I think one of the first movies I was ever disappointed by was Masters of the Universe (1987). As an eighties kid, I was intimately familiar with the lore and universe of He-Man and Eternia. The show had technically ended two years earlier, but She-Ra was still airing and was typically paired with a syndicated episode of He-Man. The movie seemed like it would be a mature evolution of the show we had all been raised on. I, for one, was very excited. But the movie was vastly different from what I expected. It was chock full of new characters (most of which I found very annoying), it took place on Earth, and there was no transformation sequence. I was flummoxed. The bright spot for me was Evil-Lyn. Of all the characters, she seemed to stay the most true to her cartoon origins. She had a cinematic redesign and there were a lot of differences, but the essence of Evil-Lyn was still there. There have been a fair amount of action figures from the movie over the years, but Evil-Lyn was always a glaring omission.
This figure is part of Masterverse Wave 11, but she is an exclusive to certain retailers and not shown with the character lineup on the packaging. (Hasbro typically calls this a "Fan-Channel Exclusive", but I don't know if Mattel uses that terminology. She is readily available on sites like BBTS and EE, but not Target or Amazon.
The details on this figure are really great. The swirly pattern on her bodysuit is subtle but important. And the use of metallic paint, pearlescent plastic, and creative paint highlighting is impressive. For instance, her forehead ornament isn't a glued-on plastic gem. It's just a masterful use of blue highlights on purple paint.
Evil-Lyn comes with two sets of hands and the Cosmic Key in a glittery translucent blue.
What a cool synthesizer.
If only they could find some far-out Earthling boy with mad keyboard skills to play a sick melody from memory to open the portal home to Eternia. I don't know how... it's just always something he could do. Oh, eighties.
Funny thing, when I saw this movie in the 80's, I always assumed the actor playing Evil-Lyn was Kirstie Alley (because she looked like "that lady from Cheers"). There was no iMBd to research such things back then. The actor is Meg Foster (Xena, They Live, Star Trek DS9, and the upcoming Masters of the Universe Revolution as Motherboard).
This is one of the rare Mattel figures that looks 1000x better than its prototype. The figure on display at SDCC 2023 looked flat and boring. Her makeup wasn't right and her costume ornamentation was missing all of its cinematic sparkle.
Also, the prototype and solicit pics all showed the Cosmic Key in full color.
Perhaps they're saving that for Gwildor.
A big wish I have for the Masterverse line is a figure of the 1987 movie She-Ra.
There is a beautiful concept design (by William Stout) and several pages of script that never made the final production.
Time for a Comparison Pic!
Cheers!
I can't believe something good actually came out of that awful movie. I remember being very excited about it when it showed up at the blockbuster. Grabbing the movie and being all setup with popcorn and soda in front of the "big" 20 inch tv. I think about 20 minutes into the movie I was horribly confused that things didn't look right and the story wasn't right. At the very end it was a terrible disappointment and I have never revisited it. I'm glad something good came out of that turd.
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