The Horror Movie BBQ

2004 was a fun year for toy collecting. WWE Classic Superstars just debuted, Marvel Legends and JLU figures were on fire, GI Joe was back in the fold and so were Transformers. But, by mid 2004, the MOTU 200X line came to a close due to lack of interest. Yeah, that was a hard pill to swallow. Toy collectors had such a variety of toy lines to pick from, but one of our childhood icons, which we thought would set the world on fire once again, was now being cancelled?!?!?

Drag.


I guess there's nothing else to do. We had a good run. The cartoon was the best to date, the toys were superbly sculpted, we even got Mario Lopez palling around with He-Man! I mean, what else would we have to accomplish with this line? Well...one thing was missing: SHE-RA.

Come on! You can't have a new He-Man line without She-Ra. It'll be a complete failure, I mean who in their right mind would consider trying to put out...





Oh. Right. Um. Bad example.

To be fair, we were at least given an appearance by t…

It's a double sized episode! Today, Graham of TheHistoryOfWWE.com and of Graham and Chad Talk Rasslin' joins the #MOTUMonth festivities with a hearty discussion on the vehicles and playsets in Masters of the Universe! And of course, off topic conversations! Oh and you bet we discussed our favorite wrestler: VIRGIL!



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And for fun, I've included an interview with legendary voice actor Michael Bell! I conducted this brief interview at TFCon in July (report coming after my trip to TFCon in Virginia next month!). It was an absolute thrill for me. And I hope you enjoy it as much as I did living it!



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Rochester, NY became Bayside this evening thanks to the local minor league baseball team The Red Wings. Why? Well, they were rolling out the red carpet for a star of one of my all time favorite tv shows, Saved By The Bell. Screech? Nah, Red Wings are above that silliness. No, sir. Mr. Belding himself, Dennis Haskins was invited to ring in the new school year with "Back To School Night"!

 Sure, I wasn't expecting Max to sit around pulling his thumb off and pulling a burger out a hat or see Zack Attack making a music video, but I was expecting a good time. Thankfully, I left my neon pink tank top and neon shorts at home. No one needed to see that. I leave that to the more popular Bayside allstar.



Happy dance aside, it was time to hit the bricks and head out to the ballgame!



Got the stadium a little before 5 pm. Dennis was to start signing at 6 and I knew I had to be the first in line. I'm no nerd like Screech or Ollie, but I pride myself on being the number 1 SBTB fan,…

Ahhhh, MerMan....the mighty warrior from the swamps of Eternia. We have a lot to discuss here...




The original MerMan was pretty cool looking. He looked liked a frightened alien from War of the Worlds. Far from a demonic sea creature, his sculpt was better suited for Stinkor, the mighty warrior of stank, but he was still a figure memorable enough to become a favorite over the years from the most diehard fans.

Off the bat, he's given an advantage. He comes from the sea! Everyone loves underwater characters. It's a given. Now while this figure never represented everything MerMan can be in my opinion, it's his 2002 facelift that truly makes me wanna do a cannonball into the MOTU pool...



Now that's a real splash! Also, yes, I'm done with the pool puns.

The 2002 MerMan pays more tribute to the Creature from the Black Lagoon,  a character that no doubt inspired his creation. Where as the original figure was a little more cartoony and silly, much like the entire line itsel…

I can't believe I'm typing this, but we officially live in a world where a Scareglow Funko Pop exists!



For the uninitiated on today's subject, ScareGlow was released in the 1987, when the line was winding down. His figure was most unique, just a giant glow in the dark skeleton with a giant purple Dracula cape. I'm a long time fan of action figures that glow in the dark, so naturally Scareglow has always been one I've been on the hunt for to no avail. Being one of the last figures released, his numbers were much lower than say a TrapJaw or Battle Armor He-Man. Now, as cool as the figure is, it's his backstory that gets weird. He was originally introduced as a spirit from the future that Skeletor brought to the present to scare people and invoke fear into his enemies. A cool idea but fans took this as it was Skeletor's future ghost after he died. Personally, I always just saw him as a hitman of Skeletor and never really thought of him as his future form. No…

From the Masters of the Universe movie, comes Blade, the lethal swordsman and one of Skeletor's newest henchmen and my personal favorite of the bunch. Sorry, Karg. No offense...

Times Square. The Big Apple. Gotham City. The Entertainment Capitol of the World. New York City is not just a perfect background for 1980s Christmas movies but also a proverbial melting point of all races, genders, religions from all over the world. Bringing together the finest folks this world has to offer and sometimes the not so finest. But that's ok, NYC is one of the finest places you could ever ask to visit and to experience complete madness!

Oh and Times Square was the backdrop for a great punk movie of the same name where Tim Curry plays a  DJ...







All that hype aside, Times Square earned it's name of "Crossroads of the Universe" on one fateful Friday in October of 2002. The legendary Toys R Us in Times Square brought together three of the most powerful names in the galaxy (we'll get to them in a moment) to officially kick off the 200X MOTU line, a line that had been hyped for quite a while by multiple toy publications, Cartoon Network and Mattel themselves…

When Mattel introduced the 200X toy line, it seemed one of the biggest goals was to improve on old designs as a way to make it new all over again. Whether it was the characters themselves, the creatures, the vehicles and even Castle Greyskull, no stone was left unturned as far as this bold, new venture. And one of the characters that desperately needed a facelift? None other than Prince Adam...




Before you start filling my inbox full with hate mail, think about it. The original Prince Adam figure was just a quick repaint of the actual He-Man figure in a white shirt and purple underpants. You're not exactly hiding his secret identity well there, Mattel. One look at Adam and Webstor will figure out who he is in about 3 seconds and he's the dumbest of Skeletor's minions! So now you've got the most powerful man in the universe sharing a mold with what seems to be a Flying Graysons reject. Come on, now.

So the beauty of this figure that we were given in 2003 was that Prince …

I'm a big fan of storybook-cassette/record sets from my childhood. I mean, there's so many out there due to their popularity in the 70s/80s/90s that I'm still discovering recordings I've never seen before. I'm talking Real Ghostbusters, The A-Team, Transformers, and so much more. Heck, even George Washington's life got a story cassette!

Now, as you can imagine, He-Man and She-Ra received quite a few stories. You'd be right. I've found so many tapes and records from not just America, but all over the world. Some of them are very corny and not acted or written very well but what else would you expect when it comes to these? At the same time, some were pretty fantastic. Believe it or not, Secret of the Sword actually got a story record featuring actual dialogue and sound effects from the movie! It's a pretty fantastic to listen to if you're in the mood to listen to a fun adventure while you're out running or driving to a convention. But what we…

Today's subject is quite the controversial character and I see no better way to kick off MOTU Month than with this guy!

See that furry, little troll? That's Gwildor, a character created for the live action Masters movie as a replacement for the cartoon's favorite magical master of hi-jinx, Orko. He essentially played the comic relief, a bumbling fool that would follow around He-Man and his crew on their way to and from Eternia. The master of the awe inducing Cosmic Key was played by legendary character actor Billy Barty and became an instant favorite of...well, probably just me. But his figure is a fantastic sculpt and I have to imagine, had the line continued, we could've gotten more great sculpts like this. His size, big gut, happy face and crazy hair make him stand out.



Gwildor only came with one accessory and he only needed one accessory. I can only be referring to...THE COSMIC KEY!



The figure included in this writeup is beaten up and beyond filthy for a good reas…

Things have been awfully quiet here on the blog lately and I do apologize. It's been a relaxing and lazy summer so far but that aside, I have a very good reason for my weeks long absence. Well, I think it's good and I think you'll agree...

MOTU MONTH!





Yup! If you've been paying attention to my Twitter and Facebook page, you'll notice I've been dropping hints about doing a Masters of the Universe project for this very blog. What started off as just doing a MOTU 200X themed week turned into a much bigger project when I came to the realization that not only did MOTU 200X debut in August of 2002, but the live action movie debuted in August in 1987! The Masters of the Universe live action movie is a HUGE favorite of mine, which I'll elaborate more throughout this month, so I wanted to do something with that as well. So then it kinda hit me again: I haven't done as much He-Man related content on this blog. And that's awfully surprising, considering the imp…