Mattel Masters Of The Universe Masterverse New Eternia Merman Figure
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00:00If you go looking for this creature, you might want to start with the sea.
00:03Here's a look at the Mattel Master Universe Masterverse, the New Eternia Merman.
00:23Like New Eternia, shattered into thousands of islands,
00:26Merman terrorizes everyone foolish enough to travel the oceans in search of Castle Grayskull.
00:31I wouldn't even bother threatening this guy that if he fails, he'll sleep with the fishes.
00:35Merman does it anyways.
00:37Just before, of course, we get a closer look at the brand new Masterverse, New Eternia,
00:40and they wear pajamas too.
00:42The New Eternia Merman.
00:43First, the tape measure is going to tell us that the figure stands at 7 1⁄4 inches in height.
00:48That's, of course, factoring in the fins on the sides of his head.
00:51That translates to a figure that's 18 centimeters tall.
00:55Of course, if you are one of those collectors that prefer to collect your masters in a 7-inch scale,
00:59offerings are available from Mattel in the Revelation and Revolution based on the Netflix miniseries designs.
01:04There's also New Eternia, and I like New Eternia a little bit more because it looks like the classic design characters.
01:09One of the best examples going around right now is the Battle Armor Skeletor.
01:13Didn't know this guy existed? I did a review of him.
01:15Feel free to check that out after you check out the review of Merman.
01:18From a size standpoint, Merman isn't quite as tall as Battle Armor Skeletor,
01:23but he's about the same size as the New Eternia Triclops.
01:26He is, though, taller than the Trapjaw, which I guess you don't really want to have all the characters all be the same size.
01:32So he's about, like I said, he's just a little bit taller than Triclops.
01:35He's certainly a lot taller, though, than Trapjaw.
01:37But he's about the same size as the New Eternia Faker.
01:40Faker is one of those examples where, yes, I know he still has a smudge on the top of his forehead.
01:44I have to get my hands on another version of Faker.
01:46Faker, surprisingly enough, the head sculpt worked really well for him,
01:49but it ends up making a really fugly-looking Thunder Punch He-Man.
01:53Still got to get my hands on him.
01:54We did, though, speaking of Revelation and Revolutions, we did get a couple of variations of Merman there.
01:59We got one that was without the armor that you're not currently seeing right now.
02:02I never picked that one up because I knew eventually they would come around and release one that had armor.
02:06That had scars all over his body.
02:08The one that we got here was kind of the closest thing I had for a Merman of a 7-inch,
02:12and he was my stand-in for the longest time.
02:14As you did see at the beginning of this review, as is the case with most Masterverse figures,
02:18the side compartment next to the tray contains a tiny little white bag.
02:22Inside that bag is all the wonders of the universe.
02:24Well, maybe not so much.
02:26You only get, actually, inside that bag a pair of replacement hands for Merman.
02:30These are a pair of relaxed hands.
02:32What you didn't get, though, inside was his spear.
02:34And his spear was rattling in round inside,
02:36and I actually thought for a second that something was broken on Merman.
02:39Wasn't the case at all.
02:41The hands themselves do represent one thing I did want to talk about extensively for Merman,
02:45and that's the color scheme that they went with.
02:47Initially seeing what this guy looked like online,
02:50I was expecting, really, to get this guy in hand and hate the color scheme completely.
02:55Normally, Mermans would have had something similar to, like, a yellow,
02:58and then, of course, he'd either have a blue or a green body.
03:01The colors, though, you can already see for his hands aren't quite green.
03:04They aren't quite yellow.
03:05They're somewhat meeting in the middle,
03:06and they kind of have this metallic, almost pearl sheen to it.
03:10It's a trait that you'll see consistently when we look at the rest of the figure's body.
03:14It comes with a pair of relaxed hands.
03:15Like I said, you just don't want to replace either one of these hands.
03:17Just pop them off and replace them with these hands instead.
03:20Before you do that, though,
03:21you may want to just entertain the idea that the figure could technically hold either accessory
03:25or both his accessories with his hands.
03:27You may not even necessarily need those hands.
03:29Like I said, though, loose inside the tray was actually this.
03:32Well, it wasn't so much loose in the tray.
03:33It was loose inside the cardboard compartment space next to it.
03:37I thought for a second, like I said, something was going to be broken on the figure.
03:40The spear is very much something that looks a lot like the sword.
03:43They followed the motif of kind of giving him this...
03:45Well, it's supposed to be like a spine or a bone of like an underwater sea creature,
03:50but the joke has always been made that it looks like a corncob sword.
03:53They carried the trend here as well to the spear.
03:56I like the curve to the sword,
03:58because generally the sword would just have been straight like this.
04:01Making this look curved like this definitely gives it a much more dangerous, gnarly look to it.
04:05I don't know if I would say it looks as good for the spear.
04:08I think it's one of those cases where I think the spear would have worked better
04:10if the point was just straight instead of curved like this.
04:13It is technically soft plastic.
04:15If I really was hating this as much as I sound like I'm hating it right now,
04:19I suppose I probably could just heat this up, bend it straight, and let it cool flat.
04:23Maybe put a couple of books on either side just to make sure that this is going to cool flat.
04:27The thing that's weird, though, about these accessories is that...
04:30Not that he necessarily holds it. That's not a weird thing at all.
04:32But there is stored space on the back of the figure's body.
04:35If you spin the figure around, located on the back of Merman's armor,
04:38there's a hole right here that he does have a peg placement right in his guard.
04:42Right above the hilt, actually, of the sword that just plugs this in place.
04:46Unfortunately, it plugs it in such a way that the sword sits really low on his armor.
04:50Ideally, I would have really liked that the sword had been plugged in here.
04:54But then it would have meant that you'd have to put a really ugly peg right there.
04:57I wouldn't want to sacrifice the mold as good as it is for the blade just to put a simple peg right there.
05:02So this is the only peg placement that I could really even think of.
05:06And obviously, at least it gives him storage space.
05:09What's weird, though, is that they give him a storage space for the sword,
05:12but they don't give him one for the spear.
05:14You would think of the two things that the character would want to carry around in his hands.
05:18His sword being the first, the spear being the second.
05:21Yet, there's no peg at all here.
05:23Could they not have just done something similar to the sword?
05:26Had not put a peg right there so that...
05:28Yeah, if you wanted to, you could have put the spear just like that.
05:31That would have made the most sense. And yet, they just left one off altogether.
05:35Like I said, he does have it. So you can have him holding both things in his hands.
05:39So you can have the spear maybe in one hand. You can put the sword then in the other.
05:43If you really want to, I suppose, you can also have him holding the spear with both of his hands.
05:47The hand plastic as it is, is pretty hard.
05:50Luckily, just with a little bit of twisting, it's very easy to get the sword in his hand,
05:54and it's also very easy to get the spear in his hand.
05:56Again, I like the curve of the blade. I just don't like the curve of the spear tip.
06:00I know it's a simple fix. I'm sure I could fix it with hot water.
06:03Let's remove those accessories. We'll put them off to the side.
06:05By the way, if you want to see what the hand looks like, if you want to change them out,
06:08you just hold on to the peg, or just hold on to the forearm,
06:11and then twist the peg of the hand until eventually you just remove it.
06:14Swap it out with the hand that you want to use.
06:17Whether you're an underwater sea creature or not, the thumbs will always go in.
06:20So that's what he looks like with a relaxed hand.
06:22This is what he looks like with the gripping hand.
06:25Exact same color scheme.
06:27Speaking of color schemes, get a good look at this guy's face.
06:30I was really, again, on the fence of really how much I was going to like this figure
06:34when I saw the images online.
06:36I don't really feel, honestly, that the images did any justice to the character at all.
06:40I think he looked way too metallic online,
06:42and I think also the color transition of the greenish-yellow into this teal color,
06:47I think looked a little bit more jarring online, that the figure looked like he was made of metal.
06:51He doesn't, again, honestly look as bad in hand.
06:54The head sculpt is fantastic on Merman.
06:56I love the fins they've got on the sides.
06:58His mouth, though, for a second I thought was going to have a hinge.
07:01It doesn't. It always is going to permanently stay open like that,
07:04which isn't really a bad thing at all.
07:06If they were to really put a hinge, it would mean they would have had to put this ugly peg
07:10on the side of his jaw in order for that to be accommodating.
07:13I'm just glad that they sculpted the mouth like this.
07:16I don't think it necessarily needed to have a hinge.
07:18Initially, I was kind of on the fence with the idea that they gave him fish eyes like this.
07:22So what it looks to be the case is that they probably put the pupils way back here,
07:26and then they put a lens of clear plastic over top of it.
07:29The fish eye look, initially I was thinking, I don't know, I'm not going to like this.
07:33Because all the characters up to this point have looked like action figures.
07:36When you start adding realism like this to Merman,
07:38I thought the figure would then stand out a little bit more, like a fish out of water.
07:42I'm here all day.
07:44But honestly, though, now in hand, I actually don't think the fish eyes look bad at all.
07:48Very much of a familiar looking Merman face.
07:51In fact, we can bring in the Merman again we got from the Revelation line.
07:54I mean, to look at the two, it's definitely a lot more,
07:56it makes this guy even more stand out like a cartoon representation of the character.
08:00You can see like his armor is handled well,
08:02that it looks more like the original classic design of Merman's armor,
08:05with all these large spikes jetting out the sides and sticking up the sides of his collar.
08:10The green color that again they've used isn't quite going to match the coloring of his face.
08:14I don't think it necessarily needs to either.
08:16The greenish kind of yellow color scheme is on the hands.
08:20It's also again on his armor and it's wrapping all around the back of his collar as well.
08:24The green actually works.
08:26Again, I don't know what color you would call this, like a greenish yellow.
08:28Works really quite well and it looks a lot better in hand than it did online.
08:32The only thing I would say is one thing that doesn't quite match in colors
08:35is when you're looking at the head sculpt and you're looking at the rest of his body.
08:38Clearly seems to be the case that there's a lot more blue in his body than there is to his face.
08:42There's a little bit here that's a little bit more resembling the face color,
08:46but there's a little bit of a divide where you can definitely see,
08:48like the head sculpt is painted differently from the rest of his body.
08:51Speaking of the rest of his body,
08:53here's one thing that's rather interesting about Merman.
08:55Bringing in the original one here,
08:57there are things that they have shared between two,
08:59but it's not that they just moved one mold from one release of Merman to the other.
09:04There's actually some differences between them.
09:06If I was to lift up Merman's armor, for example,
09:09and I lift up this one, this is soft plastic by the way,
09:12his abdomen area is exactly the same, exact same sculpting.
09:16However, if you're looking at the top of his torso and the way they've sculpted his pecs,
09:20I think his arm out of his way,
09:22you can see it rounds around here and there's a little kind of cut on the side.
09:25If you look at the new one we get here from Merman,
09:28he's actually got this little ledge on the side of his torso here.
09:32So what it looks to be the case is even though they are using this part,
09:36they're not using this part from the original Merman.
09:38They've sculpted a brand new piece,
09:40which is really strange considering that most of his armor is going to cover over it anyways,
09:44but it's probably also so that they could sculpt something a little bit more interesting on the back of his body as well.
09:48You can see the original Merman wouldn't have had that.
09:50The new Merman kind of has these little rigid scales.
09:52If you want to take off the armor, I don't know why you would want to,
09:55but you could detach them here.
09:56There's just pegs on either side.
09:57You just remove that, remove that.
09:59I'm not going to remove it just because I know generally it tends to stretch the plastic
10:03and I can never get the armor back on the way it should be.
10:06So while his abdomen is the same, his torso is brand new.
10:09Obviously his head sculpt is brand new too.
10:11It looks like they've also used the same shoulders.
10:13They haven't though used the same bicep.
10:15This Merman's been working out.
10:17Look at the size of the guns on the new Merman versus the original one.
10:20Forms are also very different from one to the other as well.
10:22The legs from a thigh standpoint at least seem to be sculpted the same
10:27and the lower legs are also the same as well.
10:29Now it's very easy obviously to pull this off because they're just sculpting brand new boots.
10:33It's essentially like this piece here is just over top.
10:35Well, it's plugged into the top part of his calf.
10:38By the way though, speaking of his boots,
10:40I really like the way they've handled these, giving them kind of like scales there on the front.
10:44All in all, it's a nice looking Merman.
10:46A lot nicer honestly now that I have the time and I've been able to see this guy in hand.
10:51If I saw this guy again, photos only online,
10:53I wasn't liking the way they've handled the coloring.
10:56I thought he looked a little bit more metallic.
10:58He definitely looks a lot better and he shows a lot better when you get this guy out of packaging.
11:02Now for the figure's articulation, going back to Merman's stellar head sculpt.
11:06Oh, that's awesome.
11:08Head's going to rotate all the way around. It's on a ball joint.
11:10Even though he has this high collar on the back, there's nothing getting in the way of his head rotating.
11:14The head can look up, the head can look down, and you can also move it back and forth.
11:18His arms, because he's got the scales there on the tops for his shoulders,
11:22there's enough space right here that he can easily move his arms out at 90 degrees.
11:26Nothing getting in the way of those arms.
11:28Okay, maybe there's a little bit of things getting in the way when you try to rotate his arm all the way around.
11:32That's the only time you're going to find this rubbing up against the shoulder pads.
11:36Here's a bicep swivel. Merman does have a double hinge on his elbow.
11:39And again, look at the sculpting on the fins here.
11:41Smaller on the top, he's got these larger ones on the bottom.
11:43The transition of the color definitely looks a lot better in hand than it did online.
11:47It's a little on the more metallic, it's a little bit more pearl kind of coloring scheme,
11:51but actually looks surprisingly a lot nicer now that I have this guy.
11:55Like I said though, he does have a double hinge on his elbow.
11:58Hands rotate all the way around and hinge back and forth.
12:01Now the upper torso is going to be on a ball joint.
12:03The lower torso or the abdomen will only be on a straight swivel.
12:06The loincloth is a softer plastic.
12:08Get a good look at the loincloth for those that like loincloths.
12:11And I love also the way they've sculpted the shell work here on this belt.
12:15Boy, that looks fantastic.
12:16Legs though split out, you can take the legs and move them forward.
12:19Yeah, you can move them back. Sure.
12:21There's a swivel about three quarters of the way up the thigh that allows the leg to rotate all the way around.
12:25Merman now still has a double hinge on the knee.
12:27The original Merman also had that as well.
12:29Swivel on his leg.
12:30He's got an ankle pivot back and forth, an ankle rocker back and forth.
12:33And like with the original Merman who happens to share the same monster feet,
12:36he does have peggles on the bottoms of his feet.
12:39Merman. Yes, Merman was one I was really excited for.
12:42I've always been big into this character.
12:44And I don't know if you guys can even see this.
12:46And I'm hoping this video has done this justice.
12:48Even with the way the light shines on this,
12:50he has again like that little bit of a kind of pearl mirror finish to it.
12:54It works honestly a lot better than it did when I first saw this online.
12:58Again, I say the same thing again when it comes to the look of the character.
13:02It's one of those things where you really have to see either in a video or you have to see in hand.
13:07Sometimes, honestly, things can be distorted when you see the images online of these characters.
13:11That Merman, I thought honestly I was really going to hate it.
13:14Not from a design standpoint, but I was really going to hate what Mattel decided to do with the paint scheme.
13:19Though now seeing it in hand, the figure does look a lot better than I was expecting.
13:23The transitions of this yellowish green then into the teal color of his arms worked really well.
13:27The fish eyes, which something was also something I was thinking I was going to hate,
13:31I end up liking a lot more on the character.
13:33But again, the longest time, this Merman was my stand-in for the 7-inch scale.
13:37I think it's fine time, a prime time, to have this guy retired in favor of what I feel to be now a superior-looking Merman.
13:43He's not 100% perfect.
13:45I mean, while I do like again his sword, I think it looks a lot more dangerous now that he's got one that's got a curved blade like this.
13:51I don't know still why they chose to not make the spear tip straight.
13:55I can fix that.
13:56What I can't fix though is the fact that there was a missing absent peg on the back of this,
14:00so this could have at least plugged onto the back of his body.
14:02Why would they have done it with his sword and not done it with his spear?
14:05It makes no sense to me.
14:06Other than that though, a perfect-looking Merman to add to the rest of my new Eternia line.
14:11New Eternia Merman definitely is one of those figures that you need to see in hand and relying solely of images of him online.
14:17Because whatever figure photos you see of him online, it seems to change the coloring of his skin.
14:21Those first figure photos we got from Mattel gave, I feel, a false idea that Merman was going to have more of a metallic finish to the plastic.
14:28While there is a bit of a pearl sheen, and it does add to the idea that this guy's amphibian after all,
14:33I don't think he's as metallic as Mattel would first suggest.
14:36I've also seen other online images from sites that sell Masters figures,
14:40and the images that they use give the idea that Merman has green skin, and that's not right either.
14:46Speaking of green though, the one thing I do really like is the way they've colored his hands, the sword, and his armor.
14:51Not quite green, not quite yellow, meeting in the middle.
14:54The thing I also really like is that while he doesn't have gloves on the original vintage toy,
14:58the Lords of Power release of Merman and the Cartoon Collection both have the character wearing gloves.
15:03So while he doesn't have gloves with this release, by airbrushing the arms the way that they did,
15:07kind of gives a suggestion that he's wearing gloves when he really isn't.
15:10The figure does also have very vintage-looking armor, very vintage-looking cob sword.
15:15The cob sword's a little meaner this time around, and this time there's actually a peg on the side of the guard,
15:19so he can attach onto the back of the figure's body.
15:21I wish some similar love was also given as well to the spear.
15:24I don't like that first the spear has a curved point. I can easily fix that.
15:28What I can't fix though is that there's no peg at all on the side handle.
15:31If anything was to be displayed on the back of his armor, it would definitely have been his spear, not his sword.
15:36If you're going to do it for the sword, you need to do it with the spear as well, and they didn't.
15:40The one other thing I thought was going to be something I wasn't going to like as much to the character,
15:44and I'm kind of thinking it's one of my favorite things about the character,
15:46is that he actually does have real fish eyes.
15:48Well, not literally real fish eyes, but they took clear lenses and they put it over top of his pupils,
15:53so it does add a little bit more personality to the character.
15:56Head-to-toe, great-looking merman.
15:58What do you guys think of this guy? Let me know down below in the comments section.
16:00Have you guys been maybe on the fence about picking this one up,
16:03and maybe hopefully a review like this has helped a little bit.
16:05Also, as a little side thing, one thing I didn't even mention in this review, speaking of his armor,
16:10I also like that they added a little bit of oxidization patina to the finish of his armor.
16:14Just nice little touches that Mattel added to this character.
16:17Yeah, really, if you guys get the chance, don't sleep on this, don't sleep with the fishes.
16:21Grab Merman now before this guy sells out.
16:23But let me know down below in the comments section what you guys think of this.
16:26Let me know also, if you guys did enjoy this video, by doing a solid, hitting it with a like.
16:30You guys want to stick around for more, so I hope so.
16:32Hit the subscribe, turn on that bell, come back please.
16:36As always guys, thanks for watching. See you guys next time.
16:40Outro