Masters of the Universe Classics: Slush Head Review

When I thought about what New Adventures characters I would want in MOTUC, Slush Head was the first to come to mind. He was the dumb but lovable second in command of the Space Mutants, and probably one of the better looking designs from the series. He wore a water-filled helmet in order to breathe on land. This is the 3rd New Adventures character to come to MOTUC, the second of the Space Mutants, and I believe he is my favorite.

Build and Aesthetics
The vintage toy included some kind of liquid in his helmet, but MOTUC doesn’t do things like that. Instead, there’s a hole in the back so you can add your own water. A plug snugly fits the hole so nothing leaks. I was hesitant to put water in mine, as I feared my home’s hard water would leave calcium residue, but I went ahead and did it and I think he looks a lot better with the water. Surface tension makes it difficult to get water through the narrow hole (which is helpful for keeping the water in), so I had no luck using bottled water. A narrow stream from the tap worked fine though.

The head is really the only part of the figure I’m not quite satisfied with. It’s based on the vintage toy, with a pointed shape and an angry, kind of crazy looking facial expression. I’m more familiar with the cartoon, where he had a more human-shaped head and usually a dopey look on his face. I can’t really fault them for making him look like the toy though, and it’s still pretty cool looking.

To make the water feature work, the usual interchangeable head feature was left out. The head is permanently attached to his armor, and there’s not even a neck peg on the torso underneath. That’s kind of odd, because there’s enough room inside to fit his armor onto other figures that do have neck pegs. The armor itself looks just like the vintage design, with the usual increase in details. It has tubes, wires and a backpack with a water tank all painted silver, with rivets and some other details painted metallic blue. The vintage figure had metal armbands as part of the sculpt, but here they are separate pieces. They can unsnap at the bicep, but not at the wrist, so they’re not really removable.

Flying fish?

The rest of Slush Head’s body is all reused parts. He has the scaly torso + shoulders and spiky legs (from Whiplash / Buzz-Off /  Clawful), spiky forearms (Whiplash / Kobra Khan), Skeletor’s feet, Merman’s webbed hands and Icarius‘ boots and pelvis. He’s not quite accurate to the vintage toy, which had bumps all over his body, but it comes together really well and looks good.

Articulation
Slush Head has most of the usual articulation points for MOTUC. There’s double-jointed shoulders, triple-jointed hips, and joints for the ankles, boots, knees, wrists, biceps, abs and waist. What he lacks is any articulation for the head and neck. Turning his head on its own wouldn’t work because of the water, but there should’ve been a way to turn his helmet, head and all. Too bad. The armor doesn’t really get in the way of his arms, but the tentacles can stop them from moving back much. Just like Icarius, the pelvis stops his legs from going together as far as some other figures.

Accessories
Just like the vintage figure, Slush Head includes a gun that doubles as an axe. Unfortunately mine has trouble holding it as the axe. He also has two tentacles that plug into the bottom of his armor’s backpack. They’re hard plastic and not bendy, but you can still get a nice range of poses out of them, especially since you can swap them. One has a hinge to open and close, and the other can rotate.

New Adventures may be the forgotten and unloved chapter of MOTU history, but so far the characters seem to translate really well into the Classics style. I’m really pleased with how Slush Head turned out, though I still wish he could turn his head.

Slush Head was sold in May 2012, so you’ll have to check places like Amazon, BigBadToyStore or eBay to get it now. New figures go on sale on MattyCollector.com each month, usually on the 15th. The lineup for the June 15 sale seems to be:
Horde Prime
Snake Man-At-Arms (includes the second mini-comic)
Griffin (oversized beast)
Beast Man (reissue)
Evil-Lyn (reissue)
Tytus (reissue)

Now available year round:
He-Man
Battle Cat
Skeletor
Panthor
She-Ra
Swiftwind
Hordak
King Hsss