Despite his not being a big star of the old Masters of the Universe cartoons, Clawful always stuck out to me-- in part because I dug the concept of a crab man, and also because he looked incredibly cheap. I mean, it looks like He-Man got bad skin, a badly-drawn head, and claw hands. I love it. I mean, look at the eyebrows, the eyes, the face... he doesn't look like belongs in this line. With the amazing sculpt of the head and the heavy black outlines and bushy dark eyebrows, he almost looks more like a Muppet-- were this exact design carved into foam, he'd make a darned good one too. Most of the figures in this line look like finely-tuned updates of 1980s action figures, but this one looks like the head was stuck in 1984.
You'll recognize a lot of his parts as having come from Buzz-Off and Whiplash. The armor is new, but mostly this is another fine example of Mattel reusing parts, as they managed to pull off a nice release with basically a head, hands, and a few accessories. The giant claw hand is particularly notable in that it's actually spring-loaded and can grip things, which is extremely uncommon in this line. Most action features were replaced by non-functioning parts which can be swapped out, but this one actually works-- I appreciate that.
There's nothing new here as articulation goes, but it's worth noting both hands can hold his bright green... what is this? A lobster stick or something? I was never quite sure, but the mace-like weapon fits well in either hand and it certainly is bright. I should note, the smaller claw hand has little round slot way back in the opening which looks like you could snap the weapon into place, but I haven't needed to push it that far back. So yeah, it works nice.
I assume many see this as an unessential release in the line, and they'd probably be right-- the drop-off of significant characters in the Masters mythos is pretty steep after the main guys. Skeletor's rotating cast of henchmen has been represented well already, with characters like Tri-Klops, Beast Man, Trap Jaw, and Evil-Lyn bringing some of the best (and best known) faces to plastic. While clearly not part of Skeletor's starting lineup, I'm happy to see Clawful in my collection mostly because that head sculpt feels incredibly fake in a line where it seems the sculptors tried to make these designs increasingly believable. If even the Four Horsemen decided he's too goofy to really reinvent, how can we not love him?
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