It took a few months but, finally a few memorable figures have been sent as part of the subscription to Mattycollector.com’s Club Eternia.

 King Hssss is detailed extremely well, he has a fully articulated upper body including his head and arms. The original figure had a shell of the disguised form of the leader of the Snake Men. The parts of the shell snapped off and revealed a mass of yellowish snakes as the true form of King Hssss.

 The mass of snakes is now a separate part of the snake kings body. The human torso is snapped off and the snake body is put on in it’s place. The detail of the snake body is very fine and has meticulous sculpting of the scales and an open mouth ready to bite.

Also included with King Hssss are his trademark weapons of a green snake staff and his red shield. Both weapons are full of details and they bring back the memories of the old days.

The back of the package has a group of “also available” characters and a bio of the snake ruler.

King Hssss is a great character as part of a MOTU collection. He is the leader of the Snake Men, how can you go wrong? However, I never really cared for him especially in the 2002 cartoon where they made him invincible–well, almost. I still believe Skeletor could kick his ass any day!

GRADE: B+ (The figure is great!)

The new addition to the top 5 MOTU in my collection! Battle Armor Skeletor is one figure I am having trouble keeping my eyes off of–he was one of my favorites when I was young and apparently, he still is!

The detail that Battle Armor Skeletor has is so close to the original that I feel like I have the one that went to the toy graveyard so many years ago. The face is painted in the same way with prominence of the yellow and the green to the edges. The armor has great paint applications giving a two-tone of black in gloss and flat and the loin cloth being all black as it is under the purple armor piece that the standard Skeletor has.

Battle Armor Skeletor is a straight forward figure, he comes equipped with a clip-on armor that has replaceable plates that show the battle damage on the armor. The original figure was built with a mechanism that consisted of a spring and cylinder. The cylinder spun and stopped when it was pressed and a bat-like symbol would appear to have been damaged. The first spin would show a slightly damaged piece and a second spin would show a greatly damaged piece. You could then spin it back to good as new and begin again. This mechanism was prone to failure and finally breakage–it was probably too expensive for them to re-create so I’m guessing the plates were used instead.

Battle Armor Skeletor is also equipped with a purple axe, the axe is reminiscent of the weapon he carried in the 80’s episode “The Diamond Ray of Disappearance.” I remember how much I wanted an axe for Skeletor after seeing that so I made a “custom” one out of He-Man’s axe. What a great weapon to include!

Odd thing though, in the photos on Mattycollector.com, Battle Armor Skeletor is shown holding a gray Power Sword, I looked into the box at every angle and even shined a light in and I couldn’t find the sword. I’m either not seeing it, or it was a mistake in the photos. It would have been a great extra, but, it’s ok, I’m happy with just the axe and how cool the figure is.

 The back of the package shows the usual with a bio that has a bunch of weird “facts” that I don’t recall but, it doesn’t matter, the figure is so perfect that I just don’t care.

GRADE: A+++ (I’d add another plus, but people will think I’m being biased…which I am.

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