Advent calendar ICFtTC 24: Snake Mountain... The Wrestling Ring.

 

I'm still waiting for my Super7 Snake Mountain, but Mattel helped soften the blow with the Rattlesnake Mountain squared circle. Back in 2012 I made an Arena of Pain: a Grayskull Themed Ring for Castle Grayskullman. The Grayskull ring seems like a knock-off of my Arena of Pain... Again, I mades mine in 2012 this was made in 2019-2020.

I never thought of making a snake Mountain themed ring, because the ring I made was mostly for a: "Castle Grayskullman looks like Hulk Hogan" joke.  I also wasn't interested in buying a snake Mountain themed ring... but Mattel forced my hand.

By making a MOTU-ized Maniac Sibling... 

Of course, I mean Hulk Hogan. Y'all should know who he is and what he means to me.

Stone Cold is cool and all that, but deep down I'm a Hulkamaniac, brother!!

That is how I ended with a Snake Mountain ring.

To be honest, I do have a small nitpick with the rings. They look a bit too WWE-ish. Take a look at my Arena of Pain.

Ignore the scale issues for a minute. The ropes are not ropes, but chains. The turnbuckles are stone pillars with skulls adorning the tops of them. The entire ring is made out of rocks. It still looks like a ring, but very "MOTU-ish". The Mattel rings look very WWE-ISH, but with some MOTU accents. Check out other Mattel WWE Rings to see what I mean. It looks like a WWE ring cosplaying as MOTU.

Don't get me wrong. It's cool but

So I strongly WISH that the MOTWWEU was more influenced by MOTU. But Vinnie Mac wo

n't Allow it to happen.

But back to the ring. It has a pseudo MOTU vibe with the rocky edges surrounding the ring and the vintage Snake Mountain inspired snakes atop the turnbuckles. It's supposed to have a sticker for the center of The Ring. Mine didn't come with one.

As a way to enter the ring we have a ramp inspired by the Snake Mountain bridge.

The good thing, if you're NOT into Origins or MOTWWEU is that the ring fits with Classics. But not only we have a ring... we have 2 figures to review:

Hulk Hogan and Steve Austin.

Articulation 

I won't bore you here. Their articulation is exactly the same as MOTUO. This is because the lines share body parts for the customization aspect. Everything He-Man can do they can do as well.

3.5

Paint and sculpt 

Here everything goes to hell. The sculpt is nice for the most part. Hell, you could get away with some sticky blu tac and use the heads with MOTUC. Out of the 2 Hogan looks better and not because I'm a fan. It just does.

Paint can be hit or miss. On SCSA it was mostly misses. The Goatee was a miss. His leg tat was a hit.

What?

Hogan 4.0 Austin 3.0

Accessories 

Expect the line's incoherence here. Austin is modern Earth Austin  (minus leg brace) with two Serpent hands that don't fit MOTUC... snakemen. They COULD fit females.

He also has his vest, which is pretty much an Earth piece of Clothing.

Hogan on the other hand, has a modded MOTUC Flying Fists HE-MAN Armor with the HE-MAN insignia instead of Hulkamania merchandise logos. Best part is that the back has the holes for the Hulkster to tear off his shirt. Yes, MOTWWEU Hogan gets armor crafted with holes in the back that allow him to tear off his own armor as an intimidation tactic.

He also has a new Hornless Viking helmet and a MOTUO He-Man axe...

Hogan 4.0 Austin 3.0

Overall

The ring is a very worthy addition to MOTU. Including Classics.

Hogan is the superior figure (paintjob and MOTU-ISH accessories) with a 3.83 as his final score. SCSA on the other hand gets a 3.16 as his final score. (Technically, a 3.17 but I rounded it down for obvious reasons. Before you ask, no. I did not lower Stone Cold Steve Austin's score to reach a 3:16. That was a serendipitous thing.) Now I need to get Mr. T!!