"It exists" is, at times, the reason long-term collectors make a purchase. It's not because it had a cool backstory, or awesome history, or appeared in a cartoon. Masters of the Universe Classics managed to have a pretty fantastic life cycle updating the original figures and new figures like the Horde Wraith functioned as a preservative to keep it going. This is a perfectly nice figure that seems to fit a mix of the He-Man and ThunderCats aesthetics... but from where I sit it has no real significance. It's another Evil Orko, and while it looks perfectly fine I'm the kind of fan who would never have missed it if it didn't exist. A background magician helps to expand the universe, but it doesn't necessarily fill a void in your fanboy heart.
I'm a fan of the Horde aesthetic by and large, but mostly because it took the whole faction allegiance with the familiar Horde mask face slapped on a varied army of troopers. We got a cat lady, an octopus woman, a hairy wolf dude, a freaky bug-eyed monster, and several other wonderful creations. There were even some pretty zany concepts that never saw plastic, like the infamous Horde Mummy which I've always thought would be fun.
The figure itself is pretty great, but the accessory interaction is garbage. The hand fits in the staff, but the staff is super soft and limp under its own weight. A 3-piece clear display stand fits together, but without a hair dryer or boiling water you probably can't fit it in the figure's stand hole under the robes. I certainly couldn't get it in there with my bare hands, so maybe I got lucky/am weak/have reason to hate the figure. The design of the gear seems on point, as it looks sharp. It just doesn't work so well.
The Horde Wraith itself is pretty decent. From the waist down, it's one big piece with tattered robes and almost no paint. The arms are nicely articulated, and fit together pretty well. Wrinkly blue hands extend from beyond the cloak with gnarly fingers and nasty clawed hands. This basically looks like an evil, taller Orko - and since there's no bio I don't know that it explicitly is or isn't a Trollan. A blank black face has yellow eyes with red outlines, plus a nifty cape that goes over the shoulders and makes a nice bib so he doesn't get sauce on his robe when he has ribs. Clearly someone thought ahead. The tattered sleeve robes tend to get a bit in the way of the staff in his hand, but you can mostly twist parts around to make it fit. The body itself is also largely unpainted save for some light grey flourishes on the upper arms.
I had this figure for months and didn't open it - and wasn't curious to open it. I wanted to look at and write up something than my usual scheduled robots and Pop! vinyl figures lately, so we busted this one open. It's OK. It's not a bad figure, but since the stand doesn't work well and the staff kind of stinks, I'm not a super big fan of it. I'm surprised by its high secondary market prices these days, and I probably would have been better off selling it to fund some other purchase. This has nothing to do with the sculpt quality or the paint job - it's a perfectly fine figure. It's just another figure to add to the overflowing shelf of the Eternians and Etherians on my fireplace, which needs to be expaned/fixed up/tweaked because it's filled with characters that aren't the reasons I love this line in the first place. I love Skeletor and He-Man and their core flunkies, and even a ton of those "concept design" figures. Who doesn't love Oo-Larr or Demo-Man? This one is a fine example of a wonderful figure that does nothing to push my buttons. Get it if you like the design, but if you missed it and are generally happy with your Masters of the Universe collection you can keep missing this one.
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