I want to review Castle Grayskull Man, but there’s another MOTUC review I’ve been putting off that I should probably do first. Regular readers may have noticed that I skipped a figure these past few months. It wasn’t really on purpose. I just kept finding things I’d rather spend time on…
Sir Laser Lot was part of 2012’s mini-sub featuring (mostly) all-new characters in the MOTU mythos. In years past I have championed, and still do, new characters being added to the ongoing story and there being figures of those characters too. I think that a line can’t be healthy without growth and new characters, so when the 30th sub was announced, I, in particular, was pretty excited.
With all the figures in hand, I still think it was worth my signing up, but I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t love all of the figures. The best way to sum up why is probably to talk about what I find compelling (and what I don’t). The six figures in the 30th Anniversary subscription were compelling to me in different ways. Photog got the easiest past for his history as the original “Create-A-Character” winner thirty years ago. The others had to rely on a mix of their design and their backstories.
Draego-Man, Castle Grayskull Man, and (Cy-Chop to a lesser extent) all appealed to me visually and creatively. Draego-Man looks kickass and his bio did a great job of explaining who he is. CGM looks kickass and his bio laid out the particulars while his creator, the amazing Daniel Benedict, made me fall in love by having him chuck the door of Castle Grayskull as a projectile. Cy-Chop took a little longer for me to warm up to, but he’s fun and again, his bio gives me a good idea of where to go with him. And yes, I’ve even accepted the Spector into the fold. I don’t mind the design and Scott has (somewhat inadvertently) given Jon Spector his own personality in my eyes. Regular readers have seen me get a kick of out having Spector around.
And then there’s Sir Laser Lot.
Laser Lot had the misfortune of receiving one of the bios that doesn’t really say much of anything about the character. Some of it was purposeful (his real name is “unknown”… so mysterious), but it was mostly because it told you about what happened to him instead of about him specifically. What makes Laser Lot cool? What sets him apart? The bio doesn’t really tell us. We know he wears gem-powered armor and that he’s an excellent hand-to-hand combatant that gets flung into the future, but that’s about it. Bios like that make work for characters like Bow that have plenty of media to explore should we care, but it wasn’t the right away to make us care about Laser Lot. It forced the figure to rely almost exclusively on the design and… Well, they say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I’m the one writing the review.
I dont’ want to armchair quarterback the design, but he just needs something different. I like the idea that he’s a knight (he can pal around with Extendar) but there’s not much else here. I’d almost say he primarily suffers from not being able to include the action feature that the “original” would have presumably had: a light-up feature. Laser Lot presumably would’ve worked similar to Laser Power He-Man & Laser Light Skeletor (though his CAC design should predate those figures, right?). A battery pack would light up his weapons, his plume, and ideally the gem on his chest. The gem not being a clear-molded add-on piece, is downright criminal by the way. How can Mattel expect us to think the Gem of Tamadge is cool when they wouldn’t spring for it to be cool?
Anyway, I don’t know if it’s simply the design, the lack of action feature or what, but one thing I did do to improve SLL was to remove the cape. It did further offset the blue/red balance, but I think he’s a sharper figure without it. Continue to Page 2…
SLL has grown on me, I like him a lot more than I used to.
Great review, excellent pics, and I pretty much agree with every point you make. (Except for online exclusive comics you have to pay to download. Just the word “exclusive” raises my hackles, let alone making it a digital file that can become corrupted over time.)
While I actually rather like this figure in and of itself, as you say, with almost no media tie-ins, it’s hard for me to work up any enthusiasm about him as a character. I might like this figure more when I finally get around to doing him a fabric cape for ease of balance and poseability. And if I can find a clear triangular fake gem, even better. These 30th Anniversary figures are growing on me. I thought I’d hate Cy-Chop when I finally got him, but with a spare Horde armband on him, I find he’s not quite so horrible as I’d initially expected.
Out of curiosity, how do you do the “light-up” effects in your photos like Laser-Lots’s mace and He-Ro’s sword? It’s damn’ cool.
it looks like Noisy had a flashlight aimed at the mace? no way was that some computer graphic.
practical is usually better than CGI FX.
It’s SuperLanternKnight with the Shield of SummerScot!
(and I came up with that before seeing the last panel shout out to LoSH!)
yeah, sorry, this guy has zero appeal to me. He looks like Geoff rejected a Lantern concept character barely modified to the MOTU-verse. Maybe if you had the Red Lantern Night-Lich head popped on him, he *might* have potential as a baddie, but….it’s not and this guy is a waste, imo.
Nice Legion riff there at the end, Noisy. This guy is probably the least exciting of the lot, but he’s not so bad either.
He’s grown on me but passed on the pair since the stand selling didn’t reduce them by the time ofbthe endbof the toy show. ($35 each for MS and SLL) Admit if was a bit cheaper woulda tried for SLL. I got the free SDCC comic that had the SLL story in it plus #1 of the mini and it did make me like the guy alot more. Hoping somebody may surprise me for Christmas.
I admit I did make the two in WWE ’12. Might Spector announced as “The Purple Disaster” and Sir Laser Lot as “Blue Nightmare” and together they are the Craptastic Knights. It is a funny sight to see. Though the move set I gave Spector has him kissing his opponent for a signature move.
Maybe it’s just me, but one of the most annoying things about this figure, that I haven’t seen mentioned in even the most critical reviews, is the color of his shield.
SLL has a red energy sword, a red energy mace and even a red energy helmet plume, all ostensibly powered by his (non-translucent) red chest crystal; but he has a blue energy shield?
That’s a great point. I thought I was just being petty, but that bugs me too. Nice to know I’m not the only one.
right on rik, i thought the same thing, the shield should have been red.
personally, i play him like an arrogant douche. like w/ his laser weapons, he’s a top shelf fighter, but he’s very cobra kai about it. but dekker is here now, and he’s all miyagi about his skills. there’s most likely a reckoning coming. anyways, to me, that’s how the characters, as written, inspire my imagination… if their creators think that’s not how their characters should read, perhaps they should have done a better job of presenting the character as they intended us to read it.
i did buy most of the 30th anni figs, the only exception being photog, who i’d pined for long enough that i lost the will… go figure. but in large part, that’s because i have the courage to do repaints and custom work. my SLL now has gold paint over all his silver and several extra detailing slots like in his breathmask, and i think he looks better. and like noisy, i chucked the cape. bad design is bad design.
I like the way you think. Personally, I haven’t been able to get him to stop sounding like a cross between The Tick and “Beast Wars” Silverbolt in my head. Your take on him just might remedy that.
I had the exact same little story going on with Dekker and Sir Laser-Lot. Now that Man-at-Arms is a Snake Man and events are leading up to another “last” battle, Dekker has decided to add to the cause where he sees Sir Laser-Lot going on and on about his abilities with his magical gem. Dekker ends up taking down Laser-Lot with just his techno mace that Duncan had perfected.
Photog’s been up on Matty all weekend, $15.40.
Maybe his shield is blue because his body-armor is blue, thus making his defensive weapons the same color-scheme? And, obviously, his offensive weapons are both red.
Yeah, that’s not the greatest explanation either. Hey, I tried, but like my grandma used to say “You can’t polish a turd.”
I question letting non-designers make figures for a very visually striking toyline.
Honestly, while I can see what he was going for, Sir Laser-Lot (a name I still hate – maybe if they dropped the “sir”, to make it less obvious) looks like he was designed BY a child, instead of FOR a child. It’s like a child saw Superman and wanted to make his own version, without understanding color theory or WHY Superman needs red to break up the blue.
With Johns’s influence in the company, I suppose that also explains why they dropped his briefs in the New 52.
That last panel…oh, oh, I can’t stop laughing!
OK, I know how to make ol’ Lasy better. He’s Duncan, exiled in time!
See, when he was captured, he was cloned, and the clone turned into Snake MAA (it’s easier that way), then the real Duncan was sent to the past for ‘safe keeping’. But they didn’t count on his wizard techno skills, he escapes from his captors and prison, he creates the ‘laser armor’ to disguise himself in case he runs into anyone from his time hurled back in time (because that s**t happened ALL THE TIME) and preventing any paradoxes and so on.
When Snake MAA is killed blah blah blah. There! Suddenly Laser-Lot is way neater!
I LOVE it! It can even cover for the goofy name, as a pun based on an Earth legend Queen Marlena spoke of at the Royal Dinner Table one night.
Thank you! And it can work with existing stuff. The armor is ‘hot’ not only as a passive defense measure but it’s a side effect of tapping the chronodyne particles that result from the way he was sent back in time, he uses the chrono energy to power the laser stuff, thus is seems like a ‘super power’.
Duncan will use this technology to create Snake Armor, Ice Armor and Laser Armor.
Or something. 🙂
This figure would have been better with a 2nd head to be displayed with him.
Seconded!
this guy remembers my a black sabbath song called Neon knights
Yeah, right! Isn’t that him on the cover of the Paranoid album?
I got SLL in a trade, swapped out his buck for Hordak’s, broke out the paints on the rest, and made a Sir Horde-a-Lot. Looks way better.
As usual great review. SLL is the stinker of the 30th line for me…it was cy chop but after seeing the previous review of him walking on his scissors I kind of like him more than I did.
I don’t collect MOTU figures, but I always check out the reviews here to see what’s going on. I will admit I was a little bored by this figure review, but the last panel won me over in the end.
I just wish Sir Laser Lot came with a lot of lasers. But he doesn’t, and I still love him. Hate to say my least favorite with Photog, he just bores me compared to all the other ones.
I really dug the 30th line, a little sad to see it go.
I think he might make a good armored up superman custom, Noisy! If you take that Kal-El superman with the headgear and find a way to pop his head on the body, it’d probably look pretty cool. of course, you’d need to make the S logo…
The reason I don’t like him is because it looks like Geoff Johns forgot he agreed to create a character, then when Nietlich called him up he panicked and reached for the “Elseworlds Superman” file.
i almost bought this on matty during the cyber monday sale but then read he was a black plastic and immediately backed off. i can barely tolerate mekaneck and spikor in my collection and i love those characters.
What i got from the comics is that Geoff Jhons made Sir Laser Lot relevant by making him Clamp Champ in disguise!