting, and harder to wait, as it takes two months for each new set to come out. But Mattel is really handling this line quite well. The size alone for Voltron was enough to convince me to get a subscription.
With my past Voltron Classics reviews, I was quite extensive and thorough, talking about both the pilot figure and the lion vehicle, however this time I’m going to condense the review and be more concise. I have a tendency to talk a lot, to the point of excess, so I’m going to experiment with a much more clear-cut review here.
A large part of the reason I’m trying to be more concise with this review, is because every review I do of these sets seems to turn out the same. They’re all made the same way, and in turn end up getting the same opinion from me. And while consistency is good for a toy line, when it comes to reviewing, it can end up quite bland. So I’m going to mostly let the pictures speak for themselves in this review, and while I’ll still give my opinions on the figures, I’m just going to cut to the chase.
I’m also going to nix the scoring that I usually do for each section, and just give one overall score at the end. The reason is because all the scores for these sets seem to end up being the same anyway, and also because it’s just getting to become too tedious for me. Too rigid, just for the sake of it. I would prefer to do my reviews a little more lax, since all people want to do is look at the pictures and read my opinions. I don’t think a strict scoring system is all that relevant to be honest. So if this review goes well, this is how I’ll be doing all of them from now on, which will hopefully translate to me getting more reviews done.
Alright, now let’s get to the review.