Following up on my recent post about this incredibly cool custom hammer by friend Joe Amaro, Joe has updated his blog with these images of the final product!
From Joe:
“The Mystic Hammer sculpt is now finished! Here are some pictures of the hammer with various figures to give you an idea of scale. The size is 5.5″ tall by 4” wide. It’s now off to get casted and then they will be ready for sale. I do not have a pre-order section. I will post a link here and on Twitter to the sale page when they are ready.”
In case you haven’t seen it yet, Scott “ToyGuru” Neitlich has once again posted a short video to show off some features on upcoming action figures. He answers questions about how the arm attachments will work on MOTU Classics Spikor and shows how the interchangeable legs work on Ghostbusters Dana.
Maybe someone can clear this up for me. Is Dana articulated at all? When she was shown to us at Toy Fair, I was under the impression that when she has her “normal” legs on, she would still have some articulation. I figured at least the head and arms still moved, and I likened this interchangeable legs feature to the most recent Slave Leia figure that Hasbro put out. I loved that figure, so thought it was cool Mattel was handling Dana the same way. However, I’ve seen a lot of people upset, saying Dana is more of a statue than a figure. So maybe I was wrong about the articulation?
As far as Spikor goes, I love the way they handled his trident. And I think it’s extra cool that the attachments use the same plug in as Trap Jaw, Roboto, and Hurricane Hordak. Definitely not something that was necessary, but col to see it included.
Mattel has sent me yet another teaser image to share with you all. This time it’s this tiny little image of a portion of Mosquitor’s thigh.
I am told that it was the idea of Cornboy from Four Horsemen Design that I am teased with tiny pictures like this leading up to the big reveal. If they are trying to kill me with anticipation, I think it’s working. This is pure torture!
But, I am still on Cloud 9 knowing that my all-time favorite character will be coming to Masters of the Universe Classics this year!
I’m sure many of you have seen this by now, but I wanted to share it anyway just in case. Scott “Toyguru” Neitlich put up a quick video to show off the funcionality of the upcoming SDCC Vykron. We also get a look at the packaging as well. And look, Spikor!
The goofy looking trio you see above is the Masters of the Universe Classics exclusive known as Vykron. At least, the barbarian guy is Vyrkon. I’m unsure yet if the other two have been given official names. But in a nutshell, it’s one figure that includes three outfits: a barbarian, a military man, and a space man.
For those in the know, you will immediately recognize what this is. But it seems that there are a lot of fans and collectors out there that are completely thrown off by this exclusive. Many seem to not know what these odd looking figures represent.
The debate over the reversed forearms on the upcoming MOTU Classics Stinkor has been a very hot topic among fans over the past week. This thread on He-Man.org is a prime example of how fans are reacting.
Last week I posted a comment directly from Mattel where they stated that the arms were reversed on purpose. Mattel says this was a decision from the in-house design team in an effort to make Stinkor “pop” and differentiate him from other figures who utilize the finned forearms.
Mattel has stuck by this statement, as many questioned them on the MattyCollector.com forums. After similar mistakes happened with reversed parts on figures like Roboto and King Hsss, its understandable why fans may be having a hard time accepting Mattel’s statement as truth.
Yesterday, the Four Horsemen chimed in via their Twitter account, stating:
“We haven’t seen a production version yet so we really can’t comment yet, but we can’t imagine why they would be switched.”
In my opinion, this statement from the Four Horsemen does not prove that Mattel is outright lying about their decision like many fans are claiming. I feel that all this proves is that The Four Horsemen did not intend Stinkor’s forearms to look that way. We already knew this, considering we saw the original prototype at Power-Con, and the forearms were correct.
Now, I am not at all defending Mattel’s decision on this, so don’t get me wrong. I agree that it seems incredibly odd to swap parts for the sake of swapping them, especially when it throws off the anatomy. I’m just saying that the Horsemen have only stated that they also don’t know why Mattel made the decision to swap them, if they did indeed purposely do so.
The debate continues to heat up, so it’ll be interesting to see where it goes. What do you think? Was this a QC issue? Or do you believe this was a decision by Mattel design, albeit an odd one?
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.
My very talented friend Joe Amaro has sent along some work in progress shots of his upcoming fan project that he is calling the Mystic Hammer!
From Joe: “It’s coming out great, a little more cleaning then it’s time to cast and paint. The size is almost 5″ tall…it’s massive…perfect for 12” figures!
Once I’m finished cleaning I’ll post pictures of the hammer with some figures to show the size and scale. You can see in the images below that the top part will be hollow. This is so that it’s not too heavy which will allow for some awesome posing.
I’m thinking it should be ready for sale in the coming weeks. The price will $15.00 plus shipping. There will be a very limited quantity made as this is not mass produced.”
I am a huge fan of Joe’s work, and personally I’m very excited for this! I’ll definitely be sure to keep you all posted as updates come in. But if you guys want to check out Joe’s work for yourself (as you should!), you can follow him at his blog.
Following up on my recent post about this incredibly cool custom hammer by friend Joe Amaro, Joe has updated his blog with these images of the final product!
