Tag Archives: Ram Man

MASTERVERSE New Eternia Ram Man

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You can see my video of the package here!

Here I am back to Ram Man. The last Ram Man I had was the Super7 Ultimates MOTUC “re-issue,” that had that orange color scheme on his armor instead of the classic red. The orange was from the “cross sell” art on the back of the vintage figures. It was cool. Very detailed sculpt, with even the boots having skull details.

(Surely people reading the SpartanNerd blog are familiar with vintage Ram Man. But just in case…) The vintage Ram Man toy was so iconic…so incredibly cool and everywhere. Everyone had one. I always felt like his plastic was a little different than the other figures…it felt like some Christmas ornaments my grandmother put on her tree. And it had that springy leg action feature. You locked him down first by pressing his legs up through his armor skirt into his hollow body. Then you pressed this button on the back of the boot, and he would pop up. Only his arms were articulated, and he had this axe that really no one else could hold, and likewise he couldn’t hardly hold anyone else’s weapon. He was featured heavily on the Filmation cartoon, and was portrayed as kind of stupid. And he was shorter than everyone else as well.

But since 200x, Ram Man has been portrayed as larger. And more of a “Juggernaut” type who has powerful strength to smash things with his head. No version of Ram Man has had the spring loaded legs. (I don’t think the 200x toy had them.). I suppose the requirements of modern sculpting just keeps it from happening. But today, I am going to show what I think is a terrific attempt at giving us some of the feel of the vintage Ram Man’s action feature.

Here is what New Eternia Ram Man comes with.

Check out this pose! I know I already talked about what was in the box, so lets talk about these legs. What we have are evidently standard MASTERVERSE legs encased in a hollow rubber tube. It is bendy stuff, and you can see it kinking up behind the left knee. But this is a fine attempt to do something that calls back to that original idea. Just be careful when bending the knees. That green covering prevents you from seeing which direction the knees are facing. I had to feel around for awhile before attempting to pose the legs. I really, really didn’t want to break anything.

So some things I didn’t mention in the package video. The axe has a very nice “patina” on it. Some brown, rusty shading. The armor has the Battle Ram missile warhead on the front.

I haven’t complained too much about the quality of the toys in this line. The ones I have are pretty terrific. I am a very picky customer. There are a few that I am just not going to get, for instance Andra, Mercenary Teela, or any of the Virgil Abloh collection. There is no appeal to those specific offerings for me. I also am holding out for a better Gwildor than the Revolution one they are offering with Orko. I would like a movie accurate figure. Some of their products don’t appeal to me, but otherwise the quality has improved, and the New Eternia figures are giving some of the Masters of the Universe Classics figures a run for their money. Still not quite as awesome of sculpt work as the Horsemen do.

Which is why the next statement is shocking. Ram Man is the first MASTERVERSE figure I have that came with a problem.

Full disclosure. I opened and photographed this after 1:00 AM, (I went to a Disturbed concert. Very nice!) I was trying to remove this head, and I just couldn’t get a grip on it. The helmet has smooth surfaces, and my fingers kept sliding off. So my solution was to pinch it tighter. Perhaps I should have got out the hair dryer, but you see, after the Disturbed concert, I wasn’t in the mood to get that out I guess. At any rate, I heard a “crack,” and I knew something very bad was amiss. I got the head off and saw that a piece has cracked, and the neck is separating at the seam. BOO! So for the rest of the photos you will see, I am showing you the head barely on. You can’t tell it isn’t snapped down, but I just couldn’t risk it.

The armor has its own special issues. On Ram Man, I haven’t been able to get the straps to lock tight. The left side keeps bucking open. Why do we have this head? I would have rather had an unhelmeted sculpt like the MOTUC version, with the metal plate on top. This looks like Judge Dredd to me. Is it supposed to be a helmet for riding the Battle Ram? I don’t hate it and am glad to have it. This is one of the New Eternia “riffs” like Beast Man had, where he had awesome fur armor in addition to vintage style armor.

And here he is with the Samurai helmet. This one does remind me of Shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I don’t have a problem with that, but I have never thought of Shredder as being so big. (This weapon is the samurai spear from Animal Warriors of the Kingdom.)

Oh yeah…I almost forgot. In the comparison of MEGA Ram Man and the back of MASTERVERSE Ram Man’s back right leg, you can see that he has a stirrup or something…this is a call back to that little switch that activated the action feature in the vintage line!

Speaking of size, Ram Man isn’t a towering Juggernaut as he has been in the past. He isn’t short. But he isn’t bigger than, for example New Eternia Beast Man.

So armor swap time. This armor looks OK on Beast Man. But there is still room. I tried it on 40th anniversary He-Man, but it was way too big. I suppose it could work on Two Bad. The issue is that Ram Man is just “fatter” than anyone else so far.

So I am a little conflicted on scoring this one. I love the character and am glad to have a new figure of him. The sculpt is very nice, and the solution they came to for the springy legs is novel. Nobody ever asked for those two heads, but they are nice additions. The helmet-less head would have been cooler. The armor that goes on top of the armor…really just, “why?” It is barely usable on anyone else, and the straps don’t want to connect. The axe is nicely done, and the paint all around is as well, though I think this Ram Man is a bit more youthful than I would prefer.

The neck joint breakage is a big problem. I am a grown-up. I am not going to cry about stuff getting broken. But what about a kid? And he comes with those alternate heads, but they are not easy to swap even for a dexterous SpartanNerd. But I feel a little burned every time something like this happens. Super7 Ultimate Cobra B.A.T. had a hand that snapped when I was swapping it, and it almost put me completely off of their stuff. But there were other hands. On Ram Man, this was the whole neck joint!

I have to give this figure a low 3/5. The armor is aggravating and the head swap resulted in a broken neck. Those are negatives outweighed by the positives of well-thought-out leg design, excellent sculpting and paint, and variety in the accessories.

Do you agree or disagree, Hub City Geeks? Let me know in the comments!

Mega Snake Mountain Review part 2

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This is the third part of a huge review.

Part 1- Packaging and Minifigures (Click)

Part 2- “Section One” (Click)

Part 3- “Section 2” and final thoughts (You are here!)

I mentioned in the Part 2 review that this is a “daunting” project. I kept putting it off. I actually figured it would snow some during the school year, but that never materialized, and so a lot of the projects I would work on never happened. But this one…the first part took hours and hours. And I knew this part would also. Throw in that this is my least favorite looking piece of Snake Mountain, and it finally just took me getting tired of the box taking up all the room in the closet.

This build took about 10-12 hours. I would work on it for 1.5-3 hours and then stop. (I would take brief breaks to do normal things, of course. I mention the box was taking up my space. I ultimately decided to throw it away. I kept some of the more “diarama”-ish pieces, which is why you see the build sitting on the black and gray “brick” packaging. Going forward with vehicles and such, this will be nice! I saw someone on FaceBook used HeroClix floor pieces to fill out their displays, and that looked fantastic! Using the box this way gives a similar vibe I think. The other thing…I used a large poster board we had sitting around as a backdrop. It is kind of beaten up and has a conspicuous label on the side, but I blurred that out in case anyone was wondering what that was about.

I have never been a big fan of the “face” on the vintage toy Snake Mountain. As a kid it was kind of confusing to me that the Filmation version had such a radically different design. All these years later, in order to make the most fans happy, they have amalgamated the designs. I don’t dislike it. But I still am not a fan that stupid face. As a kid I think I supposed it to be a snake…only the ugly face we can see. As an adult I learned that it was supposed to be a demon face. Well…it is a stupid face either way. It has a lever that you can used to open and close the mouth to make it “speak,” but I thought it more fun to have it eat Ram Man.

Up at the top where He-Man is being eaten, I still don’t know if that is a rat or a wolf. The original toy featured a removable microphone “voice changer.” This is still removable, and you can move its mouth also.

I like to joke about the Battle Bones having a “secret action feature.” One or two of the claws, they just launch off! I guess it is the type of plastic, the thickness of the pieces. But usually when I move it around, I lose some toes. Well, the back cheeks of the rat/wolf also have this problem. Eventually, not really caring as they aren’t that necessary of pieces, I just took them off.

I’m getting ahead of myself! What about the build.

I almost had a seizure when I saw the discoloration on these bricks. The SpartanWife decided I shouldn’t complain…it was probably on purpose. Turns out she was correct! Easily some of the most rewarding Mega building I have ever done was the lava slide!

You can take a flashlight of some kind and shine it behind and it makes a really cool glowing effect! The way the pieces are layered is also very fun and satisfying. The mix of translucent yellow/orange, opaque red, plus those unsightly paint splotches are what makes this work. (Isn’t the bridge a cool feature. And it is designed to break down like this also!)

Fans will sure get the picture reference of the above!

I don’t have pics of the other two sections alone. But the lava slide was just fun!

As you can see, there is a nice stairway going in front of the face that leads up to the bridge that crosses the lava slide. There is a ledge with shackles…actually a piece of the vintage design that I had forgotten about! In order to get a minifigure on it correctly, you pretty much have to take the chains off and attach to the arms, and then put them back on the wall. Beneath the ledge there is a false wall so that prisoners can bust out! It has a much better switch to cause it to open than the ones that came with Grayskull.

There are lots of pink squirel-ly things and a couple of “faces of evil,” as well as pink horns all over the place making this place into a corny, campy, obvious base for bad guys. One of the problems I had more than once in both sections of this build was getting the “faces of evil” to work. I wound up adding a round or square stud piece in several instances to make them fit. (You can’t tell I added a piece.)

Let’s look at the inside.

We have a jail. (Guess who is inside…) Filmation’s magic table. (Notice I placed Filmation-type figures around it. You don’t get more 1980’s than this!). A ladder leading from the top floor. The top floor also has the computer, which I think was in the vintage toy (maybe?). And the bone throne!

I love that more is going on here than in the vintage playset, where there was nothing but a hollow shell.

The magic table. This is the most worthy item! And the bone throne! If you watched the unfortunate “Some Kind of Monster” rockumentary about Metallica’s “St. Anger” disaster, I think I remember Kirk Hammet having a similar item. He said he likes to sit on it and think. In Filmation, we saw Skeletor sit on this quite often. I love the design…so evil! I like how Super7 made one for their MOTUC Snake Mountain, and was positively envious as it would be something I would never have. But this is great for Mega! Now, I do have a complaint. There is almost no floor space in front of the chair.

The throne rests on some flat gray pieces that have a single stud, so it is easy to take it out to set in other places or on other playsets. Traditional Skeletor works better. (Hub City Geeks, do you think this havoc staff is a darker color than the carded one?)

Notice that we have the correct stand for Screech also. It is red, and he (she?) has dark blue or black feet. Sorry, the SpartanNerd isn’t great with colors!

Thoughts on the whole set.

When you put it all together, it is massive!

You can store your figures in here. But there isn’t really that much room. For instance…

By the way, the instructions state that this table is supposed to lock in here. NO WAY! It doesn’t, and I don’t want to.

Ultimately, in the interest of space, I am going to keep it on display like this…

The table, the throne, and the sarlacc pit monster are ultimately cool pieces to use anywhere. I don’t recommend relying on this castle to stay locked together as you move it around. Remember, the SpartanNerd has dropped Castle Grayskull and had rebuild it. On the other hand, the pieces here are very tight. Almost unreasonably tight. The little pink horns and teeth and such…those things break off very easily. But also, that is an area where you kind of have artistic liberty also if you wanted to change them around.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I mentioned I might have to think twice about building an Eternia three towers or Fright Zone on account of some of the frustrations I had with building this set. But if you have been reading my blog, then you know I already have Eternia tower. In other words, it wasn’t bad enough to deter me from getting it.

The box got on my nerves enough to finally toss it out.

Do I regret this castle? Not really. As a Mega set, it has its quirks. The pieces not fitting together well, or fitting together TOO well. For. the price, looking back, I know I gave the minifigs a 5/5. I can stand by that, but why didn’t this set come with more? Where are the Snake Men? Why did we get another Evil Lyn?

In total, it probably took 24 hours to build this set. Your mileage may vary. I am an adult with the responsibilities of jobs and a family, and do other things also to be entertained. Some things have to give sometimes, and Section 2 of Snake Mountain kept getting procrastinated in favor of spending time with my wife, playing Magic the Gathering with my son, building other sets, playing with my dogs, fishing, etc. When I began building section 2, it sat on the kitchen table taking up everyone’s space for several days.

I guess I am saying, this was probably too much. There are complaints that the new Eternia Tower is too small…even I said this. But looking back after building this behemoth, I don’t think I want anymore sets this large. It is too tedious, and I think Mattel/Mega believes the same thing.

Let’s consider $300…and. it has been almost 365 days since it first arrived.

The packaging was a fail.

The selection of minifigures…Dragonblaster Skeletor (Great), Thunder Punch He-Man (Great), Ram Man (Great), Webstor (Great), Trap Jaw toy colors (should have been available apart from the set), Evil Lyn (meh), Screech (OK I guess. Why can’t we have open wings?). Snake Men (MIA). Skelcons (MIA).

(Rather than a Battle Cat large set build, they should give us Zoar and Screech. That would be worthy!)

The Filmation Side was terrific.

The more toy accurate side had a cool lava slide and terrific accessories.

A lot of hours of work. I am going to give the whole set a 3.5/5. Why the decimal? I believe there is alot of fun ahead with this set. I already have plans to make a comic! But the build was daunting, tedious, and lengthy, perhaps moreso than the feeling of accomplishment when it was done. More like “I’m glad I am finally finished.” I know I am old and such, but who is this marketed towards? The mid 30’s to mid 40’s crowd. I am optimistic that I will really enjoy it as a part of my almost complete set (Battle for Eternia II is hard to get). This piece is essential to having a complete set on account of the minifigures and on account of being a Masters of the Universe fan.

Thanks for reading if you did follow all of this! Do you agree with my 3.5/5 rating? Let me know in the comments or let me know of FaceBook!

SpartanNerd Review…MEGA Snake Mountain Packaging and Minifigs

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Well it finally came! After months of waiting. Honestly, I was suprised to see that the arrival date was to be ON OR BEFORE August 31. And in that way of thinking, I wasn’t suprised to see that it did not ship until mid September. Still, it is a faster turnaround than say, Magic the Gathering Secret Lair Drop Series. (You have to wait sometimes a whole year!)

Now I ordered this item because Castle Grayskull was terrific, and I have approached collecting the Masters of the Mega Construx as a sort of selective completist…(I don’t want that Battle Cat or the Havoc Staff.). I have every character on card and loose, almost. Still looking for another copy of Man-E-Faces and another copy of Scare Glow. My point is, I couldn’t pass up on the MEGA Snake Mountain.

NOTICE I KEEP SAYING “MEGA…” Mattel has changed the name again. Why? Mega Construx was a dumb name. But the way they are expressing MEGA now looks exactly like what they were trying to avoid when they moved away from the word “Mega Bloks.” That big MEGA looks like one of those blocks!

What else…I still have Castle Grayskull’s box. Because I must be insane, right?

When I compare the two boxes, it is very noticeable that they have “updated” the design aesthetic. WHY? This is very bad. There was art before…now only photos. Even as recently as the Monstroid and Land Shark, it seems there was more “art.” While it is notable on the front, on the back it is very very apparent. Castle Grayskull had this drawing on the back of the inside of the castle, that called back to the Eternia Maps that they did for the MOTUC line. Indeed, the Wind Raider also had something like this on the back. (I should go look at the other boxes. I am pretty sure Battle Bones, Wind Raider, Roton, and Talon Fighter did.). I believe I might ask Scott Neitich about this… Maybe he’ll make a video addressing it. (I notice that there is a re-issue of Castle Grayskull with this new boring style packaging.)

I am showing you more of the packaging…You can see striking differences on the side. I was curious what I would see as I opened it up. Castle Grayskull had what amounted to comic panels using the minifigures. There was a “drawn” element to them. Maybe not even any photos. But here on Snake Mountain, we just get action poses with the mini figures.

Mattel and MEGA missed an opportunity here. Now not only does this Snake Mountain needlessly mismatch to the first printing of Castle Grayskull, it makes fans like me just a little less joyful about it. The boxes were part of the wonder of getting new toys as a kid. Now we have this big downgrade. This packaging looks alot like the stuff they are doing for the MasterVerse line, (which I am not collecting.). Those boxes are a basic window with the figure on display. I daresay I even prefer what they did with the Heroes line with sporty gray and orange boxes to this style. BOO!!

But woefully, I have more to bad news to report…

What the crap! With Castle Grayskull, we got small boxes each containing a large component of the castle. And these boxes each featured the characters that were a part of the set. But here, we only get two large boxes. Not only that, these boxes have this flimsy sleeve over the top.

Now I really like the old Castle Grayskull box. It is useful for storing other MOTU related items. And because it was four interior basically shoeboxes, they lend some sturdiness to the box. There is not doubt in my mind that what they have done with Snake Mountain was a way of reducing packaging. But this Snake Mountain is a premium product with a premium price tag. It should match or exceed what came before. Instead, we have a flimsier box, a worse design choice with the two large boxes and the decorative sleeve, and boring images on the front. This packaging is getting a big F in my summation. I will use my apple pencil and color the images from the inner sleeves on my iPad when it snows or something…I did this with the Castle Grayskull art.

I will give props for ONE piece of artwork. This shows up when you open the box completely.

This is the only thing close to the style of what we got with Grayskull. And this image is on both of the instructions manuals.

SO I’VE GRIPED A TON ABOUT THE BOX.

What about the minifigures.

I’m glad I don’t have to say anymore bad stuff. The Minifigs offered here are very cool and welcome (for the most part.)

Let’s start with our feature character, Dragon Blaster Skeletor.

As a vintage toy, you put water in the dragon and pressed its head down so that it would spit water. It was kind of a specialized water gun. Here we have Skeletor with this dragon on the back. The chains pictured on the packaging look more silver, while these are light-gray-approaching white. It is cool that we have a dragon blast effect. Skeletor also comes with the purple sword. I wish they would give us proper stands with names instead of these green flat pieces. By the way, I had to dig through the boxes to get package number 1 which always contains the figures. The figures were spread across both boxes.

Thunder Punch He-Man.

No caps this time. But on his back the gunpowder cap is sculpted on, and the shield also features one. You can use the holder on the shield to place the fantastic clear-yellow sword.

Ram Man

You never know what they are going to do with Ram Man. There are a few different versions…200x he was huge. In Filmation and the vintage toy he was shorter. The MOTUC version was a very large and heavy figure. No versions have had springy legs since the 1980’s. But here they made a good Rammy. I thought we might get to remove the helmet, but it doesn’t seem to be removable. This is a bummer because you could give him the flat steel bald head. You also could use that helmet somewhere else.

Another Evil-Lyn. This time in vintage toy yellow. But the magic staff she has is much less impressive than all of the other versions we have gotten, including the “Heroes” printing in the same color. If I have to complain about one of the figures it is Evil-Lyn because we have so many versions of her, we already have this colorway…why not give us a Clawful or Jitsu or almost anyone else that we haven’t gotten yet. A Snake Man would have been outstanding, and they are tied to the lore of Snake Mountain. Now I have three Evil-Lyn sealed in box and three out of package. (If I am counting right.)

We get Screech.

This is Temple of Darkness Zoar’s stand, as I haven’t opened the castle yet to get out Screech’s feet and its own stand. It is the same as the other two birds we have, only purple. They really should give us proper birds with the wings spread out.

Webstor.

Here is one I didn’t have as a kid…I was actually only vaguely aware of him for some reason. I am unsure if the vintage one had those extra legs on the back…that seems like more of a 200x detail. He has a rope feature and an orange gun. I feel like he is kind of a plain kind of character without those big insect legs. (I do have some of the cartoons on DVD.). I really like what they did in 200x with this character…extra creepy.

And finally….Trap Jaw in vintage toy colors!

Love it! Notice I used these purple pieces to highlight the black details. I complained about getting Filmation colored Trap Jaw in my review of recent figure releases. And we have Minicomics Trap Jaw that came with the improved turret gun for Castle Grayskull in a Skeletor head set. But here is the Trap Jaw that I remember the best. My only complaint about any of the trap Jaw figures it that there is no little clip to hang the accessories on his belt.

The minifigures recieve a 5/5 because they are great. Snake Mountain’s packaging is a solid F because Mattel has done better and just didn’t seem to try this time. I give that packaging a 1/5. (I’ll probably still hang on to it because I am insane.)

Do you agree or disagree, Hub City Geeks? Let me know in the comments! I will keep posting updates as I work through Snake Mountain. (I have only built six little baggies so far, and there isn’t much to see yet.)