May 9, 2017

It Came From the Toy Chest: Single Carded Super Special Army Builder

Habemus Horde Troopers... 6 of them... Single Carded... Now I have a Horde Army. (Not trying to rub it in people's faces. Hopefully Super7 will be able to make an Ultimate Horde Trooper for 2018-2019)
So, Mattel's infinite lack of care allowed the Single Carded Horde Trooper... to fall down the cracks and eventually, Mattel had to dump them in their main shop, which, unfortunately, is not International Friendly.
If I were lazy I would do this:

and add But Single Carded and the Damages are now Stickers...

Do I REALLY NEED to explain Horde Troopers? No? Good, cause it would be tiring to say that these are the Storm Troopers of MOTU and the Horde is the Empire with Horde Prime being Palpatine and Hordak being Darth Vader...

So, Horde Troopers:

Articulation:
It's the same figure as the 2 pack Horde Troopers or General Sunder. There's a few kinks in certain points, namely the elbows that don't have a perfect range of articulation, but the "hasbro elbow" allows for a bit more articulation in the arm that normal MOTUC figures lack. As last time, the trooper gets a 5.0 here.

Paint and Sculpt:
This is a Single Card reissue of the Horde Trooper... While now a few more characters are reusing parts that originated here, the 100% new tooling for them still stands. Paint, on the other hand... I've opened 2 so far and the paint job is super sloppy. One of my troopers has some blue paint splotches on his torso and shoulder... There's some darker grey drybrushing/sprayed on that makes the troopers look dirty... looks off somehow.
4.5 Here the 2 Pack Trooper fairs a bit better EVEN THOUGH they have pre-made Battle Damage.

Accessories:
-Vintage Staff
-Filmation Stun Rod
-MOTUC Crossbow
-Horde insignia Shield
-Sticker Sheet (Same as the Rowbutt Knights)
5.0 The Sticker sheet kinda puts the Single Carded Troopers above their 2 pack version.

Overall:
The Horde Trooper (single Carded) gets a 4.83 as its final score... Yes, it's the same as the Two-Pack, what did you expect? It's the Horde Troopers...

Now I must conclude this rant by pointing Out once again, Mattel's idiocy.
Everyone, INCLUDING Neitlich, KNEW that Horde Troopers were = Printing Money... Problem was that Neitlich had too many Palace Guards made (probably because they had his face.) Then instead of making an accessory pack to MOVE the other PG units... (a Head/ armor plates and Weapons pack with 4 new heads would have helped people buying more PG packs to display these) they did NOTHING... Troopers, unlike Snakemen, or Palace Guards, you can get ridiculous numbers, because they are totally faceless troops. (snakemen being in 2 colors with 2 heads each made it harder to have multiples. Palace Guards, if you add more human heads, you can pad it out without having a Toyguru Clone Army)
I got 10 troopers from the first two pack and from single carded ones... Had they been available more often, I may have been with 20 or something.

Mattel missed a golden opportunity, whether it's the phantom dinosaurs in suits that Neitlich had to fight to get things done, Neitlich's own ego for pushing crap he wanted (Nepthu) over things that were for the betterment of the brand, or simply they didn't fully understand the Importance of Horde Troopers to the fandom.
Which tattoo should I add to look badass?
It's rather sad that the Glorious Second Printing of Horde Troopers, this time Single Carded, was unceremoniously dumped on the Mattel shop with the remainders of Mattycollector's unsold stuff.

Had these been released sooner, maybe Super7 wouldn't have been doing MOTUC this year, but instead Mattel themselves would've been at the helm.

Mattel's least amount of effort dogma HURTS Mattel... Blunders like this shouldn't happen, especially since it was Mattel... Biggest Toymaker and all that crap. Oh no... Mattel has become the Vince McMahon of toys...



But on a more bit of sad news, the Father of ALL ACTION FIGURES, Stanley Weston, Creator of the Original GI Joe has passed away... My condolences.



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