Monday, November 18, 2013

The Little Differences: Vintage Figure Style MOTUC Skeletor

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Vincent: It's the little differences. I mean, they got the same $#!t over there that we got here, but it's just – it's just there it's a little different.

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Today's installment of the Little Differences is a quick, down and dirty, Masters of the Universe Classics kit-bash! I was very excited to get the more "vintage action figure style" body construction with Dragon Blaster Skeletor. However, after I had him in hand, I knew achieving the vintage figure look would not be as simple as swapping his chest armor and giving him some weapons.

First, unlike any other Skeletor figure to come before him, Dragon Blaster Skeletor's body is actually black plastic painted blue. This practice fans on He-Man.org have dubbed "blastic" was used on several figures last year. The problem with this technique is that the paint on these figures rubs off over time revealing the black plastic underneath. (This is totally unacceptable for someone who enjoys posing and displaying their figures out of the package. Thankfully Mattel has stopped doing this on subsequent figures.)

The second problem with Dragon Blastor Skeletor is that his right hand is not a Skeletor "creature" hand with long pointed fingernails. Instead, for some odd reason, they gave him a standard "human" right hand. The last nail in the coffin preventing this from being an easy swap was that the armor tassels "hanging" from his belt were painted black instead of purple.
 photo vintage_skeletor_zps25592ea2.jpg 
So instead of simply swapping the Dragon Blaster armor with regular Skeletor armor, I needed to put the DB forearms, boots, and feet onto a standard Skeletor! Using the tried and true hot-water technique, I swapped the arms at the biceps, hands, and boots. I was especially careful removing and re-attaching the DB parts as the paint on the "blastic" comes off even more easily when heated. Here's my recipe...
Head = Demo Man (alternate head)
Body = Skeletor (from Mo-Larr pack)
Arms = Dragon Blaster Skeletor
Hands =
Skeletor (from Mo-Larr pack) 
Boots/Feet = Dragon Blaster Skeletor
Armor = Skeletor (from Mo-Larr pack) 
Trunks = Skeletor (from Mo-Larr pack)
Weapons = Skeletor (from Mo-Larr pack) + Fang Man

Note; the blue on the body parts are not a 100% match but they are close enough. In fact, I've seen much greater differences on factory painted vs molded color production pieces. So my decision to swap the entire arm instead of just the forearm is for two reasons; removing the complex elbow joints and re-attaching them could damage the paint on the DB pieces and I felt the biceps would be a better place to hide the color difference with the shadows created by the armor and the deltoids.
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Yes, he isn't totally toy accurate with the Alcala head but it's such a wonderfully expressive sculpt that I couldn't resist using it. I also gave him Fang Man's sword as a stand-in for his "energy-blade." The skull motif on the handle suits him especially well.

So if you like your Masters of the Universe Classics with a little more vintage-toy flavor, this is an easy one to do. Until next time, I remain The Insidious One.