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Hello, Hub City Geeks, and here is the SpartanNerd coming to you this time from Summerville, South Carolina. You say, why are you at Summerville, SpartanNerd? Well, it’s a teacher conference, and you know I’m at Summerville, the birthplace of sweet tea. And while I’ve been here, I have drank no coffee and no Monster Energy because so much sweet tea just everywhere every day. And besides…it is WAY hot. (Heat Dome effecting half of the country).

So anyway, I did a little shopping with this money I saved at Target over here in Summerville. Walmart actually has some MASTERVERSE figures. Flying Fist He-Man…No, thank you. That thing does not look right (same head sculpt as Thunder Punch, which looked wrong and also I just don’t care for him). They also had New Eternia Evil-Lyn. She always looks right, but I didn’t want to buy another one. So, I’m reviewing something I picked up at Target in Summerville, and that would be MASTERVERSE Revolution Man-Of-War. The Man-Of-War is the same person as Man-At-Arms, but from the Netflix Masters of the Universe Revolutions cartoon. It is an updated Man-At-Arms. A 2.0 if you will. If you watch the Netflix show, then you know that Andra becomes Man-At-Arms. Duncan becomes Man-Of-War, and he has this mech suit and that’s terrific. I thought about picking this up when I got The Green Goddess (OK, Sorceress Teela). I’m pretty sure this was in the same wave and I was on the fence of getting it or not. I decided ultimately not to get it, and then I said…I think I even remember stating out loud, “Hey if I see it in a store someday somewhere, I’ll pick it up.” So here we are. Man-Of-War is now in my possession.

PACKAGING

The packaging is our basic, usual MASTERVERSE figure packaging. I call this the Transformer-style packaging because it has where you can see the figure inside, but it has mostly artwork. This minimizes the amount of plastic they’re using, which is good. It gives us more artwork, and artwork is always great, aways better than photos of stuff. They like to do this tilted picture on the side of the box, so with this picture you can see some more details. It looks to me like we have Man-Of-War fighting near the Wind Raider. If we get a vehicle in MASTERVERSE, the Wind Raider is a possibility, I’m sure it’d be pretty big. You could use Masters of the Universe Classics Wind Raider. But anyways, these are Horde ships, I believe. So he’s fighting against the Evil Horde.

The other side has the general library picture, that shows us the two ways to display his face…with and without the mask. If you happen to be a mint-in-box collector or just store your figures library style, this side image is very useful. I recently visited a store with lots of GI Joe classified figures done like this.

The back s a photoshop picture of the toy with some illustrations. I am not a fan of these, but you can see that we have artwork here of The Fright Zone or at least the inside of a Horde ship. And we’re seeing what Man-Of-War can do with mask and his weapon arm. And we can see a Horde Trooper here, which is a figure you can get from Mattel Creations. He’s really big. I never had one as a child, but I think he’s cool. And I like the Warhammer 40,000 vibe they’re bringing to it also. Making him oversized and you take that helmet off and see the goblin underneath. But it’s just not really for me, so I’m not getting that (I don’t think!)

We are given a new bio for Man-Of-War. Though he’s not the royal Man-At-Arms anymore, Duncan is still ready to protect Eternia at all costs in his plussed up battle suit as the powerful Man-Of-War. I like that they used the word plussed up. That’s for the D&D types. You know…people don’t talk about it much, but the DC Masters comics that came out going on ten years ago featured an evil version of Duncan called War Wraith. And he was indeed very cool.

Then we have cross sell images for other figures in the wave.

• Man-Of-War (of course)
• Sorceress Teela (This is who I call the Green Goddess).
• Mer-Man (So good).
• Battle Armor Skeletor…he is so rare and I am lucky to have him!

FIGURE REVIEW

All right, so I have the figure out to get photos, sorry about my setup. But I am in a hotel room!

Man-Of-War comes with…

• Man-Of-War figure
• mask
• alternate fist hand
• alternate weapon
• blast effect

The packaging has the accessories inside of one of those little baggies, and printed on the inside are the package contents. So you can see everything is supposed to be there. I checked to make sure everything was here. It was all here. Didn’t get done wrong this time. Didn’t get burned this time. So, there we are. We have a blaster, a hand, a mask, and a fist weapon.

He is as articulated as any MASTERVERSE figure, with the 30 points of articulation they brag about. He has double jointed elbows and knees, and also cuts at the thighs. Like most MASTERVERSE figures he feels kind of lanky, and wants to be stood up with a wide gait.

This Duncan feels like a dress-up kind of figure, so let’s start with the helmet. The head pops right off, but here we have our first stupid problem AND first complaints. The stupid problem is that the helmet is warped in the package. So it looks like it is on crooked all the time. The complaint is the paint job on the mustache and beard. The reason why I ultimately passed on this when I ordered the Green Goddess was because the image they had posted on Big Bad Toy Store seemed to look very wrong. I’m sure it is a painted plaster prototype or something, but it was off-putting enough for me to actually remove it from my cart before pulling the trigger on the other figure. This face doesn’t look that bad…but as a guy who cares about keeping his own beard straight, it is kind of unforgivable for Mattel.

Anyway, you can use a hairdryer or just “force” and bend the helmet out of the way and slide on the mask. It looks great with the mask on!

While I am at it, I am going to go ahead and take off his armor. And it comes right off. Underneath is a silver colored body all over, reminiscent of New Eternia Mekanek (who has a shiny blue body). The weapon hand pops off and the oversized shoulder pad just slides right off. That shoulder pad is very 200x, anyone else think so?

What I wish we had was an alternate head. Or maybe the helmet should come off. But an alternate head with a ponytail or something would increase the appeal of this figure to fans of the 200x show. And let’s say the Man-Of-War head has the mask and helmet on permanently. But Mattel is saving money this way maybe…just the same. It wouldn’t take a new sculpt…we already have a Revelations Duncan AND a New Eternia Man-At-Arms they could have borrowed the head from. (I don’t have Revelations version…but I do have New Eternia. Remember April Fools Day?

Now the armor and everything goes back on easily, let’s address the weapon hand. That shoulder pad takes some force to get in on the bicep tightly. And then the weapon arm…it really only loosely fits. (With some force, you can get it to stick). There is a hole for hands to peg in, but you don’t usually want to use that because it is a mace on the end.

This pays homage to the vintage weapon that Man-At-Arms always had, but it is morphed to his hand…the net effect however is something that goes over a stump arm. Which is cool and sad at the same time. (Barret Wallace comes to mind).

COMPARISONS

It turns out the SpartanNerd thought he might pick up something while he was here, so he came prepared with some figures that needed some attention. So I have with me Trapjaw. Now comparing Man of War with Trapjaw just ain’t fair. Trapjaw is maybe one of the best figures in all of Masterverse. But it tells us that for the same price, the same exact cost, we could have had that much more. Trapjaw here, better sculpted. I mean, yes, New Eternia, yes, a different line. So we could say artistically that Man-Of-War looks like the Revolution cartoon. But that doesn’t mean it has to be this bland. We could have better paint. I mean, there is a gold detail on some of the armor painted on, and it looks good. But most of the gold just looks like yellow plastic.

(You can easily put Trap Jaw’s weapons in Man-Of-War’s wrist).

Let’s compare him to the Mythic Legions Gold Knight.

(The Gold Knight has not been doing his job. What job is that, SpartanNerd? Watching my funds. That’s what. He sits where I set my wallet. He’s a Gold Knight. Debit card got lost. He’s fired). Anyways, you can see the difference in the gold. This is clearly Mythic Legions, but it is a more gold-looking gold. The gold details of the paint on the armor here match pretty good with the gold knight, but a lot of this other, for instance the left boot, that’s just like yellow plastic is what that is. It’s not gold at all. So bland and boo. We are comparing the gourmet caramel apple with peanuts to the general red-delicious apple here. Not apples to oranges because similar scale, similar everything.

I have someone else here with me: Super 7 Ultimates Metalhead (Link in the caption of the sweet tea). Metalhead reminds me of Man-Of-War here. They’re both from cartoons. They both have cartoon designs. I even say the yellow on Metalhead kind of matches some of the yellow on Man-Of-War. So the carapace here, the plastron, (ooo, use the biology words, SpartanNerd). Those are of a different kind of gold than the Mythic Legions. I’m going to say it’s still kind of similar. Maybe it feels more metallic than what is on Man-Of-War. So would Metalhead’s hand attachments work? The answer to that one is no. This peg is too big. Doesn’t work.

SPARTANNERD’S RATING OF MASTERVERSE REVOLUTION MAN-OF-WAR

This sculpt is fine. It reminds me of New Eternia Mekanek. Especially maybe because of that shiny plastic. But the face painting is a little bit derp. Like I said, the beard details, they seem a little bit off. It looks like Man-Of-War here might have had some kind of shaving accident. His eyes do not look derp, but that soul patch there does. And the mustache seems a little bit sloppy maybe. The paint on this is just kind of lackluster. So it’s got to lose a point for that.

Articulation- He is very posable. No problems here. So sculpt and articulation…that’s two points. I’m just going to have to rate Man-at-War here 3 of 5. I feel like he might be a 2 of 5. He’s not a 1. He’s not that bad. I’m just going to go for the 3 of 5. I mean, articulation is good. I wanted it bad enough to pay $22 for it. So it’s worth the $22, I’m saying. ($22 worth of feels…that’s the third point).

It’s another Man-at-Arms. If you’re a customizer, it’s a nice silver body. The paint is lacking. Accessories are okay…I wish he had more stuff with him. I think he would have been well served with another head. Maybe even a head instead of a mask. I know they’re saving money by doing the mask. But they wouldn’t have had to re-sculpt anything. If you’re like the SpartanNerd, then you probably already have another Man-at-Arms. You could pop that one on if you like better. But I’m just saying. This is the area where we could have gotten more. Mattel could have given us more and it would have been more satisfying. So I’m going to award it a 3 of 5 kind of reluctantly. And what do you think, Hub City Geeks? Do you agree or disagree with the SpartanNerd?

I will say, in person, out of the box, he looks better than the cross-sell or the Big Bad Toy Store promotional image. Be sure to read other blog entries and reviews on SpartanNerd.com, and also check out my YouTube Channel. There you will soon see a review of Final Fantasy Commander decks for Magic the Gathering, and also a review of the Mythic Legions Undead Builder set.