It might be bad of me to say this but there are times where I enjoy watching the ant farms that are toy forums get shaken up a bit. With The Mighty Spector we got to see the small (and intensely passionate and vocal) members of the Masters of the Universe's most popular board lose their collective cool for several months, despite the fact this is a pretty good figure. As a fan of the line who's not, shall we say, "engaged," I generally just get my figures and enjoy them. The line has its ups and downs, and some.shtmlects I don't necessarily love, but I don't begrudge the line for including a She-Ra character here or there as they have their fans. With Spector, Mattel made a separate subscription with six original characters and well, you could opt out. I guess figure fans are the same all over, so many of us feel compelled to buy every last one in a line regardless of if we like it or not. I'm glad to say I like this one.
While it doesn't come from the original line, it does come from the fertile imagination of the line's current brand manager and it does make a decent degree of sense. This character is the master of time travel (which makes more sense than being a master of cameras, really) and does come from both the present and future of the timeline. The design sensibility is a mishmash of late 1980s and early 1990s stuff, with a Predator-like gauntlet (complete with weird "alien" characters) being a big source of the character's power. A mini Cosmic Key can snap right on to it, and be activated with some sort of energy burst. I dig it. The purple suit is the time-travel device, supposedly, and the yellow harness adds some color to the otherwise dark figure without hindering movement-- a big plus, as even Skeletor's arms are restricted by his armor. The figure's joints are tight, and it basically works well in the sense that it can stand and all of its features and articulation work properly. From an engineering perspective, The Mighty Spector may be one of the best overall assembled and painted releases, plus he's purple and there aren't a heck of a lot of purple good guys.
One thing I particularly dug about this figure (and wished could be fleshed out more) was that Cosmic Key on his wrist. The idea of being able to plug multiple weapons into a wrist-mounted device seemed like a lot of fun and reminded me a smidgen of the Green Lantern toys (because it's green). I'm particularly pleased at the designs, because if you want Spector can hold his gun while having the "switched off" Cosmic Key stored in his holster. It's a nice touch. The gun itself is pretty good, they don't waste a lot of detail on the grip and the weapon has an energy stick inserted in it for maximum.... something. The figure has a bunch of this "ammo" sculpted to a yellow band on his thigh, and you'll notice one of them is "missing."
As most of the figures in this line, Spector is made of previously used parts like Trap Jaw's left hand and feet/shins, Optikk's "loincloth," and the standard buck outfitted with a new head, a new harness, and a new left wrist. The head looks properly heroic, but the wrist is particularly amazing as it's packed with tons of detail and probably had more paint applications than most vintage 1980s figures. There's gold and silver, a little bit of dirt, some green, and some black which all come together to make an almost alien, definitely futuristic control device which is clearly beyond our understanding as mere mortals.
As a kid I was a sucker for "next generation" stories and I always wanted to know what happened in the distant future, like if Luke had a decent run after the Death Star blew up or if Cobra would still be around in the far-flung future of 2006. Spector's being here lets us know He-Man gets to be king some day, which lets us know there are probably a ton of interesting stories left to tell from this franchise which, particularly on the TV show, spent a lot of time spinning its wheels. Here's hoping we can see more from the future of Eternia! Oh, and Gwildor. His bio makes me think we'll get Gwildor. I'm looking forward to that.
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