Masters of The Universe STRATOS + SKELETOR + TRI-KLOPS MICRO BUSTS
By Jackson Turling
STRATOS + SKELETOR + TRI-KLOPS MICRO BUSTS
Long time follower of your site, first time reviewer. I haven't seen too many review on busts, but these Masters of the Universe renditions just brought me back to the 80's when i received them. They are the epitome of everything my imagination ran away with playing w/ the figures when i was little so i thought i'd review them.
DETAILS: Each of the micro busts stand roughly 4" in height and weighs about a pound each. I was not expecting them to be so heavy but i was gladly surprised, so they're pretty sturdy sitting atop the round black base. Cold cast and hand painted, the Four Horsemen really outdid themselves this time as they are similar in scale to the figures released but much more detailed. Each comes in a little window display box and gives a short bio of each character.
STRATOS: The widest out of the 3, the Guardian over the skies of Eternia has the classic grey skin, blue straps red helmet and feathers color scheme. Styling cool in his wraparound glasses, beard and jet-pack he used to blaze around on in the cartoon, the sculpting detail is pretty good. A lot of attention was put into the line sculpting on his facial & body hair, and has some really tight views of his side ribs. The paint job gets a B- as the red on his helmet was sub-par and covered semi translucent. But he was always one of my favorites.
SKELETOR: The Skeletor is breathtaking. Not just sweating him because he was by far the evilest skeleton in town back in the day, but because you could tell the Four Horsemen really put some time into this one. Donning his purple armor, black hood and blue skin, the body scuplt is really tight. From the minute studs on the armor plates to the section of Skeletor's spine that creeps out under his hood down the back, the detail is beyond belief. The paint job is is also above average. The glowing faces peers out at you with evil fangs grinning and they even go as far to the paint red around his beady eyes & embed dirt specks in his teeth and chest crossbones. All i can say is wow... Definatly the best of the three.
TRI-KLOPS: The Heroic warrior swordsman turned evil by Skeletor, the Tri-Klops is the only interactive one out of the 3. The paint job is simplistic, but done very well on his green outfit. The sculpting on his face and a module on the back of his neck are excellent but other than that, the muscle tones on his body are kinda weak. What makes up for that is the feature of the revolving eyes. You can move the top part of his head around to position either a red, yellow or blue eye. One of the coolest features for a He-Man non action figure. Saw people on ebay trying to sell off each Tri-Klops as a Chase yellow eye version and so on, but don't be misled, you can rotate the eyes to which ever color you want.
PRICING: I bought all three of them online from some store nonstoptoys.com for $20, but i've seen them on ebay for a similar price. Definitely worth the twenty (although it was closer to $30 after shipping), you get more than you would expect. Would be a super steal to find all 3 for $20 in a comic book store or something and save on S&H but still a great deal if you don't want to spend $60 on a single large bust.
OVERALL: For some nostalgic non-toy merchandise, these take the cake. Now that I'm older and don't play with figures much, these Masters of the Universe micros sit on my work desk unnoticed, starring back at me reminding me of a much better time. They are pretty classy and being hand painted, its hard to believe that someone had the patience to sit and detail like that. The weight + the price + detail and painting (Not to mention their from He-Man dammit!) gives the set of 3 an A+ overall. 100% worth investing into!
Overall Rating:
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