Thundercats of the Universe Classics

Like my friend Scott, I'm way behind in my MOTUC posts, so this month I'll try to pick up the pace. I still don't have Bow, and he should be here any day now, but I have several characters to get to before that. I'll try to do one MOTU post a week to make up for lost time. I decided to start with him:



I think I was one of the few people that was really excited about getting a Chief Carnivus, I liked the 200X cartoon, and I love the 200X toy line so having him and Count Marzo just improves my chances of ever getting a King Dactys figure...


That's a freaky toy collector dream, I tell you...

But Carnivus is a great character on his own right. Many said that Mattel released Carnivus as a way to show collectors what they were missing when Bandai got the Thundercats license, I don't know if that's right (probably not), but those Classic 8" Lion-O and Tygra Bandai showed look awesome anyway.

Carnivus' sculpt is incredible, some reuse from Beastman and a lot of new tooling, and I really like the new parts: the head, paws, sword, shield, armor and cape. He looks like a lion king (ha!) and If I had a Chief Carnivus in the vintage line when I was a kid he could have totally been Lion-O's father. Tell me that doesn't have a huge amount of play value.



The sculpt in the shield is particularly impressive, proving once again just how talented the 4 Horsemen truly are.

I'm trying to follow Eternian history through the bios, but it's really complicated, I think, most of the time, Eternian warriors weren't sure who the fuck they were fighting. They'd charge into battle, kill a few enemies and then go "You'll never get away with this, Skeletor... Oh, we are fighting the Snake-Men today... My bad... OK... You'll never get away with this, King Hsss!".

Maybe Mattel could add a non character specific Eternian time line with each figure starting, I don't know, with the Faceless One or something. That way, if you collect all figures for the next year or so you can have a complete time line that will maybe (just barely maybe) help you understand that world.



Another plus of Chief Carnivus is that he adds non-human characters to the good guys. That, I've said it already, was something I always felt they were lacking. you have a lot of altered humans fighting with He-Man (and a giant bee), but the monsters were mostly in Skeletor's side. That's why he usually won when I was a kid. I like monsters. Maybe with guys like Carnivus and Dactys on the team those battles would have been a little less one-sided.

Until next time.