swallow your soul!


At least that's what Mer-Man's eyes here say to me. Big, bulbous, soul-devouring eyes! Hideous. And such.
I picked up my Masters of the Universe Classics Mer-Man from UPS on Friday. It's a great figure, and really indicative of what Mattel can do when they want to.
Of course, this was a hard-won purchase. I battled for an hour on mattycollector.com, ended up with three orders which I had to cancel two of, and then I had to fight with UPS to arrange a Will Call to pick the figure up since they insist on delivering to my residence in the afternoon when I'm at work.

As you can tell, Mer-Man's main feature is swappable heads. The Modern version is one of the Four Horsemen's interpretation of how the original cardback art looked. The Original version is how the original toy looked. Clearly, the modern version is more interesting to look at, but I'm glad to have to option to swap heads if I so chose instead of having to buy two figures. I will say the original version is more sinister, but part of Mer-Man's bio is that he's forced to fight for Skeletor since his kingdom was destroyed, so the modern head makes him look more like a pawn. Or a prawn. If I could remember what a prawn looked like.

Mer-Man's accessories are two- a trident, and a sword that looks like serrated coral. He doesn't hold either very well in his right hand, and his left hand is splayed open, so you won't be getting any accessories in that hand. I just pose him holding the trident, and he looks OK.

The colors used on Mer-Man just pop. The yellow over the dark green skin is an interesting contrast, and it works. I like this better than the bronze armor featured on the 200x figure.

Mer-Man was a complete bitch to obtain. The first batch of these went on sale on April 15th, and sold out within an hour. On April 29th, another production run was available, and that also sold out within an hour. Fans without a Mer-Man are livid. And I really can't blame them. Mattel is really stuck in a hard place here. They want to make enough for everybody, but not run the risk of overproducing them. A year from now, if they were to make double the numbers of their figures, they'd probably end up stuck with most of them since interest will have undoubtedly lessened, and that interest is also harmed by the figures selling out so fast, leaving most fans in the dust. And when they give up, no longer buying from resellers on ebay, those resellers will stop buying as many, and BAM! Lots of unsold product. I'm in support of the idea of lowering the maximum order quantity from 10 to something like 3 or 4. Just try the idea for Zodac and Hordak, Mattel. It obviously won't hurt sales, and might spread these figures around a little bit more. That and I DO NOT WANT to go through this for a Hordak. As bad as this fiasco was, that will be even worse.

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