Added a Skeletor Review to the MOTU Classics Collector’s Guide.

Skeletor was my first MOTU Classics figure. I had ordered He-Man and Beast Man earlier, but didn’t change the shipping option and Skeletor ended up beating them here by nearly a week. (Let’s all be glad that USPS shipping option is dead!). He came on a Wednesday and I had to leave for comics before I got him out of the package, but I knew on the way to the comic shop that the line had me for the long haul. Now, it’s the night before I sign up to order figures that I don’t even know who they’re going to be and one that I won’t even get until Dec 21st, 2010. It’s fair to say that the 4H are powerful and that Mattel has harnessed that power to convince us to give them all our money.

Skeletor was the January 2009 figure. He caused some controversy because He-Man and Beast Man sold out days before his release, and a lot of fans who planned to save on shipping got bit. Then he turned around and sold through in eleven days, leaving a whole second group of people bit. I remember the debates back then, and how paltry they seem with Man-At-Arms selling out more than 350 times faster. As of this writing, Mattel is saying that we’ll see a rerelease of Skeletor before the end of the year.

Skeletor was the first to sport the evil forearms, calf protectors, and claw feet that most of the villain figures will utilize. Unique to him are his head, his armor, and his loincloth. His armor and loincloth are clean updates of the classic versions. His head is also a great update of the classic. His face sculpt is exceptionally detailed with scratches and indentions in the bone and he looks slightly pleased, so I’d say he’s from the middle of an episode and not the end. I like the hood from the front, but from other angles the hood starts to remind me of Little Red Riding Hood or Gretel. I don’t think it’s a sculpt problem, but maybe the source material. The way around it is for him to have a more draping hood, but that might not look right in a different way.

Skeletor comes with the minimum amount of accessories a $20 toy should have. And that’s three. You get his Havoc Staff, the purple sword and the half-version of it. The two swords have a nice coat of metallic paint that helps sell it as a blade. The Havoc Staff is pure purple, it looks like the skull atop is molded in a slightly different color, but it’s hard to tell. Some paint apps, even just the purple metallic paint might have been nice here. There’s a good sculpt there, but it’s kind of hiding in the solid color.

In the paint department, I won the lottery on Skeletor. I’ve seen quite a few pictures of him in various collections and the green on the face ranges from an almost entirely green face to having specific green dots in certain places. On my Skeletor, the green is an even wash and the yellow paint underneath shows through in all the right places. The paint in his recessed eyes and nose are also crisp. From the head down, there’s not a lot of paint, but what is there supports the figure very well. Again, the early releases just seem to have been better painted.

Overall, Skeletor was the figure that made sure I stayed in the line. This is where I learned how sturdy they were, how nice the articulation was, how detailed they could be even if the parts reuse was as high as the old days. He’s the figure that made sure I’m buying Dec 2010’s figure in Aug 2009. As the main bad guy, Skeletor deserves front of shelf status and this figure makes sure he gets it.

For more MOTU reviews, check out our MOTU Classics Collector’s Guide.