Two words that are much hated in the toy collecting community are “Store Exclusive.” Add a “Walmart” in front of that phrase and you get something akin to a worst nightmare. The world of “collectibles” has always relied on same degree of scarcity. The 90s saw a collector boom across various mediums which created a mindset in producers that scarcity was good. Scarcity is what the public wanted. Scarcity was fun! In reality, most collectors aren’t buying because they want to make an investment. Sure, some do, but most collect for the enjoyment of it. The idea of an exclusive is just a barrier of entry and it’s frustrating for those who just want to buy some toys.
With the rise of online sales and the decline of brick and mortar, stores are more desperate than ever to drive foot traffic. In the eyes of retailers, exclusives will bring in people that might not otherwise set foot in the store and the big toy producers like getting the big retailers to pay for exclusive merch. With Mattel and its Turtles of Grayskull subline of Masters of the Universe Origins, the company was able to strike a deal with both Target and Walmart. At Target, the deluxe figures that include a build-a-figure part have remained exclusive to that retailer. I have so far reviewed those two releases and I plan to review them all. I’ve been able to find them in-store with no issues, and failing that, online has worked fine. With Walmart, Mattel has released a different set of deluxe figures that seem to be a little more involved than what’s at Target, but doesn’t have a build-a-figure. And even calling them “more involved” might be a stretch so I don’t know where the extra money is going, but they’re $25 as well. Only with Walmart, tracking them down has been a problem, at least for me in the north east. Not only have I not seen a single store exclusive at various Walmart stores spread across Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine, I haven’t seen a single Masters of the Universe figure at all! It’s like they don’t even carry the brand any longer.
What’s a guy to do when he can’t find something at retail? Regrettably, I turned to a third party seller. It’s great that Walmart can’t sell its own product on its website to people that want it, so they let others use their website to sell their wares at inflated prices – awesome! In this case, I purchased today’s figure from someone charging $41. Whoever this person is presumably paid $25 for this thing and then had to cover shipping and whatever fees Walmart charges those who sell through their website to sell me this thing. What did they actually make on it? Ten bucks? Eight bucks? I guess from Walmart’s perspective it’s a win-win. They sold this person a toy, then got to take a piece of the resale as well – it’s like selling it twice! If you ever wondered why Walmart essentially condones the practice of scalping on their own website, well now you know.
Unfortunately, I felt like I had to have this figure of Krang so hopefully it’s worth the extra fifteen bucks or so. Krang has always been an absurd character design. As Vernon put it, it’s a guy with his brain in his stomach. If you’re a toy designer at Mattel and you just received word that the company acquired the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles license to mash-up with Masters of the Universe then Krang had to be at the top of the list of characters that would be the most fun to design. And for Krang, they settled on a mash-up with Megator, a big, green, ogre of sorts. He’s packaged in a window box with new artwork all over that looks great. And this Krang certainly takes up a lot of real estate in that box.
Krang, like Sla’ker, utilized the oversized Origins body to add some considerable size. To the top of his head, he’s around 6.875″ and to the top of the tuft of hair he’s 7.5″. That’s not where it ends though, because Krang needs to occupy the center of this body as God intended. Since this toyline is modular by nature, the way to accomplish this is simply to create a little Krang prison that fits in between the waist and abdomen. Once that is in place he balloons to about 7.75″ to the top of the head and 8.25″ to the top of the hair. He’s a big boy and he looks pretty good. The figure is primarily green with light red, almost pinkish, accents. The head is shaped like the classic, Playmates, android body only the antenna has been replaced by a topknot of hair and he has a helmet and protruding sharp teeth. The helmet is red with spikes on the side and a metallic plate on the front which covers the eyes and nose. The red slits of the eyes look like they’re set too high on the sculpt. The artwork on the box has them angled so it works better, but the figure didn’t carry that over.
For the body, Krang is wearing this breastplate with a skull on it held to the body by two, bronze, chains. These go over the shoulders and match the color of the cavity for Krang. Below that he has a black loincloth and belt, but the only part painted is some more bronze chains. Krang himself, the little brain with a face, is quite tiny. He’s almost cute. It’s a soft rubbery plastic with painted eyes and teeth and the portrait here is very close to the 1987 TV series interpretation of the character. He locks into place in the body and there’s a little grate that closes over him. The tentacles are designed to stick out and I think it’s quite entertaining to look at. If you’re particularly concerned with scale then it might annoy you that Krang is way smaller here than he’s been in the past. They could have made him bigger, but that would have required a larger compartment. One drawback to this design is that Krang’s body has very short arms since they’re designed to scale with the body without the middle insert. If it were any larger it would look really goofy.
Krang does come with a pair of accessories to add some value here. Both come in the form of weapon add-ons. Krang can remove his hands and swap them with either an axe or a ball and chain. The axe can function has a handheld weapon too and it’s cast in a grayish plastic with some decent sculpt work. The ball and chain is done in the same bronze plastic as the chains on the body of the figure with a gray, spiked, ball at the end. Like Michelangelo’s nunchaku, the chains are all plastic, but are actual links. It’s pretty damn long and looks cool, though I’m always a little remiss that accessories like this don’t have a fixed chain for posing, but this line gets away with it by being an homage line to actual toys that are meant to be played with. It’s an odd space where it’s a collector line done as-if it were a line made for children. The articulation is also exactly the same as Sla’ker, right down to the poor ankle rocker. The peg hole in the foot isn’t done at enough of an angle for the ankle rocker to be useful.
Is Krang worthy of your $25? If you can find him at that price, then definitely. Is it worth north of $40? No, probably not, but that’s what a potential hole in the collection will do to a collector. That’s not the figure’s fault though, it’s on Walmart. For the line, this is one of the best figures so far. Maybe even the best. I like the design quite a bit, it’s fun to behold, and it works as a combination of two famous properties. If you’re into this line and come upon this figure in your travels then I highly recommend you pick it up.
Check out more from Masters of The Universe – Turtles of Grayskull:
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Nothing can be simple in this day and age of retail toy sales which is why the new mash-up of Masters of the Universe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toyline features ostensibly 3 SKUs: standard, deluxe, and deluxe with build-a-figure parts. The standard releases are, as you may have expected, released abroad and you can…
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When it’s come to the Turtles of Grayskull line by Mattel, I have mostly stayed in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles side of the pool. I have all four turtle boys plus Sla’ker, who is more Slash than Faker if you ask me. The one exception has been Mouse-Jaw, but the classic Masters of the…
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