When I was a wee tot, I sorta hated Spikor. I could bore you with why, but the specifics aren’t really important. Suffice to say, this wasn’t a Masters of the Universe Classics figure I was really looking forward to; and that was before he debuted as basically a vintage rehash.
I don’t have a lot of memories of toy shopping when I was a kid. My parents accumulated presents for my birthday and Christmas throughout the year. The results were some of the most awesome Christmas mornings and birthdays a kid could have, but very few stories of being in a store getting a new toy. I remember some – the awesomeness of seeing black Spider-Man for the first time as a Secret Wars figure, foolishly turning down Metroplex for the Joe Swampmasher (or was it the Dogfighter? I don’t even remember, but duh… Metroplex? I must’ve been on crack), not wanting Spikor because he had a dumb trident hand, my Mom being annoyed that the capes came off on Super Powers Batman & Robin (I was always losing the accessories), or my parents & I searching high & low across the state for an Optimus Prime. And, after not finding him, letting me pick out whatever Transformers I wanted. I chose a blue corvette, Tracks.
I loved that Tracks. I loved his stickers off, his paint thin, and even his arm/door right off (and yes, I did lose his missile battery & missiles). To this day, Tracks is still one of my favorite Autobots, but unlike Ratchet, whom I loved because of the comics, or Hot Rod, whom I loved because of the cartoon, I loved Tracks because he was a great toy that will forever be associated with that awesome day. And as I got older and ended up a toy collector, that affinity for Tracks easily morphed into a Tracks collection. The pricey Milton Bradley red Tracks. The yellow Alternator. The blue Alternator. The Generations Tracks. And, of course, a Reissue so I can have an original in pristine condition. And… for me, I would ultimately realize that there was really no point to having all of those, but that’s a much longer story for a different day.
Anyway, so this is a Spikor review, right? Well, give me some credit, I did mention Spikor up there, if you’ll recall. I remember not wanting him. He was purple (which strangely didn’t keep me from getting Adam) and he had a trident for his left hand, which I have to admit I still think is out of place & lame. And are the spikes his armor or his skin? The head and chest tell two different tales… I couldn’t tell you which figure I came home with from Sears instead that day, but my dislike of Spikor carried over for awhile. I have never been once disappointed that we didn’t get him in MO2K. And, while I always knew he must have a Classics figure, I never really cared about it. When he showed up with his trident hand and cartoony face earlier this year, I felt vindicated in my disinterest. I had hoped that the Four Horsemen would do something to him to make him more worthwhile, but as the line slowly caves slavishly into nostalgia, it seems increasingly unlikely.
With Spikor coming via my subscription, I had intended for him to be one of my “grin & bear” it figures. It wasn’t all bad, I no longer really much care about the color purple anymore, and probably more importantly, if I’m going to have a toy, I may as well inspect it for unseen coolness instead of writing it off (that may apply more to me as a ‘professional’ toy reviewer then to the average collector, but getting out of our collecting comfort zone and seeing what’s out there is something we could all use a little practice at).
Classics Spikor is just about exactly what any one of us would’ve expected. He’s got the basic MOTUC buck, only sporting new forearms to get the bracers right. To round him out, there’s the new prickly armor and the new head sculpt. The head sculpt appears to be much more to my liking in person than what I saw at Toy Fair. I doubt it was tweaked, perhaps it’s just materials or bad lighting at the show, but Spikor’s head isn’t as goofy and Cl-awful as it first looked. And if you’re willing to take out some paint and remove those googly pupils, his menace factors grows exponentially! Continue to Page 2
Great review. I laughed at that last series of pictures, those are hilarious.
I had Spikor as a kid, and there was always something off about him. His rubber band legs gave out while I was playing with him (which is weird because other of my old figures still stand perfectly today), and his paint kind of chipped off easier than on other figures too.
Sadly, somehow they managed to give me a Spikor with a few QC issues this time around too, which soured me a bit. He has the expected googly eyes, but he also has a fully fused foot joint (that isn’t budging even after hot water), one arm that doesn’t turn and a few paint chips in the purple. Not even counting his badly warped club, which was easily fixed. The worst thing though is that he has a very noticeable mold line across his cheek, which looks like a wrinkle.
A bit of a dissappointment.
Put your Spikor in the freezer for 20 minutes and I bet that fused ankle becomes unfused.
Funny how both of us didn’t find Optimus and end with a Tracks toy 😉 he was soo cool then and now.
for me it was the opposite… as a kid i tried hard as heck to find tracks and i never got him until the reissues…i got optimus on a birthday run where i got to pick any toy i wanted…
he is probably my second least favorite next to spector
that is spikor my second least favorite ..not tracks.. what is not to love about a flying car
Stop convincing me to remove the pupils of my toys!
great review! now i feel like removing pupils on a lot of figures;D no pupils work better for many of my favorites(hal jordan, batman and of course the ninja turtles:D). spikor is awesome i have him i cant stop fiddling around with him. i wish my trident was extendable;D
I’m one of the last guys that will take a vintage re-hash over some 4H added flair or a Millennium design, but I really ended up liking Spikor. I like his grumpy as hell face, and the trident just reminds me of a more aquatic theme. If he’s another race like Merman, it makes sense, and his spikes make sense as he’s like a blowfish man or something.
In the “Separation” episode of the MYP cartoon, there’s a big underwater frieze showing what looks like a battle between Mer-Man’s species and Spikor’s species (back before he became a one-off curse victim). I always assumed they were Urchin Men, but blowfish could work, too.
Urchin makes more sense. I knew there was a better example than a blowfish.
I still have my Spikor of old. I don’t recall how I got him but I grew found of him via the terror claws being made by him. Wish matty put those in as a bonus with Spikor. I’ll have to watch the eyes when looking for this guy. Dug the review and laughed at the one picture. Which one, schwing give a hint.
You turned down Metroplex for one of the smaller Joe vehicles? Metroplex? The gigantic Autobot City? DUDE!
Seriously, you are a master storyteller. Great segue between Tracks and Spikor there. I never had ol’ Spiky as a kid since I had given up on the line a while earlier. Still, he seemed one of the most menacing Masters from the middle years. Kind of a cross between a blowfish and a porcupine with a bad attitude. I like how you tricked him out with two maces, he looks way meaner that way. And even though I might be in the minority, those pupils make him look creepier to me. Sort of like a demonic Muppet or something.
Oh man, Noisy, I love the nostalgic stories about youthful toy-collecting. I do want to hear more about how you decided you didn’t need a bunch of Tracks, or why you hated Spikor!
Assuming there was more than Spikor not looking cool, lol.
Also, love the Stinkor sulk.
Nice review and pics, Noisy. Yeah, Spikor was not one of the “have to have” figures when I was a wee lad, either. He was one of the goofier looking Masters, along with Snout Spout and Buzz-Off, and even as a youth I knew the guy was kinda dorky. That said, I had hoped the 4H would work some magic with him, and show us how cool this character could be. Maybe give him a “bald” head, or a head with smoothed down spikes like a porcupine you could switch out with his classic “pissed-off” head when it’s time for fightin’. I don’t know. I mean, it looks like a Classic-cized update, and that’s about it. It’s not a bad figure, it just seems like ol’ Spikor was just kind of “phoned-in.”
“Phoned-in” is about the best way to put it IMO.
i feel like those last two photos were taken just for me… and i thank you from the bottom of my old black heart, even if they weren’t… but they totally were, weren’t they?
i passed on spikor, as the next few months expenses are forcing me to be more selective than i’d like to be (why, why am i being forced to dread december? there are so many cool pieces out in dec, and i feel like a schlub even asking the family to accommodate that much product “just for me.” am i the only matty custom who isn’t a self centered prick?) but i have always liked spikor… i was more than a tad peeved at the MYP when tri-klops, my favorite barbarian mercenary swordsman turned into the snake mountain mechanic while spikor, the REAL guy behind the skele-tech, got completely blown off.
as usual Noisy amazing job here!
Great review and great pics! (As always.)
Unlike many here, I was a fan of Spikor as a lad (and still am, apart from the ridiculous Filmation portrayal of the character), so was pleased to get this guy added to my collection. His head is a little smaller and less spiky than I’d been expecting after owning the original, but I’m not traumatised by it. If he’d only had a spring-out trident, I would’ve been thrilled. Your picture of him battleing the Vykron posse depicts him how I’d always imagined him: one of the baddest, most dangerous mammajammas on Eternia.
I didn’t know that about his skin being cast in black and painted purple. That bites! I’ll have to be careful, then. Having said that, I didn’t have any paint issues on mine with his skin or eyes like many people had. I was annoyed by the fact that the proximal edges of his studded bracelets weren’t painted well, and that all his weapons have “CHINA” blatantly printed on them.
Actually, I kind of like the way your examples have his eyes looking downward. For one, it makes a change from the usual Mattel “looking up” problem with painted eyes. And for another, it makes him look like he’s sneering down at you, adding to his grumpy appearance, with a hint of “I can lick you and your whole damn family, now get out of my way before you get a telescoping trident where the sun don’t shine” thrown in.
But I’ve gotta say I was impressed with the number of different metallic paints used on him. He’s got silver on his trident, metallic red on his belt, copper on his bubble-warped thagomizer*, metallic teal on his breastplate studs, and a really, really subtle metallic dark purple on his bracelets.
* Ever since I found out from the BBC Planet Dinosaur series that scientists now call the Stegosaurs’ spiked tails “thagomizers” in honour of a Gary Larson The Far Side cartoon on the subject, I’ve taken to referring to spiked clubs like this as thagomizers. I imagine Spikor holding it aloft for all to see, in the manner of Bruce Campbell, and saying: “See this? This is my THAGMOIZER!” I have a vivid internal fantasy life.
Looking forward to the Vykron review now!
“Ever since I found out from the BBC Planet Dinosaur series that scientists now call the Stegosaurs’ spiked tails “thagomizers” in honour of a Gary Larson The Far Side cartoon on the subject, I’ve taken to referring to spiked clubs like this as thagomizers. I imagine Spikor holding it aloft for all to see, in the manner of Bruce Campbell, and saying: “See this? This is my THAGOMIZER!”
i like the way you play.
Thank ‘e, mate! };D
Also thanks for correcting my misspelling on the final “THAGOMIZER.” My keyboard dyslexia is getting worse.
I am one who really was hoping to see a Staction version of this guy.
From the 4H’s concept art:
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y275/Sephron13/IMG00540.jpg
it almost seems as though they’re suggesting a spiky torso with spikes poking through armor that’s been sealed and locked on top of him, presumedly some spell to keep him in line.
At least that’s my take. 🙂
That looks like a damnn nifty on the character, but the trident arm looks way too big on that version.
there is something about that trident arm in the concept arm that just looks a little too “red rocket” for me to take seriously. i know i have a fixation, but for real, it looks a little too much like a meathammer and not enough like a weapon… on the other hand, that version of the thagomizer looks fly as hell.
honestly though, it’s too much of the same for me. he looks like vintage spikor, just bigger. just being bigger isn’t cool. if they intend him to be in armor, then he needs armor that’s not colored like his skin, for starters. then, we need the trident to either be a real weapon, or an artificial limb… and just imagining the horsemen doing a really gnarled, mutilated stumpified hunk of limb hanging, and then the expertly crafted mechanical limb attached to it via spike and straps that are in no way friendly looking… that could be double live gonzo. or to put it another way, look at how much cooler trap jaw’s mechalimb came out… why didn’t they do something like that for poor spikor? instead the concept art gives us the great red knot, which sounds too much like the title of my bestiality porn.
Yeah, they definitely could’ve done more with the trident on that to make it more gruesome. After all, by the the time MO2K got to the Inaction Figure stage, they didn’t have to worry too much about traumatising the kiddies with Dave Kronenberg / Clive Barker body horror imagery.
nothing to do with Spikor, but I remember having Optimus Prime, the dinobots, sunstreaker, and sideswipe. I remember having no other autobots. Even then I was obsessed with the Decepticons
As a character I have no love nor hate for Spikor. I could go along with ‘Blowfish Man’ on him, I could see cartoon writers having a field day with ‘puffed up self importance’ and sudden shocks making him go BWOOMF!!
Saying that, the pic of him with the twin clubs, he suddenly strikes me as a brawler, a guy who just wades into a melee and whomps on everything and everyone around him. You send him in to break up a bar fight. He doesn’t CARE, he just wants to hit things.
I think taking out his pupils does wonders for his overall look, even if it does risk leaning to the ‘cartoony’ that made some people wince with Clawful.
I had Spikor as a kid, and I enjoyed playing with him alot. I never saw the cartoon episode with him until recently, but for me he was always matched up against Fisto, because of his spikes He-Man couldn’t punch him, so that left Fisto with his giant metal fist as the only master who could take him out without hurting himself in hand-to-hand.
Can’t wait to get Spikor in hand (in Australia, so should be here in a week or so).
It’s funny how so many people have different favourites. I was never a huge fan of Spikor as a kid, but really looking forward to the classics figure.
On the flip side, Kobra Khan, who Noisy likes, has never been a favourite of mine. I’ve always found him just dull. Then again, I’ve never been that big on Snakemen. Not sure why. I do love the Snake Face staction though (hated the vintage figure however).
I used to call Spikor “Grape-Man” when I was kid b/c of his purple color. Glad that FH made a left for him in Classics. Cool pics by the way!!