Who could have guessed that Moss Man would end up as one of the most controversial MOTUC figures? He debuted at SDCC with flocking that Mattel couldn’t mass replicate. When they changed it, they covered his ears and all hell broke loose. That resulted in two variants for the sale day. Mattel cleared a path of bandwidth and warned us to get in and order as quickly as possible. Moss Man went on-sale at 10:57 local IAT time and both versions were gone in a little over five minutes. Somehow, amidst all the hubbub, I got exactly the Moss Man I wanted.

Okay, well the Moss Man on the right is exactly the one I wanted. I bought two of the unflocked version because I’m ridiculous and like having extra figures that use the alternate heads. I know.

Anyway, the original Moss Man was one of my favorite toys as a kid and I still have a soft spot for the silly 200x “Buy 3 Crappy He-Men Variants” Mail-In edition. In all, Moss Man was one of the handful of Classics figures that I was really looking forward to seeing when the line debuted, but when they showed him at San Diego… well, I just wasn’t feeling it. I didn’t like the flocking used on the showpiece, but then fate intervened and the flocking Mattel ended up using enabled the figure to live up to my expectations. Simply put, I love the “modern” Moss Man figure. He’s easily one of my favorites in the Classics line.

Oh, and the Beast Man head is cool too. He’s all fed up and ready to go off just like I remember.

Though my BeastMoss Man is missing some flocking on his right bicep, I have to say Mattel did an excellent job on the flocking, despite the controversy. It gets as close as it can to the joints and fades out. The only two areas where it stands out are around the shoulders and the elbows, but the other areas more than make up for those two sore spots. Still, if you’re not a fan of this type of flocking, you’re not going to like it. But if you wanted something akin to the previous versions of the figure, this is the flocking for you. And it’s the best of Mattel’s three attempts at Moss Man yet.

Moss Man only has a handful of paint applications and most are sharp. I did have one issue with the modern head’s eyes. I forgot to grab a picture of it, but it appears to be crying. The green paint bleeds out of the sockets. If I’d only ordered one figure, I’d be annoyed, but thankfully it only happened on one of the two modern heads I received.

One strange thing about Moss Man’s colors are the differences from his face, to the visible parts of the body, to the hands and feet. They don’t match, but are complimentary, particularly the brown streaks across the unflocked plastic areas that blend with multi-colored flocking. Moss Man looks sharp up close and from afar.

As I said above, Moss Man comes with two heads. He’s packaged with the repainted Beast Man head to appeal to the “just as we remember” crowd. They went all out, even painting the eyes looking to the left. That really helped to convince me I wanted both versions on display. That and I’m a total sucker for the extra Beast Man armor coming in the weapon’s pak. I’m going to put that on him just like I did when I was a kid.

While BeastMoss Man is an angry fella, he doesn’t have much on his contemplative (annoyed?) modern counterpart. While the overall body design isn’t there, this is the Moss Man I’ve been waiting for since 2002. He looks sharp. And, I have to admit, I didn’t really care if we ended up with flocked ears or not, but the unflocked ears look really good on the final version.

Since Moss Man only required a new head in the tooling department, he’s got some decent accessories in addition to the alternate head: a satchel, a knife, and his classic mace with a twist.

The satchel is made of various tangled vines and includes a scabbard and a sculpted bag. I have no idea what would be in the pouch, but the knife is removable. And it looks great too, like it’s made of stone. Perfect for a guy that lives in the woods. The whole setup is easily removed so you can display your Moss Man with or without depending on how vintage you want to go.

Moss Man also includes his classic mace, but with a twist. It’s been given details to make it more “woodsy”. It looks great here, but Mattel already soured it a little bit by offering a silver version in the upcoming Weapons Pak. I guess we have to assume there are silver trees on Eternia? Why not? There’s everything else. Anyway, the smaller vine on the strap separates just a bit from the larger one on his back to give Moss Man a place to stow his mace. Self-storage is always a plus. Continue to Page 2…