There’s also the Vykron face. It really does look kinda like the classic He-Man figure. I kinda regret only getting one Vykron simply because I could use the extra face! As it is, you’d have to lop off a considerable chunk of the plug for the helmets to get the He-Hair to fit and I can’t do that to my one and only Vykron head. Maybe something to look into if I can find some loose pieces cheap.
Vykron, the barbarian, is finished off with clip on shin guards and his harness. The shin guards help round out the figure, but they do block the ankle articulation a bit. The harness to me is the prize piece because it so close to the traditional harness and I love the fur covering on the back. It’s a shame it’s not a separate piece from the harness as we’d be a little closer to an Ice Armor He-Man (though I wouldn’t care if this whole piece ended up being Ice Armor He-Man’s gear).
Vykron, the Space Ace, has the most add-on pieces (eight). I love this look, particularly the jacket, but it suffers from thing in particular – Mattel couldn’t/didn’t including interchangeable loincloths. As it is, the Space add-ons have to go over the barbarian loincloth and it just looks bulky. I don’t mind the continuity, so many of the figures have loincloths, but had Mattel opted to make the space belt and loincloth a combined piece, I think the figure would look better overall. Still, I enjoy the backpack and the helmet. The only drawback to this armor is the clip-on boots pretty much freeze the ankle in place.
Vykron, the Tank, is easily the silliest of the three. I fell in love with it instantly. I understand that the “Earth markings” being out of place rears its ugly head again here, but it doesn’t bother me like the space on Spector’s chest. I love the colors. I love the battle damage. I do enjoy the head sculpt (a completely alternate head, the Vykron face isn’t used in this configuration), but I have to agree with the contractors that it’s a bit too cartoony. I think the 4H would’ve done fine to just make it a turret-head and worked “eyes” into the design and avoided the giant grill mouth. Again, the main two problems are present, this boot totally encapsulates the leg and makes the ankle articulation redundant while the furry loincloth looks out of place. When I get around to doing more custom work on these guys, I might add a Roboto-type loincloth in a matching shade of green.
On the surface, the paint work on my set appeared to be mostly okay. There were a few little issues like the blue ‘jewel’ on the barbarian armor being off or the paint on the space belt being lumpy, but nothing that really made me feel put out. But there is one major problem with the base body.
Vykron’s arms and legs are molded black and painted in skin tone. Spikor had the same issue and so does Laser Lot this month. I’m not sure what’s behind this. If this is something Mattel is trying out, something Ruben is doing differently than Terry, or something factory thing, but it’s stupid. On Spikor & Laser Lot it’s an annoyance, but it really stands out on the light flesh tone of Vykron. Moreover, this is a figure we’re supposed to be handling, clipping on and removing pieces, and painting flesh tone over black plastic is just asking for problems. I honestly don’t get it.
In addition to the armor pieces, Vykron included three accessories. The barbarian gets a fun new axe and the other two receive rifles. This is all based on the vintage prototypes and is probably the only place where I’m really disappointed with the figures. The rifles are boring and even more so as they’re unpainted and just don’t seem to really fit. I think the axe is a fun design and looks great, but the space figure could’ve used a futuristic laser or some sort while the tank figure could have a fun shield thanks to his primary weapon being head-mounted. Still, we’re homaging here, I guess? Can I find fault with the original three mock-ups then?
In all, we can still put me down as a fan of Vykron. Like any good toy collector, I’ve gone my own way, opting to ignore the back story and find a way to add all three figures to my shelves. And I can’t really complain too much when I’ve done exactly that. I do wish the accessories were a little better and the paint over black plastic absolutely has to stop, but I like the direction Vykron took the line, albeit momentarily.
The line can only be made better by having more interchangeable pieces. MOTU Classics has almost always featured swappable armor, but imagine if all the helmeted heads had compatible ports? Some if it may not be canon, and it may be silly, but it’d be fun if He-Man could sport a guard helmet, if Lt. Spector could wear King Grayskull’s locks, or if this very Vykron head were easily compatible with the regular he-hair. Why can’t all the wrists be pegged like Spikor (if nothing else, Mattel could make a He-Man hand that holds the Power Sword aloft)? I will always want an “Ultimate He-Man” with the various armors, the Adam head (and hopefully a new head), with swappable wrists, with different weapons. It’d be awesome – and it’d blow out at retail, let’s face it. So that’s my takeaway here for Mattel. Make more interchangeable stuff (and quit painting over black plastic)!
For more MOTU reviews, check out our
MOTU Classics Collector’s Guide.
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Completely agree with you about being peeved about the ‘promise’ to not do concept figures going forward, especially since most of my favorite figures are the concept and unproduced guys. I’m also one of the sick few who have loved all the 30th characters because it just brings something new to the table.
I also think the ‘concept’ figure hate is misguided. I think people actually do not care for expensive multipacks that offer no discount for being a multipack. But since the two three-packs have been unreleased/concept figures they get the brunt of the blame. The point of a multipack has always been to get a few figures in one sweep but at a slight discount for getting them together but Mattel seems lost on that concept … even at retail with their DCU packs.
On a more Vykron note, I really wish the orange shins would plug into the Palace Guard/Keldor shins because that orange goes really nice with green!
I’ve been waiting for this review..great read as always!
My personal favorite is the tank head version..what I didn’t like is the space diaper armor..it’s a little too much to digest
Also like the barbarian axe that is packed in..very nicely done..
“You can expect to hear from my lawyers..” : vintage Noisy humor 🙂
Is that Creeper’s mane used on the back of barbarian Vykor? I’m still on the fence on this guy. After seeing what some extra bodies can do I may pick this ( or should it be these) guy up. Great review and love the pics. The lawyer shot was great.
It looks like it, but it’s not. Creeper’s mane is longer and thicker.
Talking about marketing! I was checkeing Ghostbusters (franchise) page at Wikipedia yesterday and no single word about the Mattel figures, just the NECA ones… that’s pretty smart 😛
Loved the review! I also display all 3 armors, tho havent cut the head ive been usin properly so the space helmet sits a little funny, used my man at arms fot the tank man, rotated snake man at arms as my duncan, used a palace guards buck as my snake man ar arms body.
One thing to remember, these suits all DID belong to dofferent people at one point, and we dont know what they looked like, so tank top or space man could have been whatever colors we as fans decide their buck should be
Actually Jack it was intended to be one guy, with three different looks. Sweet ripped off the Action Man concept in his prototypes. Take a look at both Roger Sweet’s book and the Power & Honor Foundation’s book.
I think Terry did a great job with this one, especially as his last MOTUC figure he worked on. The paint on black has to stop though.
All the hullabaloo about concept figures, which amount to a whopping FOUR figures since the inception of Classics (Vykron, Demo-Man, Vikor, Gygor). I could understand if people were more po’d about the eight NEW figures (Mo-Larr, Battleground Evil-Lyn, BA Faker, and five of the six Anniversary figures)…
That aside, I enjoyed Vykron. Bought two, as I also am displaying him as three different characters. The clip-ons don’t bother me aesthetically.
You beat me to it. I was gonna point out that Gygor himself is a concept character.
And I have greatly enjoyed all concept characters released so far.
I love Vykron I bought two…was gonna buy three but decided to save a little money, if they do another MMM and he’s up I will buy a third for sure.
Great review!
I glanced at your review history and saw that it was Vault, not you, who’s been doing a lot of the high-end Japanese toy reviews, but I found it interesting that some of what you’d have wanted for Vykor is very much along the lines of what’s typical for something like Figma or Soul of Chogokin: not just swappable accessories, but swappable sets of hands to give figures more versatility.
I’ve started delving into that stuff, and it’s colored how I look at “adult collectible” lines like DC Signature or MotU Classics. The Mattel figures I’ve valued most are the ones with a lot of versatility in how the figure can be displayed: the Eternian Guards, Kobra Kahn, Tallstar, etc. Those are all relatively modest with swappable parts compared to toy lines that provide multiple faces, sets of hands, etc. Mind, those figures cost more… but I can’t tell how much more, comparatively, since import and currency exchange costs are so steep. I’m fine with smart, appropriate re-use of parts, but Mattel, Hasbro, and Character Options have been doing it so much, it really starts to stink of cheapness. (I mean, we really deserved a better teen and female bodies in the DC line, and new molds could’ve still gotten heavy re-use.)
Incidentally, I passed on the 2013 subscription because I’ve got too many MotU figures already, and only want maybe 2 or 3 more, but it wasn’t figures like Demo-Man and Vykor that did it; in fact, I went out of my way to buy them before the year I subscribed. For me, the problem was figures like Dekker, King Grayskull, and Fang Man, but everybody’s tastes are different, and I know Fang Man made a lot of people (who like the He-Man cartoon a lot more than me) very happy.
i’ve had great fun w/ swapping vykron parts around or surfing through the fodder bins for compatible accessories to further trick out the V men. (i also wrote them a totally new bio, viewable here: http://www.itsalltrue.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=746&p=28165#p28165)
i will openly admit that at first mention, the photos of this set made me mad. why? because they looked cheap. and owning them now, convinced by better high res photos, eh… they are kinda cheap. i bought one set and considered for a while trying to snag two, but am glad now that i didn’t. there’s some shenanigans afoot about this set, and in toys, especially expensive toys, i hate shenanigans. for starters, the vykron buck, the new forearms are… thin. they are smaller than the standard buck forearm, so if you use another buck to slap the bracers on, the arm bands don’t fit snugly over the vykron buck forearms anymore. that’s DUMB. the paint over a buck cast in another color is DUMB, partially because, as noisy points out, we’re supposed to be using this guy, perhaps even more than usual for the line, to swap parts on and off. also, because it means the figure required extra paint aps… so vykron accrued an unnecessary expense… which could be why we got shite for paint aps on the weapons. next moment of cheapitude that was in fact not cheap: those stupid dimestore guns. they look like rejects from a chap mei set. the sculpts are soft, they lack paint aps… they look like weapons from the vintage line, to be honest. and the kicker here is, they wre unnecessary… the space dude would have looked fly as hell w/ the existing PDHM bionatops gun, and tank dude could easily have been packed w/ a webstor gun, or a pair of duncan pistols… all of these options would have required ZERO new tooling, so the budget for the pieces could have been spent on paint. who the fudge is planning this line? seriously, what kind of bonehead doesn’t look at a buck line and plan to REUSE PARTS TO MAXIMIZE THE TOOLING BUDGET?!?!?!?!? this is the kind of stuff that chaps me when i see “oh, scott is doing his best as a fan and brand manager, he’s really trying!” bullcrap, i have fleas on my nuts that try harder than that tool, he’s less competent than dan quayle at a spelling bee. i’m just saying… when his mom sends out the christmas newsletter, she tells people her son in happy in the home, and puts the bow over his face in the photo.
so back to the kvetching, the boots, had they been designed by someone w/ a brain, would have designed a clip to fit on the lower knee section that is above the boot, and thus universal to every motuc buck except the trap jaw leg. then, the giant gaudy boots would fit pretty much your whole collection. apparently, that was too easy. as was planning the frigging line “from the beginning” to have the same internal construction so that hair, helmets, etc… could be swapped. had it been done from the beginning, it would have been cost effective, and one more point of “cool” in this line’s favor. instead, it becomes a sigh of regret when the fanbase get to lamenting the lack of vision for the line. so those don’t fit quite right to enable the articulation to do it’s thing, and they don’t fit on better than half the figs we own… seriously, i want to know who the design dude was for this… if this was terry, good riddance. if this was the new guy, is it too late to have his car “modified” and get terry back? whoever was up on this set was just phoning it in, there’s no other way to call this. they can’t blame this on budgeting, because the decisions made for the figure show budget, but not good thinking.
it may be my personal fig too, but he holds his axe for crap. i have rubber banded the thing into his grip, and that works fine, i did the same thing for gygor and i’m cool w/ that, for fixinf design mistakes or QC flaws… but how often should i have to do this to fix figures that cost the same as a ribeye dinner? to put this another way, if i got the ribeye, and it was this janky, i’d be getting a new ribeye IMMEDIATELY. also, while in pixel dan’s review, his space ace suit was very hard to get on, but his barbarian uniform clipped right in, i have the opposite problem, my space ace suit fit together and stayed together, my barbarian harness won’t stay pegged in for love or money.
i’m happy in the larger sense because i like most of the pieces, and i’m fair w/ paints and quick w/ clear rubbers. i can patch most of issues i have w/ this set of pieces. most. but the set on the whole does indicate a piss poor execution from top to bottom in most areas. i shouldn’t have to do this much “clean up” on a $30 dollar toy. it is only because i truly enjoy motu as a property that i continnue to overlook this crap, any other line, even marvel, and i’d have kicked them by now. i have huge holes in my collection because i got so pissed about these stupid mistakes, and i will continue to cherry pick the line because flatly, there are toys in the line who don’t do enough right to warrant the purchase.
as it regards the new characters and ideas in this execution of the brand, man, it makes me seriously sad every time i read some one bitch about “the new.” talk about having lost the entire point of life… if the vintage is really the end-all, be-all for you, BUY THE VINTAGE!! they’re still out there, and generally affordable to boot! this is a NEW line, w/ NEW paint, NEW accessories, NEW articulation, NEW packaging, NEW bios, and NEW characters, and that’s the entire sell feature for the motuc line! this is seriously like people complaining because their kippers are briny. WTF is wrong w/ you people? let me guess, sex feels too good too? and death by chocolate is too decadent… stupid assholes. people like that are ruining life for themselves and everyone else. i guess that’s what the internet is for, complaining about crap that, if you said that in front of someone, would get you punched in the mouth. but it gets real old real fast. i love the new content for motuc, the millenium characters, the concept characters, and the actual new guys, even the ones i didn’t or won’t buy. i may not like the execution of a given fig, but i refuse to defame a whole subset of figures because i don’t like one guy… that’s profilin’, and profilin’s wrong. it’s a little narcissistic to assume that everyone will fall in line w/ how i do things… but i’m right. so snap to folks! 😉
That’s… that’s quite a lot of negativity, there.
That whole first paragraph, about the weapons? Yes, I do agree that they suck (axe aside). But they are designed to resemble the prototype ones, which a] makes sense as that’s what the figure is trying to capture – moreso than your average straight-up vintage fig even, given that this is their first crack at plastic – and b] would almost certainly be something some fans somewhere would complain about if they were replaced. We’ve all got ideas for accessories that we’d prefer to see with various figures, but turning that into a rather personal attack on TG seems a bit much.
Designing the boots to fit the lower knee section makes no sense to me, sorry. Pretty much all figures have some sort of boot beneath that, and they’re all different shapes and sizes – there’s not enough knee to anchor it to a skeletor-type boot, the fins on whiplash legs would get in the way, and he-ro boots pretty much cover that bit too. Same with Trap-Jaw boots, as you say. Granted, they might fit very loosely over Horde boots and bare legs, but that’s about it. Basically, if it were made to fit the lower knee, it’d be less secure (from being attached to the fig at the top rather than the middle) and still only really fit the furry boots.
I can’t really agree with the bit about internal connections of hair and stuff either. All the heads seem to be sculpted individually (I guess they kind of have to be, very few of them are the sort of head where you can just easily swap out a face) so ensuring that each newly-sculped head has exactly the same dimensions each and every time seems like it would be pretty fiddly. It’s not like this is lego where they can just paint a new face on a standard head or anything. And really, would that effort be worth it? I mean yes, it would be great for customisers if they could boil their he-man heads for a few minutes and give him Man-at-Arms’s helmet, but that’s not actually the point of these toys; they’re designed to represent specific characters. It’s cool when they include easy, swappable bits between characters but on the whole, it’s not meant to be a fully mix-and-match line like Gylos or OSM.
Now the stuff about painting the limbs on a figure, we can all agree that’s just plain stupid from so many angles (especially, as you point out, a financial one). And QC issues with loose grips, dodgy joints, all the rest – total fails, every one. But to complain that a toy company hasn’t made it easy for people to dismember toys that were not designed to come apart in the first place and glue them together in new configurations just seems odd to me.
clay, couple notes here:
a) the sweet protos weren’t followed exactly anyways, or space ace would have a black face mask, tank top wouldn’t have a face, and barbarian wouldn’t have hands. fudging the guns, which aren’t on model w/ the concepts either, would have been completely acceptable, especially in light of being able to afford to paint the pieces.
b) many of the masters fig do have similar heads under their hair, if you do a heat and pop. but not all. there are only a couple one piece heads in the set (so far as human characters go), most have the hair or helmet as a separate piece glued on the top. since this means there is already an under structure below the hair, using a universal understructure could have enabled more, simple parts swapping. it was not planned for that, clearly, but it could have been, hence my statement that they missed a chance to do something cool.
c) the boots are the figure we got are, aside from the barbarian greaves, large, much larger than they need to be to house the reptile boot, the hero boot, or the rebellion boot. had the internal structure been designed to clip onto the lower knee section, above the boots, it would have accommodated more boot types in the exchange feature. you can say this makes no sense, but SMAA greave wraps around that very knee segment, and fits quite securely. so it could have worked. SMAA’ greave is form fitting to the hero boot, true, but given the size of the overboots for vykron, there was room in there for many kind of boots if the clip on point were altered, especially when you consider that the ankle cuff on both boots already eliminated the use of the boot swivel and the ankle joint… so they were willing to ransack the articulation for the sake of aesthetics. why not do it in a way to give us more swap options?
d) like i said, despite my many criticisms, i’m generally happy w/ the purchase, i just can’t help, in the course of the play that the toy was designed for, to see LOTS of chances for minor tweaks to make a major difference to the toy i spent my money on. my critique of toy guru is merely on him recieving undue credit for work he didn’t do… he didn’t design this figure, so he gets no credit for it, nor criticism… what he did was the cost out the figure, and he costed out wrong. he chose new (and not very good) sculpts, over great sculpts and paint. that’s a no brainer from my living room. i was VERY critical of whichever design lead was in charge for this bad boy, because they missed a lot of chances to think critically and make a really special piece out of this character. it’s pisswater thinking like this that is leading to the customer-hemorrhage we’ve seen in the last 2 years. it’s not hard to deduce that asking top shelf prices for middle shelf product is not going to yield gangbuster sales.
Glad they never went this direction on making him the official He-Man. Excellent way to finally bring the old concept of the different versions of He-Man to Classics. The Space & Military suits seem very strange but after i brought both versions there outfits doesn’t look that bad. Cool review & pics by the way.
Outstanding review, even better than your usual excellent fare, and the comics are great! But, man, we have to make our displeasure about painting over black plastic body parts known. Could that be addressed in a not-too-distant-future Ask Matty? As in, “Why have you taken to painting over black plastic body parts instead of casting in the proper colour plastic? This cheap-o method not only irritates your paying customers, it results in products that do not wear well and bring shame and disgrace to the Mattel brand for their shoddiness and ease of deterioration.” Or something. };D
This guy’s still winging (or sailing, or plodding) his way to me, but I look forward to getting him in the next couple of weeks. (It takes anywhere up to 6 weeks for these things to get to England, depending in the random routes they take.) Actually, I got three Vykrons, so I could make three separate characters and cherry-pick the best accessories / outfits for them.
Out of cusriosity, have you thought about what the Tank Top armour would look like over a Snake Man-At-Arms buck?
i hate Vykron, they are horrible like trash
are those two guardsmen at the end actually repainted (dyed?) or digitally repainted? the armors almost look like something Skeletor would make his own flunkies wear.
Hey guys, still no LaserLot, DB Skele, Mek or Snakemen Reviews?