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MONDO 1/12 SCALE - PRE-ORDERS SEPTEMBER 11
Mondo brings back the 200X armour variants, minus the gimmicks that sold them
Mondo has announced Ice Armor He-Man and Fire Armor Skeletor as a single 1/12 scale set at $225, with pre-orders opening Friday, September 11 at 11:00 am CT. The 2003 originals were built around a launcher, a spring and a button. Every accessory survives; not one of the mechanisms does.
Armour variants have a reputation and most of them have earned it: a repaint, a new chest plate, a spring buried somewhere in the back, and a figure you already own goes onto the peg again at full price. Ice Armor He-Man and Fire Armor Skeletor were built on that logic in 2003, but they are still two of the best-looking things the 200X line ever sealed into a blister.
Mondo announced both today as a single 1/12 scale set, priced at $225, with pre-orders opening on Friday, September 11 at 11:00 am CT. It is billed as a limited edition, though no edition size has been published, and the announcement landed in the run-up to MOTUFest, Power-Con’s Masters of the Universe show, which runs September 12 and 13 in the Greater Cincinnati area [1].
Start with the contents.
He-Man takes a neutral and an angry portrait, four pairs of hands, two Ice Fists, an Ice Power Sword, an Ice Shield, an Ice Battle Axe, an Ice Staff, a faux fur cape and a stand. Skeletor takes a yellow and a bone portrait, four pairs of hands, two Fire Hands, two Fire Blades, a Fire Power Sword, a Fire Havoc Staff and a stand. Both stand 7.5 inches, in PVC and ABS.
What the 2003 figures actually did
Fire Armor Skeletor reached shelves in late May 2003, packed three to a case of six, after Mattel showed him at Toy Fair that February under the working title Inferno Skeletor [2]. He carried a fire-themed Havoc Staff that fired its ram skull across a bedroom floor [3], two fire swords that clipped to his back so they stood up off his shoulders like flames, and a button between the shoulder blades that swung one arm in a chopping arc. Three separate features on what was, on paper, a repaint! He-Man.org’s own write-up of the figure calls him a nice counterpart to Ice Armor He-Man. Plenty of us bought them that way, because neither one does much standing on a shelf alone.
Mondo has kept the arsenal and thrown away the reason it existed.
The Fire Havoc Staff and the two Fire Blades made it across. The launcher, the button and the spring did not. What stands in their place is four pairs of hands, two portraits, and joints good enough that the arm goes where you put it rather than where a mechanism throws it. Mondo made the same trade on its own 200X He-Man and Skeletor, and on most of the collector shelf besides.
The heads, and the thing under the armour
Four portraits across the set, two apiece. He-Man gets neutral and angry. Skeletor gets a yellow skull and a bone skull, and both of them had to be in the box because we have been arguing about 200X Skeletor’s face since the line launched; the yellow is the cartoon, the bone is the toy, and nobody has ever settled it.
One of Mondo’s own photographs shows something the contents list does not mention. It shows the He-Man body with the chest plate, the bracers, the shoulder armour and the cape all taken off, standing in the ice-line belt and the fur boots and nothing else. Mondo’s contents list says nothing about removable armour, so nothing here is confirmed, but it is still hard to look at that picture and conclude the plate is glued on.
The box is a diorama
The packaging opens into a two-panel painted backdrop, an ice field on the left and a lava flow on the right, with the figures standing at the join. The illustration carries Ice Armor He-Man through the snow on one side and Fire Armor Skeletor out of the flames on the other, which means the display comes in the box, if you keep the packaging.
The art is Emiliano Santalucia’s. Santalucia was drawing Masters of the Universe comics for Image in 2002, off the back of the same relaunch that put these two figures on shelves; he has the concept design credit on this set as well as the packaging art. Sculpting is Tommy Hodges and May Thamtarana, paint is Mark Bristow, art direction is Hector Arce.
The question everyone asked first
The first comments under Mondo’s own announcement were not about the paint or the price. Three different people, inside the first hour, asked whether the two figures can be bought separately, and Mondo has not answered.
Both sides of that are fair. A collector who already owns Mondo’s 200X He-Man and 200X Skeletor is being asked to take two more of the same characters to get either one. Set against it: these two were conceived as a pair in 2003, the packaging art only works as a pair, and splitting them would leave whoever bought the odd one out staring at half a diorama. Mondo has sold both ways before, but until it says something, this is a two-figure purchase.
And Disco Skeletor
The other half of the announcement is a 1/12 scale Disco Skeletor, with four interchangeable portraits, a Havoc Staff and a Double Blade Sword. Nobody had this one on the list! MOTUFest attendees get the chance to buy him in person at the show; online orders open at MondoShop.com on Tuesday, September 15 at 11:00 am CT. Mondo has already made a 1/6 scale MOTUbi Disco Skeletor, so the character is not new to the shelf, but this is the first at 1/12.
Where to buy
The set is not purchasable yet, since Mondo’s listing carries only a Notify Me button and the words “this item has not been released for sale yet”, but the window opens on Friday, September 11 at 11:00 am CT at $225. Use the countdown and reminder above and we will email you before the window opens. The 2003 originals turn up on eBay regularly, and Mondo’s earlier 1/12 scale 200X figures are catalogued here with current buy paths [4].
The launcher, the button and the spring are gone, and they are still two of the best-looking figures the 200X line ever produced.
Notes
- MOTUFest is Power-Con’s Masters of the Universe event, September 12 and 13, in the Greater Cincinnati area. Disco Skeletor debuts there in person before he goes online.
- Inferno Skeletor was the name on the display at Toy Fair 2003. It did not survive to the card.
- The ram skull on the 2003 Havoc Staff was designed to be cast in translucent orange; the production figure shipped it in solid plastic.
- Mondo’s 1/12 scale 200X line so far runs to He-Man, Skeletor, Man-At-Arms and Clawful, most of them in a regular and a Timed Edition. This set is the first pair in it, and the first time the line has gone to the armour variants.