I love accessories. In my Toy Room I have more than three chests of drawers full of well-organised, catalogued, ziplock-bagged accessories from my decades of collecting. There’s something appealing about owning a miniature armory of tiny weapons, or scaled-down shopping trolleys and cupboards that wrestlers can hurl at the Simpsons, or little fake body parts that can be strewn around a gruesome horror display. (more…)
Here is a quick update from BBTS about another exciting new batch of preorders and more cool new arrivals. (more…)
Inspired by He-Man.org’s Roast Gooble Dinner podcast, welcome to PGPoA’s latest MOTUC Bio Discussion!
Snout Spoutâ„¢ Bio
Real Name: JaxtonA peasant from Etheria, Jaxton was one of three athletes abducted by Hordak and cast into his experimentation matrix. There, like the others, Jaxton was grafted with cybernetic parts giving him both amazing powers and a bizarre form. After crossing through a Laser Gate to Eternia with The Evil Hordeâ„¢, Snout Spoutâ„¢ escaped and joined with the renegade Masters of the Universe. Self-conscious about his appearance and called “Snout Spoutâ„¢” for his abilities to blast water from his cybernetic trunk, Jaxton often feels that everyone is always laughing at him. But when the Snake Menâ„¢ slither out and enemies attack, Snout Spoutâ„¢ blasts them back with a super jetspray!
Because he joined the MOTU toyline after the Filmation cartoon had ended, Snout Spout was incorporated into the She-Ra cartoon, which is presumably why he has an Etherian origin here. But even the cartoon version was confusing; of the three episodes he appeared in, sometimes he was depicted as an Etheria resident (and was even referred to by his original concept name of “Hose Nose”) while other times he was Prince Adam’s friend from Eternia.
Finally, issue #26 of the United Kingdom MOTU comic featured the story “The Unknown Warrior” in which Snout Spout was an Etherian peasant who was experimented on by Hordak and transformed into an elephant-headed freak who later escaped to Eternia and joined the Heroic Warriors.
This bio synthesizes elements from all these origins, but adds the interesting wrinkle that Snout Spout evidently served as a Horde member for at least a little while. It raises the question as to whether “Jaxton,” like so many other Horde members, wasn’t simply brainwashed. Maybe they hadn’t worked out the kinks yet? Did Jaxton do any evil deeds as a Horde member? Did he kill a fat barkeep?
I love the lack of resolution to his bio, too: “Jaxton often feels that everyone is always laughing at him.” Oh, and he fights the Snake Men. So we’re left to think either people are laughing at him or he’ll continue to suffer crippling paranoia that they are.
As for that last bit, why the Snake Men, you ask, rather than Hordak or Skeletor, either of whom would make more sense? Because the last sentence has to come from the card back, people!
What many childhood fans of Masters of the Universe remember about Kobra Khan is that when his vintage figure was produced in 1984, he was just another one of Skeletor’s Evil Warriors (specifically the “Evil Master of Snakes”). Legend has it that when the Snake Men were introduced two years later, Kobra Khan was re-released in Snake Men packaging with a new tag of “Evil Snake Men Henchmen”; however, I have not been able to track down a photo of Khan in Snake Men packaging, so I’m a bit skeptical it exists.
The various media depictions of Khan often address the Evil Warrior/Snake Men question. The Snake Men hadn’t been introduced by the time the 1980s cartoon ended, so Khan was merely one of Skeletor’s lackeys, albeit a fairly intelligent one; but Khan worked as a spy for Skeletor among the Snake Men in the vintage minicomics (“King of the Snake Men”). In the Millennium cartoon, he was a descendant of the Snake Men who joined up with Skeletor so he could delve into Snake Mountain and free his ancestors from the Void (“Snake Pit”). It’s notable that in both cartoon depictions, Khan had a cobra hood not present on his toy version. However, the Four Horsemen added it to his Millennium figure. (more…)
Toy Aisle Trolls is a feature highlighting acts of vandalism to in-store toy items. If you find a ruined package, a stolen figure, a swapped-out figure, or any other such acts, take a photo (cell phone photos are fine if they’re not blurry) and email them to poe@poeghostal.com.
Submitted by: 3B
I found this one at Ross about month ago. Went back there yesterday and needless to say, it’s still there.
Karmic Curse: May you grow two more hands to scratch all your itches.
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Sometimes life just isn’t fair.
When I was fifteen years old, I discovered the wonders of the Evil Dead trilogy. I can’t remember how it all started, though I know I saw Army of Darkness first. I loved it, but when I saw Evil Dead II (Amazon) I knew I’d found what was destined to be one of my all-time favorite films. I’ve seen it dozens of times, including twice in a movie theater (the Brattle in Cambridge, MA). But back when I first discovered the movies – this was around 1994 or so – they weren’t easily available on VHS aside from Army of Darkess. But for Christmas that year, my parents tracked down some used videostore copies of Evil Dead and Evil Dead II from Canada. (Of course, just a few scant years later the Evil Dead boom began and suddenly it was everywhere, available on every format.) (more…)