My “staging area” (AKA the unruly pile of unopened toys that my wife wants to burn) was getting too unruly for even me being able to stand it, so I did some opening of a few Masters of the Universe Classics figures that were stranded due to lack of shelf space allocated to MOTUC. The pile included Kobra Khan, Rattlor, and the Snake Men 2-pack, and I was a little surprised to find that I could have an entire cube in my display devoted to the faction – it didn’t seem too long ago that I only had King Hiss, and he had been stranded with Hordak and the Evil Horde.
When I got Snake Man-At-Arms I was struck by the turn of events in his bio – one of He-Man’s closest friends suffers a heel turn, and it’s permanent?! It gave me a new appreciation for the mythos that’s getting extended through Classics. When I was a kid, it was comforting for the cartoon to return to status quo at the end of every half hour. Now that I’m a big kid, I’ll admit I still long for that innocence, but getting a glimpse of a story where the characters evolve, grow, or go bad has added to the enjoyment of collecting these toys.
So I took these guys outside and wanted to capture the moment that Duncan gets turned. I used my cheap DIY reflector to get light where I needed it. And for the shot above, I just used the “focal zoom” filter in Picasa. The action is all in that Serpent’s Ring. Realized after taking the pics that I had swapped Duncan and Snake MAA’s bodies, and in these shots it’s the original Man-At-Arms. I also regret not starting off with some shots using Duncan’s head. Dur!
After snapping these pics, I decided to bag up some figures in one of my cubes to make room for the Snake Men faction. My wife found the empty cube and thought I had cleared the space for her. I thought I was scoring points by clearing out some of the staging area, but now I’m back in the dog house again! Damn you King Hiss!
As always, brilliant work! Not to bother re; Duncan’s head, I feel. The above scene makes more sense as we saw the original transformation in the now infamous ‘death of photog’ set. The above looks like a ghoulish ritual officially tying in the poor MAA at the end of that battle. I absolutely adore it. Thanks so much for your work and NEVER stop. These darn ‘boids’ will never understand us *shakes head*