Mattel MOTUC Filmation Evil-Lyn Review

Our march towards the end of the Mattel era for Masters of the Universe Classics is rapidly reaching its final stop in December. While Digital River continues send out our promised subscription product (albeit late most of the time), I’m willing to bet most of the offices in El Segundo have been long vacated or re-purposed. It’s pretty obvious that everybody in charge of design and quality assurance over at Mattel is long gone. Mattel has moved on and we’re now just getting the leftovers of a once great line that they didn’t see fit to put any more resources into.

Masters of the Universe Classics – Evil-Lyn
Release Date: 10/17/2016 (Club Grayskull Subscription)
Price: $20.00 ($25.00 non sub)

Leading up to this I wanted to love Evil-Lyn so badly. The Filmation or Club Grayskull subscription has been stellar up until this point, so her arrival was a little disappointing in comparison. I think the best way to describe her figure is sloppy. So let’s get into it …

There isn’t much dancing around the sloppiness of the paint. It’s pretty bad, and on top of that it is much more noticeable since it’s an animation-based figure. Figures replicating a cartoon need large plains of flat colors and clean line-work. The paint slop around the lines is especially noticeable. And it’s disappointing because this really hasn’t been a problem with any of the other ‘Club Grayskull‘ releases. Another strange decision is that they decided to paint the skin tones of her face on both of the heads, so it doesn’t end up matching the glossy plastic look of the rest of her body.

Even with all the sloppy paint, at least I did end up with a figure whose eyes were fairly straight forward.

Not everything is doom and gloom here, however. She has some good features that I hope Super7 will carry on into their Filmation figures. The most important one is the new ankles. Marvel Legends style ankles, no less! At some point many years ago, Mattel did away with the rocker ankles seen in early female releases. They were replaced by simple swivels that only moved forward and backward. Lion-O from the Thundercats line got the Legends ankles last month as well, so it looks like a running change. Now if they could go back and replace five to six years worth of old-style ankle releases that would be super!

While I think the ankles are a big step forward, I wish they had used the old style ball hips for her legs.

Evil-Lyn comes packed with two heads, her magic wand, and the Coridite Crystal. Your head options are either with her hat on or off. Sloppy paint issues aside, her magic wand is fine except for the fact that her right hand is too open to hold it snugly. On the other hand (literally, on her other hand), the Coridite Crystals have finger holes in the bottom so that her left hand holds it very well.

I didn’t even realize it until now, but there was only one heroic warrior in this entire ‘Club Grayskull‘ subscription! Poor He-Man is completely outnumbered with only Clawful left to be released in December. Unfortunately, Evil-Lyn really feels like an afterthought. Something Mattel slopped together at the end because they had to. It’s a shame too, because the sculpt, engineering, and accessories are all great. It’s the sloppy layer of paint over everything that really kills it. I really hope this isn’t going to be indicative of what we get for the remainder of the year since Filmation Clawful is one of my most wanted Masters of the Universe figures ever.

Evil-Lyn sold out pretty quickly over at Mattycollector, so keep an eye on Amazon to see if you can get a decent price on her.

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