MOTU Classics Stinkor: Reversed Forearms?

Tuesday, April 17th, 2012 by Pixel Dan

Since the Stinkor reviews have hit the net this past week, many fans have started to notice something a little “off” about him. While Stinkor has newly sculpted forearms combining the furry sculpt with the Skeletor “fins,” the fins do seem to be reversed.

On Skeletor, Mer-Man, and other figures who have the finned forearms, the fins always pointed more outwards. Stinkor’s point more inward. Because of this, fans were starting to wonder if this was another incident of Mattel accidentally swapping parts at the factory, similar to what we saw with the shoulders on Roboto and King Hsss.

While many fans have agreed that it doesn’t seem to be as noticeable on Stinkor, it was still becoming a question that was lingering. So I went straight to the source to see if I could figure out if the forearms are reversed or not. I asked Scott “Toyguru” Neitlich for a comment.

From Scott: “I checked with design and it actually was not a mistake but a deliberate way to differentiate Stinkor due to the heavy use of shared parts. Design discussed as a team and found that you could swap the gloves to create a slightly different look. They wanted to give Stinkor something extra since he is basically Mer-Man’s head on Beastman’s body and Mekaneck’s armor (even though we haven’t done Mek yet but you know what I mean!~). Much like painting Sorceress’ wings blue this was one way of making the toy pop a bit and be different on shelf. For reference, we also did this on BG Evil Lynn to much success!”

So there you go. Official word from Mattel is that they are reversed, but it was done intentionally by design.