Eternia Restoration Part 2: Hand Washed Plastic Pectorals

It looks like it’s about time for the next installment of my Eternia Restoration Project and if you’ve been waiting for a close up look at the individual action figures of my Masters of the Universe collection, then this is the post for you!

Cleaning up this group of figures wasn’t as nearly as difficult as cleaning up the mouse-urine-soaked hoard of GI Joes that comprised my Terrordrome Renovation Project a few years back.  By comparison this toy restoration will seem as easy as a sparkling wave of magic issued from the elegant fingers of the mysterious Sorceress of Castle Grayskull!

To begin I separated all of the accessories and weapons, figured out exactly what I had, and (after a quick internet search) sorted them all out to the appropriate heroes and villains.  Then over the course of a few days I gathered up small batches of the figures and gave them a dunk in a bucket of soapy hot water, gently scrubbed them with a toothbrush, rinsed them off, vigorously shook out any excess water from their hollow abdomens, then toweled them off and let them dry over night.

Like I said most of these figures were in pretty good shape, all things considered.  Sadly several figures I thought to be complete were actually missing arms, accessories, or were just completely broken.  Also there were a couple of otherwise flawless figures who had fallen victim to unprovoked pet attacks and were irrevocably scarred by dog teeth.  Apparently the family dog at the time was deep in the puppy chewing stage when some of these figures entered my collection.

Battle wounds add character!

In a few of these cases I was able to take a very small pair of wire cutters and trim away some of the gnarly plastic snags and gouges.  After some delicate snips and clips it actually helped shape up some of the nastier bite marks, making the figures slightly less disfigured.

As far as cleanliness went though there really wasn’t much to contend with.  One or two of the Eternians had been tatted up with some marker at some point, a couple were just mysteriously sticky, but the only real troublesome figure was the legendary Moss Man.

Covered in a fine coat of coarse green felt, Moss Man not only had fur adhered to his stock Masters of the Universe body but said exterior moss was originally endowed with a distinct perfumed scent.  All of that situation; a brillo pad fur, adhesive undercoat, and whatever chemical magic was used to induce that smell combined with years of play meant that Moss Man had gathered a lot of gunk, identifiable and otherwise, all across his namesake moss!

Even cleaning Moss Man however was not an arduous task, he just took a little extra time as I gently brushed out the years of embedded carpet fibers and pet hair.

All in all the best way to describe this effort is to say that I spent a few hours of my free time giving sponge baths to a large group of musclebound men in my basement.

But enough about that let’s take a look at the results!

Clearly Eternia has a shortage of shirts.  Pictured are two average varietals of He-Man on the ends, Thunder Punch He-Man on the left, and He-Man’s alter ego Prince Adam wielding his fuchsia sword middle right.  Thunder Punch He-Man is the most complete all the other He-Men pictured are missing most, if not all, of their accessories.

 

Here we see a group of recently washed heroes of Eternia: Mekaneck, Cyclone, Wundar, and Ram Man.  Mekaneck is missing his armor, Cyclone is complete with his lenticular chest piece and shield.  Wundar is actually a mail away promotional variant of He-Man given away from Wonder Bread.  Fans and collectors gave the brown haired version the name Wundar and the name stuck!

More heroes! Fisto (you read that right!), the aforementioned Moss Man, Man-E-Faces, and Roboto with theme song by Styx.  Moss Man is complete with his brown club.  Roboto is missing one of his interchangeable arms. Man-E-Faces and Fisto are missing their weapons.

Childhood favorite Orco with his weird stack of coins accessory which features other characters pictures on them.  (Of course most of those are missing)  He also has a rip cord that would send him spinning.  Also pictured is a random Orco stamp that was in my collection.

Baddest of bad asses SKELETOR seen here in his battle damage variety and undamagable original flavor!  Although battle damage Skeletor is missing his accessories I was ecstatic to find that the classic version was 100% intact!

Four of my favorite baddies: Fakor, Trap Jaw, Stinkor (the villainous scented equivalent of Moss Man), and Tri-Clops.  These guys were the best at being the worst!  Whenever I was plotting evil deeds these would be my go to guys to make it happen.  However in the process they lost most of their accessories.  Except Stinkor, though at this point he has lost his distinctive scent.

Skeletor’s B-Squad: Mosquitor, Whiplash, Webstor, and Spikor.  (I’m sensing a pattern here with the names.)  Whiplash was one of the figures that received the worst of the canine maulings.  Although you can’t quite see it in the picture his entire right arm is chewed all to hell.  A lot of cool action features with these four though, dripping blood, whipping tails, zip lines, and retractable arms!

The Evil Horde!  A revitalization of the Masters of the Universe meant new and better figures!  Enter the Horde, these guys pulled double duty battling He-Man AND She-Ra.  Who has the time?  Seen here Mantenna, Hordak himself, Grizzlor, and Leech.  Leech had a great feature, he had a vacuum sealing mouth.  When you pressed a button on his back he could suction up to flat surfaces!

Let’s not forget about King Hiss and the Snake Men!  Actually let’s go ahead and forget about them, I was never really much of a fan.  But these two were pretty cool, Rattlor and Sssqueeze.  In my story lines these guys were always on loan from King Hiss in order to repay Skeletor and/or Hordak a favor.  These were the only Snake Men to ever grace my MOTU collection

 

Sadness.  Let us not forget our fallen heroes (and villains).  Here we have the broken toys.  Clawful, Man-at-Arms, and Trap Jaw.  Thankfully I had two Trap Jaws and the other was in fairly decent shape.  Unfortunately Clawful is missing an arm, and that crazy crab curmudgeon was one of my favorites!  Similarly Man-at-Arms has encountered an equally disarming fate.  I’ll be vigilantly on the lookout for these missing limbs as I occasionally go through old boxes at home and at my parents house!

Once again we have my wife’s She-Ra collection, finally reuniting Prince Adam with his sister Princess Adora under the roof of Castle Grayskull!  Pictured: SweetBee, Frosta, Perfuma, She-Ra, Bow, Glimmer, Castaspella, and the jealous beauty Catra!

 

And just for shits and giggles here is my small collection of Masters of the Universe figures from the early 2000’s as sculpted by the legendary Four Horsemen.  As a kid I wanted the original Merman and Beast Man but they always eluded me but that all changed in 2003!

Well there you have it!  Up next the VEHICLES!

 

That is all!

Masters of the Universe: Caverns of Fear

Have you ever spent hours working at something only to realize when you’re done that it was all just a waste of time?  Yeah well I just had that happen to me.  Whompers.

I was at my parent’s house the other night and I came across a cassette from a read along He-Man book entitled Masters of the Universe: Caverns of Fear.  A very compelling title to say the least.  Well anyway I had the brilliant idea of recording the tape to my computer and making a simple movie of it to post and share here on my blog, why not?  I didn’t have the book but I was able to find scans from the pages on He-Man.org and so I was set, all I needed to do was time the page images with the recorded audio and I’d be in business!  So I did that, I recorded the tracks with a little editing at the beginning and end to cut out the cassette play button noise then just added the pics and stretched them out to go in time with the narration.  Although this is all a pretty simple project it took an hour or two, I’m only working with Windows Movie Maker and it’s not the smoothest of tools.  Anyway I get it all done up, publish it, load it to YouTube no problem.  Then I decide to do a quick search to see where it would end up in the hierarchy of search terms only to find that, yep, you guessed it, there were already about three other versions of Caverns of Fear up on the site. 

Ah well just goes to show you that there are very few original thoughts.

Regardless I had a good time putting this together, looking over the pages and nostalgically reminiscing about my homemade Masters of the Universe adventures and the memories of reading this book as a kid.  At the time when He-Man and the Masters of the Universe was hitting it big (1983 or so) I was still rather young and wasn’t playing with those types of toys, but just a few years later when I was about 5, I was lucky enough to be the recipient of an entire MOTU collection including Castle Greyskull!  Some older kids who were friends of the family were getting rid of a bunch of their toys and somehow I was lucky enough to be next in line for the hand-me-downs.  I still don’t know how or why this happened, but I was of course extremely appreciative, and this encouraged me to add to the collection afterward asking for He-Man toys for all major gift giving holidays.

In my mind this was my basement playroom as a kid.

 

Toys have always been my thing, as a kid I loved setting up complex play landscapes in my basement with opposing bases set up across from each other composed of officially licensed toy accessories and my own homemade additions.  Filling the expanse between such fortresses were epic battlegrounds populated by vehicles, cardboard ramps, innocent bystanders (usually some other random toys who somehow became part of the storyline) and the discarded weapons, unattached arms, and other carnage one would expect to find in such an environment.  This was the case not only with my Masters of the Universe toys, but my Ninja Turtles, Transformers, Star Wars, Crash Dummies, and whatever other toys I dealt with.  However I believe I can trace it all back to He-Man and his pals and their unexpected arrival on my doorstep, it was like a real life Toy Story moment.

Ah childhood memories.  I guess it’s not really just a childhood memory, seeing as how I still collect Marvel Legends and Star Wars toys to this day, some habits die hard.  I don’t know what it is about cool action figures, but I’m a fan and they only keep getting better and cooler as time goes on!

Maybe in an upcoming blog I’ll talk about how I’ve recently discovered that I had the worst Transformers as a kid, really.  But that is a topic for another day, in the mean time take a look at my redundant video compilation of the Masters of the Universe: Caverns of Fear!  Enjoy!

A favorite Transformer of mine as a kid, though now I realize he is pretty lame as far as Transformers go.

That is all!