Nov 27, 2010

It came from the Toy Chest: Convoluted past history of He-man edition.

I'm back with a brand new It Came from the Toy Chest. The toy is a bit Christmas-y looking, but HE HAS THE POWER!!
It's King Grayskull, He-Man's Ancestor or the guy whose Power Adam calls for.
OK, now that we got the nice video out of the way let's move on with the review.
Who Is King Grayskull? I said that he's He-Man's Ancestor, but he's not the ORIGINAL Ancestor of He-Man. That would be He-Ro: The most Powerful Wizard in the Universe.

In the late 80s Mattel was trying to make an expansion to the He-Man line. This sub-line was going to be called: The Power of Grayskull. They were planning to tell us the origin of He-Man's Power. The answer was He-Ro, Whose name was rumored to be Gray of the Skull Tribe. Fast forward to the early 2000s. The Four Horsemen were trying to get the ball rolling with redesigning MOTU for a new line. One of the new concepts for He-Man looked like the man we know as King Grayskull. The MYP staff liked that design so much that they used it as an ancestor to He-Man. Unknown to them that ancestor already existed as He-Ro. The video above was made (by someone else) using clips from the MYP episode: The Power of Grayskull.

For the MOTUC line Mattel combined BOTH of He-Man's origins. He-Ro (Whose Real name is Ro) came from Space... He was carrying the Trollan Sword of He... (As in Orko's people... He means Power in Trollan. That means that He-Ro is Power Ro, He-Man is Power-Man, etc... BTW The Sword Sparkles like Edward...)
He-Ro fought evil on Eternia with the help of King D'Vann Grayskull. He-Ro died fighting someone and gave the Sword of He to King Grayskull. When King Grayskull died fighting Hordak, he made the sword respond only to his heir. Then the sword split in 2 and an orb of energy took Castle Grayskull as its home.

Now unto the figure itself.
As always the scale for the reviews is 1 to 5. One being sucky toy that made me waste money on it and 5 being most awesomest toy in the history of toys?

Articulation: KG has the standard MOTUC Articulation. He's basically He-Man with a longer loincloth, different Harness, Taller boots and a cape. MOTUC He-Man is basically a reuse of the KG mold. 4.0

Paint/Sculpt: The 4 Horsemen outdid themselves here. They've made a modern toy looking like a vintage KG. The paint is minimal (since Mattel is very stingy on paint apps.) but it works.
3.5. He lost a bit since the cape loses some detail by the flocking... More on the flocking later. I may dislike the Santa color scheme but that big glob of white paint near the bottom of the cape is unacceptable. *UPDATE!* The color Scheme was Mattel's inside job. The 4H had nothing to do with it. The Flocking was Toyguru's Idea... (Mattel's brand manager) It still does not change my opinion on the color scheme.

Accessories: Here we have his armor (which is removeable for the first time ever) His flocked cape, a new partially sparkly full sword a Blue Plasitc Marble with nowhere to put it and two half swords...

He gets a 4.0 The Halfswords work a LOT better than expected, the full sword is cool... kinda reminds me of the Master Sword of The Legend of Zelda games. Perfect for Adam's Transformation.
Overall KG gets a: 3.83 He lost a bit because of the sheer randomness of the orb of Power and the flocking flock. The worst part of it is that it's white, so it'll get real dirty, really fast. I deflocked the cape (It was easy I just dunked the sucker in warm water and a bit of brushing... Voila!)




King Grayskull kinda reminds me of Dolph Lundgren's He-Man.
*update! #2!* This KG allows for an easy "200X" He-Man (as seen on the Weapons pack #2 It came from the toy chest)

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