Eternia Minis: Skelegod review

Mini-Figure Mini-Reviews

2021 has been a banner year for spoilers on toys. The unpredictability of production times and release schedules means companies that would normally only announce (or even ship) their toys after the media in question had already been available simply can't wait for everything all the time. Toys take up warehouse space, and if you don't move them out, nothing new can come in, and your entire revenue stream dries up and then you're boned. So if Mattel has to put a MotU Revelation figure on shelves months before the show? It's not really their fault. But also? Maybe don't plan for your first release to be something from the last minutes of the finale episode.

Skelegod, the cosmic lord of destruction, is what happens when Skeletor gets his hands on He-Man's Power Sword - suggesting that what it took for them to be be "evenly" matched foes all these years was for He-Man to be operating at a 10, while Skeletor was down around a 2 or 3. So Prince Adam is to He-Man as Skeletor is to Skelegod, power-levels-wise.

Also physical-size-wise. Just as scrawny little Adam gains about 200 pounds of pure muscle when he powers up, Skelegod is bigger than the erstwhile Keldor. In the cartoon. This Mini is the same size as all the other ones. He retains his blue-and-purple colorscheme, and the yellow bone face, but wears much fancier armor than ever before: a horned helmet, spiky black shoulder pads, a fancy belt in addition to a furry loincloth, and ornate shinguards on the boots. There's not as much paint as on the real figure, but whould you expect there to be? There's a big wicked H on his chest, his version of the symbol that replaced He-Man's old "iron cross" emblem. He's armed with his chaos staff, when he should really have the Power Sword. Maybe that's a Season 2 spoiler.

The Revelation Minis are sold on tiny blister cards, like Series 3 and 4 of the regular line - that may have something to do with the number of opened Castle Grayskull and Snake Mountain shells we saw laying by the display boxes when Walmart carried them. Instead of the retro-inspired red cards, these are much darker. You can barely even tell that's supposed to be Castle Grayskull's jawbridge behind the figure.

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10 Responses to Eternia Minis: Skelegod review

  1. Scott says:

    Yeah, the Skelegod figure spoiling the end of Part 1 annoyed me too.
    By the way Skeletor is (thankfully) not Keldor here. Much like the original mini-comics and the Filmation series (as confirmed by the Sorceress in the short "The Greatest Adventures of All)", this Skeletor is unrelated to Adam and comes from another dimension (issue 2 of the Relevation comic shows he comes from a race of skull-faced people. Which he plays off like it was a 'joke' when Evil-Lyn disbelieves him but then he's shown holding the amulet his wife in his story was wearing). And despite what some people think Revelation is not a sequel to the Filmation show. Some character origins (like Roboto) are different and obviously the tone and more violent events are completely incompatible with that show's more lighthearted kid-friendly world.

    Some people are upset about this version not being Keldor, but hey so were a lot of us when that whole evil uncle thing was added to Skeletor back then too after years of him being unrelated to the hero. Keldor is the 2002 series Skeletor, fine. But Revelation goes back to the original version by having none of that dodgy uncle with dodgier facial hair stuff. 😛

    Anyways I haven't not been buying these minis. I'm much more into the awesome lil Mega Construx line for my MotU needs. In fact I just received the latest set of 5 mini-figures today that included Trap Jaw (filmation colours), Roboto (mini-comics), Tri-Klops (mini-comics), Scare Glow (slightly different colour to the first release which has become rare and overpriced. Still glows) and Man-E-Faces (they managed to do the face swivel gimmick even on a 2 inch figure). And with new sets coming out including Hordak and She-Ra plus the gigantic Snake Mountain brick set due end of next year (I've had Grayskull for about 18 months and I love it) I got some saving up to do. 🙂

    • yo go re says:

      But the evil uncle thing wasn't "added," it was the story all along. At least, as "all along" as anything in MotU was, when He-Man was originally just a barbarian with no Prince Adam or royal family, the Sorceress was Teela in a hat, etc. If '80s Skeletor hadn't been Keldor back then, he wouldn't have been Keldor in the update, either. Anybody who got mad about that needed to get a time machine and complain about it 20 years earlier...

      • Scott says:

        Nope. Skeletor was NOT related to Adam in the 80s and was NEVER 'the story all along'. It had only been vaguely implied in a very late mini-comic (The Search for Keldor) but never confirmed until the 200X series ran with that. Before then Skeletor was ALWAYS of a separate species from another dimension. The retconning of Keldor and Skeletor being same person has been disputed by some Mattel staff of the late 80s era too. Basically it was just going to be a gimmick to hopefully stir up more interest in the brand with a 'shocking revelation' but wasn't used either because they just didn't care for it or that the brand was pretty much too far close to death to continue.

        • yo go re says:

          I'm not sure "it wasn't true in the 80s because it only became true in the 80s" is exactly the strong point you think it is. Like, that's literally how storytelling works? Nothing's true until you say it is, and then it is until you say it isn't.

          Skeletor wasn't a demon from another dimension any more than Evil-Lyn was Evelyn Powers, Beast-Man was Biff Beastman, or Tri-Klops was Dr. T.E. Scope: that may be what it said in the series bible, but it wasn't used in the stories, so he was just a dude wth a skull for a face, the same way that Mer-Man was just a dude who was a fish or Buzz-Off was just a guy who was a bee. He had no origin, no history, no nothing until a story said otherwise. He wasn't Hordak's apprentice until a story said so, because Hordak didn't exist; but then suddenly he'd been Hordak's apprentice all the way back to the first episode.

          "The Search for Keldor" was the first time Randor's brother was mentioned. The idea was invented for that story. Using the power of the retcon, it magically inserted a brother who'd always been there, and now Randor had never been an only child, he'd suddenly had a brother all along (the same way Adam had always had a twin sister once She-Ra was invented). Similarly, Skeletor, who had always just been a dude, now had suddenly been the missing Keldor all along. And no subsequent story ever said he wasn't.

          Now, a strong case could be made that the minicomics and the cartoon didn't share a continuity - is Teela the Sorceress' daughter, or is she her clone? Are the king and queen young or old? But still, all the 2002 cartoon did was continue what the 80s had started, not invent something new...

          • Scott says:

            "I'm not sure "it wasn't true in the 80s because it only became true in the 80s" is exactly the strong point you think it is."

            Uh... literally not even what I was saying so how could possibly be a point I was trying to make.
            Skeletor was literally stated by the Sorceress herself in Filmation's VHS promo The Greatest Adventures of All. I already stated that in my first comment. Did you even check it out? It's on Youtube. And do you remember the (well known among MotU collectors) mini-comic image of multiple Skeletors walking through a portal? With text saying "Once I lived in another dimension, populated with others of my kind. But when the Great Wars opened a 'hole' in the dimensional wall, I was thrown into this world." And yes the mini-comics and Filmation cartoon don't share a continuity (though they got closer as the cartoon became the 'primary' focus) but they both outright stated Skeletor was from another dimension. Never once was it stated that he was Adam's uncle all along. The 200X series just took that concept and made it canon in it's universe. It was never canon in either the mini-comics or the Filmation series.

          • Scott says:

            By the way, I won't be back so you can write whatever you like. This has been a thing since end of September? Jeez. Life's too short for this stuff. I gave you references you already ignored. No point me wasting my time anymore. I've followed MotU on and off for years. I didn't really care for 200X and Classics all that much but I've been loving the Mega Construx and Revelation stuff a lot (probably too much, now I check my bank account again after buying way too many Revelation toys since Part 2 of the show was released). Hey look, Netflix has two different MotU shows running. One has Skeletor very much having been dodgy Uncle Keldor and the other has him having come from a whole world of skull faced demons and had a wife and kid. You go with whatever one you prefer. Loads of versions to please everyone. And by the way, the Search for Keldor never actually confirmed Keldor was Skeletor. It merely presented it as a possibility. Even Skeletor himself just says "the knowledge could destroy me". They could have followed it up with almost anything. It was left open-ended and was never resolved. So nothing that retconned the demon from another dimension he stated himself to be in the first mini-comics. Done. Dusted. I'm gone. Bye.

          • Scott says:

            PS
            one more thing. MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR.

            Hope you get some cool toys.

            😀

          • Mike Cass says:

            200X never revealed Keldor was related to Randor, IIRC.

            The first cartoon to do that was the new CGI toon.

            The less said about Scott Toy Guru's attempts to shove everything together the better.

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  3. yo go re says:

    Well look, man, some sites shut off comments on their pages after a certain amount of time, but that never made sense to us: if someone wants to talk about something old, why would we stop them? And to that end, if you want to wait from September to November before coming back in to add something, we're not going to just ignore it, that would be rude.

    That said, no, I've never seen a minicomic shot of multiple Skeletors coming through a portal or watched whatever VHS promo. But a throwaway line from a promo - before the show started in earnest and the stories/personalities were nailed down - doesn't really carry any more weight than a comic released at the end of the line, once there had started to be a direction to things, and actual plans beyond the next commercial break. Especially since, as I said before, *that's how retcons work.* When something gets changed later, it was suddenly true all along. Superman did not have a cousin until he did. Then he'd had a cousin all his life.

    And no, "The Search for Keldor" never plainly states that Skeletor and Keldor are one and the same, but only the densest of children wouldn't be able to piece it together from context clues. For one thing, their names are Skeletor and Keldor! In the words of Pam, "corporate needs you to find the differences between this name and this name." It's the same name! The '80s are known for children's TV writing that spelled everything out blatantly, but after years of doing that, the writers were surely aching to put out something that didn't need big red arrows pointing at the thing you're supposed to notice. What did Sorceress say? Skeletor is a demon from another dimension. What did "The Search for Keldor" say? Keldor's experiments left him lost in another dimension. There's no conflict there. Almost as if the comic were written to fit with what had already been said.

    And to reply to another comment at the same time, no, Mo2K never had a scene discussing Keldor's parentage. Again: there's no need to explain over and over that Supergirl is Superman's cousin. The new cartoon is merely the first where it's said out loud, not the first where it's true.

    Step 1: "Keldor," as a specific named character, is established as Randor's brother (1987).

    Step 1.5: Every child reading the comic figures out the two guys with the same name are the same person, because the story is written in such a way to allow them to figure it out. (Though absent overt confirmation, one could argue it remains fanon. But really, that requires willful ignorance.)

    Step 2: "Keldor, Randor's brother," a specific pre-existing character from the '80s, is established to definitively be pre-Skeletor when he gets a face full of acid and Hordak saves him, making the implicit explicit. (2002)

    Classics had nothing to do with it. Scott had nothing to do with it. Scott/Classics' only contribution was making Demo-Man part of the existing story. The story that had existed since the 80s. There's nothing saying every new incarnation of He-Man needs to keep the relationship intact, but any that doesn't is the one making the change, not any that does...

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