It's 2024 now, so good news/bad news: good news, Mattel didn't lose the He-Man rights; bad news, that means you don't owe us $10. Apiece.
Unbeknownst to him, Trap-Jaw was the first
of Krang's ooze experiments. The cybernetic walking weapon of destruction fused with Baxter Stockman's M.O.U.S.E.R. technology, making him a mindless minion in Skeletor's mutant army.
The general pop-culture understanding of humanity's transition from Neanderthals to homo sapiens was that we got violent and killed them off. That's not true, of course - there was a multi-millennia-long overlap in which the two species lived together and inter-bred, until their genome was simply subsumed by ours - but it does create a very handy parallel for today's review: in the '80s, Mattel's Masters of the Universe line died out the same year Playmates' Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles began; now here they are crossing over with each other to make some weird biracial babies.
These toys are not based on the proposed comic from a few years ago, though the idea is similar: there are only so many ways to do a MotU/TMNT mashup, after all. But maybe Mattel should have asked for more help from Freddie Williams II, the artist who did the original drawings, because the quality of these designs varies wildly from the ridiculous ("He-Man, but he's blue!" "Beast-Man wearing samurai armor!") to the sublime. Example: Mouse-Jaw.
Trap-Jaw is known for his jagged, chompy mouth;
Mousers are known for their jagged, chompy mouths; that's all it took for these two to get slammed together. And honestly, as simple as the inspiration is, the combo works really well! In different colors, this might just be a normal Trap-Jaw - he's got his helmet, he's got his armor on the right side of his chest, he's got his tall boots - but things have been Mouserized. For instance, instead of round shoes, his feet almost look like hooves; an effort to suggest the two toes on the front of a Mouser's foot. His helmet and jaw are a Mouser's head, and even the shoulder on his mechanical arm suggests a mouser's mouth and eyes. Where the actual Trap-Jaw had a skull and crossbones on his belt, Mouse-Jaw gets a squashed turtle.
The colors are very exaggerated, almost comicbooky. It's not enough for his skin to be blue, it needs to be bright blue. It's not enough for his trunks to be red, they need to be pure red. it's
mostly fine, but it does lead to one specific flaw: his Mouser parts are white. A vaguely pearly white, but white nonetheless. Mousers are not white. They've never been white. They've been gray, silver, sometimes black, sometimes blue even... but not white. This is a result of taking the proper colors and "rounding them off," so to speak, so we understand it. And the white makes the figure pop on the shelf more than gray would. It'd still be interesting to see someone customize this to look the way it's supposed to.
Just having Mouser parts wasn't enough for this figure, so we also get a standalone Mouser sidekick for him. It's comical to think
back to the trouble NECA had when they were trying to make TMNT figures, and Playmates got super pissy about anyone stepping on their territory; now we've got Turtles from pretty much any company that can find an excuse to make them, and Playmates is trying to play catch-up with unimaginative pairings like Stranger Things, Cobra Kai, or Street Fighter. Come on: did you ever dream we'd get an official Mouser action figure from Mattel? It really just moves at the hips and neck, but you can open and close the jaw, too.
One thing that's unusual about this design is that the Mouser appears to have a little tail, which isn't a standard element.
Well, that's because it's for the toy's play feature: remove the legs, and the Mouser can plug onto the end of Trap-Jaw's arm, taking the place of his normal claw hand! It's decidedly awkward in place, but it does further the connection between the two halves of this concept. The detatched legs can be stored on Mouse-Jaw's belt, and there's a big translucent orange flame spout that can plug into the Mouser's mouth. Or the figure's normal arm if you want.
The Turtles of Grayskull toys are done in a slightly-larger-than-vintage 6" scale, but still get the improved articulation seen with MotU Origins. As someone pointed out, toy companies
have finally figured out that fans want the old stuff, but made better. MJ moves at the ankles, shins, knees, hips, waist, wrists, elbows, shoulders, neck, and mouth. One weird bit is the shoulders, though. They're typical swivel/hinge joints, but... do you remember before balljointed hips became commonplace, when companies would try to do swivel/hinges by putting the peg into the pelvis at an angle? The shoulders are like that. Rather than designing it so the peg just goes straight in perpendicular to the ground, the peg is instead angled downward. That means when you turn the arm, it will move in front of the chest instead of just raising to the front. Maybe this was their attempt to compensate for the lack of biceps?
Mattel is doing a Build-A-Figure for this line, but it's not included with the normal figures, just deluxe exclusives like this.
The BAF will be a combo of Roboto and Metalhead called "Metal-Boto." Mouse-Jaw gets the right arm and alternate weapon-hands (a clamp, an axe, and a blaster). Technically those hands can be plugged into this figure's arm, if you don't mind the color looking out of place. Or even into the Mouser's mouth, since the port is the same size. The next BAF piece will come with Sla'Ker, but the two after that haven't been revealed yet.
This line's packaging is definitely going to get a ToY nomination at the end of the year, because it blends MotU and TMNT so perfectly. The standard, carded figures get the "exploding rock"
background like the '80s He-Man figures had, but it's green and purple to let us know it's something new. The deluxe boxed sets, meanwhile, get purple stones fitted together, with green mutagen oozing between the blocks, and a few leaky sewer pipes along the sides. The art on the back of the box is an homage to the cover of the original minicomic that introduced Trap-Jaw, with Leonardo standing in for He-Man, and Teela (or April, or the Sorceress) standing in for Skeletor. So fun! The set also includes a minicomic-sized chit of cardboard with character art on the front and character info on the back.
Clearly Mattel is dedicated to this crossover concept, because not only is it going to take until Series 3 to get all four of the Turtles, they've got plans for some variations, as well. Like, Leonardo and He-Man were in Series 1, but they've already showed off concept art for different versions of them in the future. Mouse-Jaw seemed like a funny little oddity, but the toy turned out to be so fun, I'm going to have to start paying attention to the future releases.
-- 04/01/24
|
