iMPULSE BUY: He-Man Cartoon Collection

 

I swear I should just make a Robo’s Fault display at this point for stuff that’s in my collection because I saw Robo playing with it and decided I wanted it too. From Mancakes and Beef Boss to the Fwoosh Skeleton to the Game On arcade games to these goddamned He-Man figures. As much as I sneer at influencer culture, I’m certainly being… influenced.

Or at least I’m finding out about stuff I would have wanted anyway? I’ve dabbled in He-Man stuff on and off for like three decades now - mostly “updated” versions that tried to bring some legitimacy to the property. I’ve been repeatedly tempted, for example, by MOTU Revelations toys from the latest reworking, but they’ve never quite clicked over for me. And then I saw the Cartoon Collection.

Six inch scale figures with modern, if not quite super-modern, articulation (ball joints, single elbows and knees, wrists, ankles, etc.) but proportions, looks, and accessories lifted straight out of the Filmation cartoon, full cheese factor intact. Apparently the Origins line has been doing this with the original toys forever, but the cartoon adjustments push it over the line into “Yeah, that’s the Masters toys I’ve been wanting.” And the 20 buck price point does not hurt.

I assume the price is because the toys were based around reusing bodies with just new heads and armor overl

ays, and the cartoon followed the toy designs, so they’re relatively cheap to produce. But they’re well made, the accessories are cool and plentiful, and while there’s not a lot of paint, that’s again accurate to the cartoon’s level of detail.

He-Man comes with his regular sword, a back scabbard for it, and an episode-specific bonus sword. Skeletor comes with his staff, his sword, and a couple of weird “masks” that are in fact replacement heads, again≈

from a specific episode. I am a sucker for deep-cut, very specific cartoon accessories even when I’ve never seen the episode they’re from, which is a weird quirk, I guess.

Man-At-Arms and Teela are similar, although at first I was worried about the scale because I opened Teela first and she is TINY. You can see that in the photo above. Plus they pose the figures weird in the packaging to make them look like the original toys, which makes them even smaller. But no, they’re just proportionally small and in the 6” scale. I’m assuming eventually the Teela body will be used for Evil-Lyn and The Sorceress. Man At Arms comes with his Stasis Ray, which he used to fight dragons, so out came my Golden Axe Dragon Mount to be stasisized. And his club (not shown).

Teela has her sword and shield and little training drone thing. Not to infantilize a hovering sphere with a gun and a kinfe, but it’s still a little training drone thing.

I did not get the whole line, becaus, because the characters I’m invested in in He-Man is a pretty small sub-set of the total. There’s a Trap-Jaw and a Beast-Man that don’t matter to me already, and a Stratos on the way I could care less about, but I think I gotta be in for Mer-Man, whose dopey-ass look perfectly captures the cartoon’s ridiculousness.

So, I guess, I have some of the power?

Also this sent me down a “create another hole in the collection I then immediately filled” rabbit hole that was slightly embarrassing in size and expense, but that’s a story for another day.