Mer-Man Ocean Warlord - '80s Adventures! He-Man and the Masters of the Universe Cartoon Collection Basic Figure Item No.: Asst. GNN84 No. HYD31 Manufacturer: Mattel Includes: Trident, Pearl of Power, Perilous Power mini-comic Action Feature: n/a Retail: $19.99 Availability: April 2024 Other: Man from the Sea
PREVIOUS	RSS	NEXT

Thanks to some of the weird swings by Mattel, the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe Cartoon Collection gives fans yet another riff on a character where you think you don't need another version, but you do. Mer-Man was important to fans of the cartoon thanks to his distinctive and different appearance, and as someone in the opening credits of 130 episodes of a show he's recognizable.

Doing lots of interesting versions of characters is tough - in the old days, really only He-Man and Skeletor got a ton of variant figures. Today nearly any reasonably famous character has at least two, with Mer-Man having four in Origins (toy, Lords of Power convention, Lords of Power retail, Filmation) and a Turtles of Grayskull mutant bun in the oven too. Each one has something distinctive to offer - plus or minus both LoP toys - which runs in complete opposition to my intent of collecting Origins as a smaller line with fewer redundancies. Each one is in some way kind of neat, and this is the (at least) third figure based specifically on Filmation. Super7 did two - one in its Classics scale, and another in its 5.5-inch retro format. This is Mattel's first at-bat for it, and it's good.

Click here to check availability at Entertainment Earth.

Click here to check availability at Amazon.

Click here to check availability at eBay.

Click here to check availability at Walmart.

The figure mostly shares other animated figure pieces with a new head, new armor, and now clawed feet. The skin tone seems to vary a bit from figure to figure, and this one doesn't match my memory of the cartoon or the screencaps online. It' a little bluer, and looks more like the comic book 2-pack version from Classics from Toys R Us. That seems to hold true for many of the figures - Skeletor seems a little pale, Orko's hat seems to come from another style guide, but they more or less evoke the feeling of the original. Is it exactly what you saw on TV? No. Is it close? Yeah. I assume that may be the point given the name of "Cartoon Collection" and not "Filmation Figures" or some such - perhaps someone was trying to get close enough to it but just different enough to not pay someone a royalty?

The head sculpt of Mer-Man seems to be specifically adopted from a particular still from the show, which means he doesn't quite look like Super7's figures. It look like a more saturated take on this specific head shot from the He-Man Fandom wiki page, and knowing what I know about toy development, it's very possible that's where the designers started. Most current Origins figures are more saturated in color than their inspirations, so so if you like it (or not) it would seem this figure is precisely what Mattel set out to make. It's pretty close to what we saw on TV, which is the 1980s by way of the 1960s. With his bug-eyes and fins, he really does feel like something that could have been on pegs alongside The Outer Space Men during their heyday.

The same holds true for the body design - it's a swords-and-magic guy with elegant but simple costuming, no real pants to speak of, and a design aesthetic that feels (but is not) pre-Star Wars. But that's He-Man in a nutshell - the barbarians of the past, with what were then fairly modern vehicles, giving fans a fantasy storyline for kids that, while popular, also seemed to usher the genre out. The figure looks superb, with gloves, a hand that can hold a marble, and a vibe that is some sort of sea creature pastiche mixed with what I would describe as an evil Sea Monkey. It's funky but it looks better than the original toy's head.

This figure has two accessories - the Pearl of Power (a marble), and a perfectly nice trident. I'll be honest - this didn't look right to me, and I looked up pictures online to verify. I saw some angled tridents, but didn't see any that had the curved bits. I just finished a rewatch of the show and don't remember seeing this, but over 130 episodes I may have missed it. It's silver, it's sturdy, and he can hold it well. It looks nicely retro and more or less matches the sort of curved, sort of pointy character that wields it. Or you can just steal another figure's sword.

The figure can hold the Pearl of Power, a glittery off-white marble, in his left hand. It's slightly more grippy than most open hands, and is very close to the one on Dragon Blaster Skeletor. But it can't actually hold the pearl securely, so if the figure falls over that pearl is as good as lost to your carpet. Be careful when displaying this one.

I kind of love - and hate - that Mattel is coming up with new spins on characters I never expected to want to buy again. But I liked the cartoon as a kid, so here I am, recommending another Mer-Man to you guys. If you're happy with what you have, you don't need this. But I do want to get these cartoon guys, so I don't mind getting a slightly different Mer-Man than the ones I have on hand already. They did a nice job, and $20 for a good figure with a lot of articulation that's pretty close to fitting in with your older vehicles and figures is worth the look.

Additional Images

Click here to see more Mattel figures in Figure of the Day.

Click here to see more Masters of the Universe figures in Figure of the Day.