To actually see and hear me ranting, click here!

The NY Toy Fair was this past week, and the big news about Masters of the Universe…most everything is ON PAUSE for 2026, deferred to marketing for the movie. MASTERVERSE is “On Pause”, and almost all of Origins is also…some of them just started like the 200x Cartoon Collection. “On Pause”. Transformers Origins Crossover. “On Pause”. Turtles of Grayskull just ended anyway, but there is a Thundercats thing. “On Pause.”

I found this image at ToyTales.ca.

I really hope the movie does well. The toys they have revealed look cool. They are more in the scale of GI Joe Classified, and they are proportioned similarly as they are based on real human actors. It is a whole new system of articulation also. And there is a kids line coming out called “core” or something like that, not “the first ones” as was going around about a week ago. Both lines look pretty good. There are some things, like Tri-Klops not having a sword and Battle Cat’s armor looking stupid. There are a lot of really cool things like Trap Jaw and Idris Elba Man-At-Arms.

But putting MASTERVERSE “on pause” is a mistake.

We don’t have:

• a non-Kevin Smith Orko
• a non=Kevin Smith Battle Cat
• Tri-Sorceress and He-Man husband and wife 2-pack
• Sorceress of Havoc (she would be awesome!)
• Rio Blast
• Extendar
• Rokkon
• Stonedar
• Zoar
• Screech
• King Hiss
• Tongue Lasher
• Sssqueeeze
• Rattlor

Yeah there’s a lot more I could add here. AND I can complain. Why did we get Anti-Eternia He-Man instead of one of the above-listed figures? Why do we have four versions of Beast Man and Mer-Man but no re-issues of Buzz Off or Stratos? Why do we have Motherboard and not a vehicle? Or for that matter the other giant figures? MASTERVERSE had all of this to accomplish, but now it is “on pause.” What about the 1987 movie figures? There was only one short window where we could get Blade, and I missed him. There was a lot more they could have done here.

And there are two competing outcomes.

• If the movie does well, everything becomes some shade of the Chronicles line. More He-Man and Skeletor variants. More Beast Man and Man-At-Arms variants. More Teela and Evil-Lyn. And some of the characters I listed above…ignored. And the MASTERVERSE style of toy, which was kind of serving in my mind as something evergreen like Hot Wheels or Barbie, is just outright replaced. (This is the best outcome I think. I hope the movie does well.)
• If the movie tanks. (A very likely scenerio). Masters of the Universe goes back underground like it did after the failure of the 1987 movie. Mattel will not support it…they have a lot invested in the success of the film. As awesome as it looks to me , an enthusiastic fan, the moviegoing regular sheeple will probably not see this so much as better than a Star Wars or Marvel movie, (both of which have been suffering for a while).

Maybe this movie will find some of that Super Mario Bros. movie or Barbie movie magic from recent years, and will knock us all out with its awesome story and special effects. Maybe it will be what the fans have always wanted and the moviegoers didn’t know they needed in their lives. But I am 60% expecting “Rise of the Beasts” or “The Last Jedi.”

“On Pause”

I believe “On Pause” is a soft way of telling us they are killing the line. Someone might say, “They wouldn’t do that! Not with so much more stuff to cover!” But they would…they already have done this…look no further than Masters of the Universe Mega Books, (or Mega Constructs, or just MEGA.). Whatever. That brick shop that was promised has given us some Hot Wheels models. They haven’t done anything with Masters of the Universe in years, and that line was VERY incomplete…they even released the Central Eternia Tower, but never the Viper Tower of the Grayskull Tower. If they can leave ends like that loose, you can bet we won’t get any MASTERVERSE Snake Men.