2790 Perry Mason.

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Mattel’s Masters Of The Universe started doing crossover sublines with their Origins imprint several years ago. It started with WWEternia, which obviously was a crossover with World Wrestling Entertainment (formerly the World Wrestling Federation). It was a fantastic idea since MOTU and WWE are mostly concerned with the machinations of musclemen interacting with each other in a good guy versus bad guy framework. Unfortunately the crossover only lasted for a couple of waves because covid struck the world at that time. It made it difficult to find the figures for a variety of reasons.
Additionally the WWE figures were Walmart exclusives & Mattel doesn’t offer them via their online store. The crossover ended without much fanfare.
After this Mattel spun the crossover line into a separate imprint with no connection to MOTU apart from the use of the same base body molds. Both imprints are still ongoing.
While this crossover was happening MOTU rolled in a sort of secondary crossover/inclusion of a toy line that was originally created as a competitor/compliment to MOTU. It was called Sun Man/The Rulers Of The Sun. ROTS was created to offer American minority children action figures that were the same race as them. They were sculpted in such a way as to be compatible with MOTU, while not actually being part of the line. What some people might call a knock off toy line. Fast forward a few decades and Mattel, who now had taken notice of the lack of diversity in the MOTU lore, made a deal with the original creator of ROTS to roll the brand into the Origins line. MOTU expanded the lore to include ROTS and fans were mostly okay with everything. Unfortunately this all happened around the covid years and ROTS suffered being mostly exclusive to Target stores. There was also the problem of some fans of classic MOTU not having any interest in purchasing characters they had zero emotional attachment to. The subline began warming pegs and shelves and faltered at the very end of its run. Every Sun Man character was produced, but the final 4 figures were difficult to obtain for strange reasons. Duplico was simply short stocked if it was stocked at all. The final 3 pack was released to stores, but Target cancelled many preorders of the set seemingly for no reason at all. Many Target locations has stacks of the set on clearance for months. My preorder was cancelled but I eventually got a set from Ebay for less than it would have cost in a store. It was a very strange situation.
Around this time the Origins line was beginning to have other problems. Some fans were annoyed that Mattel had stopped to do 2 sublines before releasing the entire roster of classic MOTU characters. In addition to that Mattel launched The Masterverse that muddied the waters for the brand as a whole. The first few waves were dedicated to Netflix’s Masters Of The Universe: Revelations. Netflix also released He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe, a reimagining of the franchise for children at this time. (Although one might well argue that all of He-Man is for children and everyone worried about the concept in general needs to grow up.) How much HMATMOTU competed with MOTU origins and Masterverse is unclear, but likely not very much since it didn’t last very long.
MOTU Revelations was very divisive for a variety of reasons including, but not limited to, bad press caused by producer Kevin Smith’s inability to shut his formerly fat mouth. Some MOTU fans were already extremely annoyed with Netflix’s reimagining of She-Ra that almost completely divorced itself from all other MOTU lore, was a very gay, arguably autistic, and romped through an almost comically diverse universe. Youtube pundits had a field day culture warring it for its entire run. (Side bar: I actually really liked LGBT-Ra. Putting aside everything else it’s a very melodramatic story about a very toxic relationship that eventually manages to heal itself through the power of character growth. I very much wish it had a toy line that was in scale with ANY of the existing MOTU imprints. I am a sucker for romance and the end of the series makes me weep every time I watch it. The series had, like, 5 dolls that don’t go with anything I own, and are extremely rare.)
All that said, the Revelations figures were generally cool and managed to hold out for 3 waves, which was long enough for Mattel to transition the line into New Eternia. New Eternia essentially took the place of the MOTU Classics line made by Super 7, I think. It’s been a little off kilter from time to time but it’s mostly chugging along just fine, even though it’s getting rare to see a figure from it in an actual store. Regardless all these lines wore the public a bit thin in the economically straining times post covid. In spite of this Origins hung on.
A year or so ago Mattel added Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to MOTU in a new crossover line. The first waves leaned into the idea that the two universes were combining and mixing the characters together. Some of them were also mutated ala TMNT lore. That line is doing quite well and has been much easier to obtain. As is the habit of TMNT toy lines there have been multiple versions of the turtles. He-Man has also had 2 figures. His first was a mutant He-Man, which was marketed as an out of control version of himself tainted by mutagen ooze. The Second figure was basically a normal Origins style He-Man with TMNT apocalyptic wasteland accessories, which is, frankly, the best version of He-Man in any version of Origins. The turtles started with figures that leaned into the MOTU style heavily, then a second version that was more of a middle ground between traditional turtle figures and the Snake Men subline from MOTU. The figures in general are of higher quality than any of the other Turtle toy lines available right now, of which there are many. They look cool, are sturdy, and can be posed more easily than many turtle figures ever released. They fit in very well with all of the other Origins figures, vehicles, and playsets.
TMNT fans are dedicated. I’m reasonably certain that involving TMNT has kept Origins going much longer than it might otherwise have. Most new MOTU Origins figures are being released via Mattel Creations rather than in stores. There was a disastrous release of a flocked Mossman figure that seemed to have nearly killed ordering from Target. Although both Walmart and Target have released exclusive figures and figure sets since then.
Target sold 2 crossover two packs of MOTU and Netflix’s Stranger Things and a set of production sketch figures, in addition to having exclusivity on a few TMNT/MOTU figures. Walmart has had a few exclusive MOTU/TMNT figures as well, in addition to the continuing exclusive WWE Origins based figures. (Which are annoyingly hard to find)
Now, you may be asking why I bring any of this up at all. Well, mostly to fill a blog post, but also to talk about the newest crossover set that is coming soon. MOTU is partnering with Thundercats. I’m not the world’s biggest Thundercats fan, but I am still a fan. These new figures appear to be basically modern versions of the original toys that are sold with accessories that you can remove if you don’t care about the MOTU aspect of the line. In my opinion this is ideal because it offers a relatively inexpensive way to obtain a set of Thundercats figures that are already in scale with a massive set of preexisting figures. The show has a fairly small cast of regular heroes and villains, so it shouldn’t get too out of hand. Six main heroes, seven if you count Jaga. Possibly ten if you count later additions. Then about that many bad guys depending on who you count as main antagonists. Not too overwhelming on the face of it at least.
I’m hopeful that the economy will pick up and people will be a little more inclined to support the comic when they aren’t worried about feeding their families. If not, well, I guess I’ll just have to do without. In the grand scheme of things nothing I do to fill my empty days is really essential to my survival. It just makes me briefly happy to arrange my treasures when I add a new one to my pile.
I’m also still dreaming of making little reports about various things I like to post on social media, or whatever. My cheap editing software is a little inscrutable but I’m getting used to it slowly. I don’t know if anyone will be interested, but I know I am.
Anyway, that’s abut it for now. I got a little bit ahead on pages so I can do a bit more sorting of my stuff, so that’s what I’m going to do until I get sleepy. I hope you enjoy the page. Support links are up top, like always. Please come see me again on Friday. Until then, pour one out for John Erwin. He was the voice of the original He-Man and he passed away the other day.