Paint was a little too sloppy for me this time around. There was a random red smear on the left ear, but it brushed off when I pulled the figure out of the package; the silver paint on the right ear isn’t going anywhere however. There’s some tiny spots of paint missing from the belt, wobbly lines on the eyes and gloves, and the backpack is painted in a high gloss to look more metallic (which is cool), but the end result was more than a few spots of chipped paint… which kinda kills the cool factor. Ironically, all the rivets are painted pretty cleanly throughout. Go figure.
Snout Spout has two accessories: his classic ax and a hydraulic spreader. The axe is pretty much standard (& kinda boring), but the non-business end replicates the notch on the vintage ax that could be used to hold up Snout Spout’s trunk. It had to be there, but I’m a little bummed that it didn’t separate into two pieces like the staction. I mean, I know the staction had to do that so he could hold it, but I’ve gotten used to the idea of it as a little wrench and I miss it. Especially since the Classics figure could’ve benefitted from it more than the staction did, but alas…
The hydraulic spreader is a neat piece because it’s the one thing that the Classics version can call its own. It’s a great accessory – it’s applicable to the figure’s heroic function, it’s well detailed with moving parts, and it kinda looks like an elephant*. It’s a real bright spot for me on this figure.
* – In the picture above, it’s upside down from the elephant face. If you can’t see it, I’ll snap a pic for the comments section.
Oh, and before I forget. Snout Spout was suppposed to ship with a subscribers-only sticker sheet. As you know, my sub was cancelled, but oops! Guess what was in the box?
To sum up, this is a perfectly satisfactory Snout Spout, but I just want more out of him. Not necessarily a MO2K flare (though, really, at this point, a slightly more tech-suit-looking, nipple-less buck would only help the line expand). I think what’s missing isn’t necessarily detail, but consistency. Remember back when Mattel reps would stammer on about the “Classicizor Machine” or that Classics was its own unique style? Well, when Man-E-Faces is pre-vintage, when Roboto is a vintage figure with better legs, when Buzz-Off & Snout Spout have a couple scarce non-vintage elements, and when Stinkor & Fisto have are awesome (and exactly what I wish could’ve happen to all the figures), that’s not really true of the line. It’s getting to be a bit hodge podge at this point.
So, why didn’t Snout Spout end up more like Fisto or Stinkor? Was it timing? Post-Whiplash, but Pre-Fisto? Is it that he wasn’t anyone in the design team’s favorite? I want to love this figure, and it will grow on me the longer I have it, but he’s just always going to be missing something in my eyes. New sculpts of the old pieces, a few minor details added, and a new accessory added to the He-Man buck. Come to think of it, that new accessory shows what I’m talking about perfectly. It’s clever, applicable, and looks like there was joy in crafting it. It’s probably my favorite part of the figure, but I’d gladly sacrifice it if a little of that ingenuity could have gone into the figure itself.
For more MOTU reviews, check out our
MOTU Classics Collector’s Guide.
Snout Spout is Motu Classics world elephant man.
Literally.
does he sleep sitting up?
I’m still jonesing for the 200x figure we never got. The one with the removable face plate? I like Snout Spout, but I have to wonder if this guy could get a different figure, maybe the 200x design properly classicified of course as Hose Nose?
The MO2K figure, while movable, would pale in comparison to the Staction, so I don’t miss it too much. I did like the faceplate though!
Interesting idea on “Hose Nose”!
Poe said the trunk was foam like Stay-Puft, Crawford called it rubber, and you say it’s painted bendy plastic. So, which is it?
I thought I said rubber? It’s just standard bendy material as far as I can tell, painted to match the face. I’ll need to check up on Poe’s review, but it’s not Stay Puft foam – you look at that wrong and it takes damage.
Nice review. I had to pass on this guy for the reasons you stated. Snout Spout is a silly figure and he needs to be fun. I wish he could’ve been amped up in some way.
Maybe you could crank out a truetorial about the non-vintage influence on the figures and how it changes from figure to figure? Maybe there’s a rhyme or reason?
I think the design influences come down to a personal choice and the aversion to the dreaded hyper-anime detail. Snout Spout can get his air tank and Fisto can have his headband, but remember how Scott had to stress that Fisto wasn’t getting a MO2K head?
Snout Spout can’t have the technical details and the hooves were probably a bridge too far from vintage, so we got the one thing we could: the airtank.
(And, yeah, I know that is the counterpoint to my own summary) 😉
Lately it seems your MOTUC reviews have an air of “whiny little girl” to them. Low T maybe. Perhaps a shot of anabolic would pick you up. Or rewatching The Expendables and hitting the strip club to celebrate all things testicular. In the future just ask yourself:
WWSSaJSD?
What would Sly Stalone and Jason Statham do?
Anyways, the pictures are still awesome. The words in between, not so much.
LOL
When we get back to a truly awesome figure, you’ll hear a different tune. Until then, you’re stuck with these.
Just wow. Lackluster figures get lackluster reviews, dude. That’s something I wish Mattel ought to take into consideration.
O.o Okay… moving on…
Great review, noisy, but I disagree. I bsolutely love Snout Spout!
I do enjoy him! I just know that he could’ve been cooler than he is!
you love snout spout? maybe you’re the one needed the t shot in the buttocks… he has all the burly edge of sy-klone without any of the masculine mystique.
Snouty may not look overtly SAD anymore, but he still looks dopey as hell. 😀
I guess I’m a little biased because I didn’t own him as a kid. But he was also one that I passed on when I re-bought nearly the entire vintage line in the early days of eBay, so clearly that figure just didn’t appeal to me.
As far as the 200x comparisons go, the only reason they’re brought up is because it’s the only sculpted example to specifically point to of an awesome Snout Spout. The vintage figure was a fun toy, sure, but not an awesome character design.
Now, is it possible to make another awesome Snouty without overtly referencing the 200x design? Absolutely!
And if anyone’s up to the task, it’s the 4H.
They just have to be allowed to do their thing without the possibility of their work being revised or rejected.
The line didn’t start out as an “80’s time capsule” line, so I don’t know why Scott suddenly wanted to make it so.
Also, for those of you with the Power and Honor catalog, you’ll see that early design drawing for Snout Spout that looks leagues cooler than the 80’s figure turned out. And why that version wasn’t provided to the 4H as a reference for some cool non-200x tweaks that could’ve spiced this figure up considerably is beyond me.
Maybe if the person running the line cared about providing awesome figures to collectors more than about recreating a dead line from the past, we’d see better, more enduring releases from MOTUC.
Just sayin’, I mean everyone has their favorites, and I’m absolutely not knocking that (bigtime Gwildor fan here, after all!) but Snout Spout will NOT be one of the heralded figures from this line after it’s run its course, say 20 years from now, just as the vintage Snouty was NOT one of the heralded figures by collectors after 20 years. But, there are lots of people who consider the Staction Snouty among the best Stactions, among the best from all of the 200x releases. Sense a pattern there, anyone?
Looking into next year, it looks like we’ve been able to get out of 80’s time capsule mode a bit. But that just makes me sad for the timing of figures like Snout Spout who could’ve used a little more of that attention.
What I’m most curious about is how the 4H planned to do Snout Spout going in. Was the air tank and a few rivets the only thing they wanted to “classicize” or was there more they wanted to do.
And vintage Snout Spout was one of the best figures in the line. 🙂 😀
I really perfer the 200x version b/c it looks more like the PREDATOR,HaHa! But still Snout Spout is still a cool character and great edition to the classics. Glad that we were able to get those extra stickers for some of our MOC figures. Excellent review also!!
The stickers crack me up. They’re partially intended to for in-package collectors to properly “faction-ize” their collection, but a true in-package collector would never dare add a sticker! I’m curious how many of the stickers will end up on the packages…
Still glad to have them though. And thanks!
I got a sticker sheet in my Snout Spout box too! And so did my buddy who also ordered one with me, so woot for free stickers. 😀
I like Snout Spout, I just wish he had the water-squirting feature. With him, I think that was his primary gimic & without it he feels like he’s just a dude with a robotic elephant head & a big axe. The bendy trunk adds something to it at least & for some reason I’m not crazy about the jaws-of-life accessory. It’s not a bad accessory, but I could see it fitting with the Tuskador figure that eventually might come out.
I liked the jaws, but they could’ve really benefited from a simple spring feature.
As I said before, Mattel COULD have given him a badass head WITHOUT having to hit the “dreaded” 200X Look…
http://www.he-man.org/publishing/item.php?id=1522&image=3303
Badass Mini Comic Snout Spout…
Yeah, that’s the same design as the early art I was talking about, I keep forgetting that’s he was in the mini-comic.
That would’ve been cool too.
I think the element I find myself missing is the spot for the tusks. I would’ve like to seen that classicized.
” I still lament the lack of a GI Joe Firefighter sub-line”
You mean you wanted Barbecue to have his own squad?
Yes! As a kid, I really wanted to get a white/red themed group of my favorite Joes in a special firefighting team. I was obsessed with the idea for awhile. Lifeline was in because his colors already matched, but I wanted Barbecue, Sci-Fi, Lady Jaew, Blowtorch, Steel Brigade, and Flint in a matching color scheme. They coulda had water shooting gear and a fire truck type vehicle. It coulda been awesome!
I learned years later that Hasbro had at least considered it: http://www.yojoe.com/archive/unproduced/prototype6.shtml
I always wonder what figures they might have thought up to go with that vehicle.
Cool choices. I probably would’ve been down with that kinda subline as a kid!
Great review!
Cant say I care (or ever cared) about snout spout something baout elephants turns me off like right away everytime maybe I was scarred by dumbo as a child who knows
I saw Poltergeist as a kid and still don’t find clowns funny. 😉
that last pic w/ rammie and the chalice makes me laugh… elephant dudes rock… snout spout specifically, does not… and they’re crafted by the same guys. go figure.
You can’t have too many elephant figures.
Yeah, I’m getting tired of seeing straight up vintage re-makes. This figure needed Millennium influence in the face, or a second head that didn’t look like a dopey elephant. Also it’s pretty pathetic about the trunk. If they wanted to make a love letter to the 80’s figure, should have made segmented joints in the trunk like that Monsterarts Godzilla figure has in the tail. I wouldn’t have hesitated to by it then.
*buy
How cool would a segmented trunk have been!!
yeah, before i forget… why exactly doesn’t the backpack have a spot to stow either of the weapons?
Great point!
They never thought about that, or they did and it fell off on the way to China…
Soooo..
See, my MOTU ignorance is as deep as the ocean. Is Snouty a cyborg, a mutant, yet another victim of Man-At-Arms meddling or does Eternian society dictate that firefighters wear giant elephant heads as part of their job?
And yeah, I just have no clue what’s going on with the line and design choices. I assume the 4H guys are blanketed with metric tons of NDAs and can’t say “well, we WANTED to do ‘a’ but we got overruled…”
The post below explains it, but yeah, he’s a dude stuck in a suit with a cybernetic elephant head. It’s hard living in the MOTU world.
Snout Spout was a victim of EVIL HORDE Science. It’s very much like what Man-At-Arms churns out, but it’s even MORE unwieldly and needlessly cruel. Like fellow experiment-ee Extendar, Jaxton (SS’s real name) shook off the mind-control that Leech and Grizzlor (and OTHER Horde science project Dragstor) DIDN’T, and escaped Horde captivity. Operating under the pseudonym “Hose Nose”, he palled around with The Great Rebellion for a time, but ultimately migrated to Eternia (fewer pretty girls to laugh at him? one wonders), where he still grapples with self-esteem issues as often as with Skeletor’s crew or The Snake Men.
Thanks!
Indeed, thanks very much!
But it’s sad, because a part of me kinda wanted Snouty to be ‘just’ a regular firefighter, so if there was a fire at the Royal Palace there would be a whole company of dudes with mechanical elephant heads responding… 🙂
Ribbed for her pleasure
😀
Waited two days for someone to make that joke. 😉
never get hurt in the Masters universe or you are gonna get turnred into some abomination by either MAA or even worse the Horde…of course he shook off leech and grizzlors mind control…I wouldnt trust those two to set the clock on a vcr
Exactly. LOL
Excellent review with fun pics, as is the norm on this site.
I wish my Snout Spout turned out as well as yours. Paint rubbed off all over the belt, and one of the weakest ankles I’ve ever seen in a figure; he’ll barely stand. Don’t even get me started on Swift Wind and the amazingly fragile wing-bracket . . . .
Yeah. Segmented trunk. Perfect idea, there.