When I saw Dekker at Comic-Con 2012, my initial reaction was "who is this?" I've only seen the 2002 cartoon all the way through once, so I didn't recognize Man-at-Arms' mentor. He was just some guy in Mattel's booth, one of many new figures that looked good but struck no emotional chord. I'm sure there are fans that saw him and went "Wow, cool! Finally!" but all I thought was "Wait, if he wasn't cool enough to do in 2002 and nobody asked for him, why is he here now?" The figure is peppered with new parts, like both heads, his "skirt," the "armor," and (unless I missed something) the boots. The boots are fantastic, easily the best new footwear we've seen in a while and probably a sign that El-dor is on the way, I'd guess. His only weapon is an orange reuse of Man-at-Arms' club, which gives us all an excuse to dig into our Weapons Pak reserves and dole out some gear to the new guy.
There's nothing wrong with the deco or sculpting here, in terms of aesthetics anyway. The default head has some amazing hair, an eyepatch, and a scar on his face while the younger one looks sort of like Man-at-Arms, cast from orange plastic and painted accordingly. The bright colors look great, the blues and green pop nicely and the darker skin is a welcome change from the line's pasty cast. Dekker's movement is pretty good, except for the legs and waist. The new outfit restricts any ab-crunch movement, while the new skirt piece does not allow for him to sit. This either means Mattel knows its audience doesn't play with toys, or, like many other lines, just opted to emphasize looks over play value. Of course, if they're doing that, I think they might want to consider removing other articulation too to bring down costs on certain figures... if and only if there's not much hope of them sitting, anyway.
The figure itself has awesome deco and a good sculpt, but the single accessory and the general unfamiliarity I (and I assume others) have with the character caused him to linger at Matty Collector for an unusually long time. I'm all for new characters in this line, but releasing Dekker and Randor 2.0 the same day as the whimsical and oddly line-appropriate Castle Grayskullman didn't help either of the old, bearded humans to look cooler. There's a definite "anything goes" attitude for Masters of the Universe Classics as we've got a space babe, two dragons, barbarians, big yellow gorillas, warrior goddesses who are too good to wear pants, and even a young green tiger. The sheer variety is endlessly fascinating, so "new human" is about as dull as you can get after being treated to such a strong line-up of characters new and old.
The Four Horsemen and Mattel did an awesome job designing this non-sittable figure, with a fantastic sculpt and a lot of personality carved into his face. A different accessory, like the fishing rod, may have made a difference in making this figure more fun. Mattel has an insane amount of leverage over its fanbase who preorder a full year of toys blind, so seeing this at the end of the 2012 run wasn't the most exciting thing in the world. Of course, they designed a line that has to last and have done a good job stretching out what could've been a short, failed line by putting in guys like this one. I'm sure he's somebody's favorite, and if I find the right accessory (or accessories) to deck him out, I'm sure my opinion of him will shoot up in a heartbeat.
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