This is the last of my vintage MOTU puzzles, for now, at least. In another Fred Carillo-illustrated scene, we have a battle between He-Man and Faker, while Man-at-Arms takes on Whiplash. I have no idea why Whiplash's head looks like a deformed aardvark. Skeletor lingers in the back and blasts a large stalactite to make it fall on his hated foe, as befits the dirtiest player in the game. Meanwhile, Mer-Man helps by chilling in a pool of water and watching with obvious glee. I assume he's delighted at the prospect of stabbing and/or pulling under anyone who slips and falls into the water, but you never know with that guy! Really, zoom in and look at his face. He is bursting with joy at watching these muscled-up weirdos beat the hell out of each other! I reckon Mer-Man lives by the adage, "Do what you love, and you'll never work a day in your life!" Carillo not drawing any teeth in the lower half of his mouth gives him this dopey look that cracks me up every time I look at him.
He-Man is again depicted in his Battle Armor, while Skeletor is still in his standard gear, just like in my last vintage MOTU puzzle. The Battle Armor figures were being pushed hard at the time, largely supplanting the standard versions in most package art and merchandise, so it's interesting that Skeletor was consistently not wearing his in these puzzles.
Faker was a pretty mysterious character who rarely appeared in any media, so it's cool to see him here. I don't remember ever seeing him in any store, and none of my friends had him. Mine came from a garage sale, and had some flecks of silver paint along one side where someone had apparently been using spray paint or an airbrush near him at some point. I pretended it was battle damage, and it made the toy cooler to me. A robot being as strong as He-Man made no sense to me-- if Skeletor could build a robot that strong, why wouldn't he make a bunch of them and take over Castle Grayskull that way?-- so I reasoned that there had to be something unique about Faker. I enacted a scenario with my toys where Tri-Klops wounded He-Man in battle, returning to Snake Mountain with the hero's blood on his blade. Skeletor removed the blood and performed some arcane ritual to bond it to his Faker, infusing the mechanical menace with some of He-Man's power. This made him a serious threat, worthy of his package art, in which He-Man was forced to wait to ambush his evil doppleganger as he relentlessly hunted him. (Cardback scan via the always awesome Battle Ram Blog!)
The puzzle quality is the same as the last one, as expected for an old cheap puzzle like this. The pieces are thin and have a rather loose fit, with a few split pegs here and there. No missing piece this time, though, so that's a plus! The original owner affixed a swanky Ellery Queen subscription sticker to the bottom of the box, a nice bit of bonus nostalgia. I'll hopefully snag more of these soon, but it's tough to find any at a decent price that aren't absolutely trashed, so we'll just have to wait and see!
No comments:
Post a Comment