And the hits just keep on coming! Back with an eleventh entry into my line of Masters of the Universe Hybrid figures! On a bad guy kick at the moment. We've seen a lord of evil, we've seen a mistress of magic, and we've seen a king of beasts . . . now onto the terror of the deep! The second half of Skeletor's dynamic duo of disaster, Mer-Man!

MOTU Hybrid is my attempt to unify the best of all three MOTU eras. The ideas (i.e. color schemes and concepts) of the original cartoon, the sculpts of the 2002 toys, and the articulation of modern figures, at a far more reasonable cost. Mer-Man posed no special challenges to this process, although I did make a few alternate design choices based on the design of the existing figure. For starters, Mer-Man's spear-thrust action feature eliminated one of his ball shoulders, but added an elbow. Instead of changing the limb, I left it as is to maintain the feature, and because it didn't restrict articulation too severely. Further, his narrow legs and bulky boots made splicing in thigh and shin rotation problematic, so I instead added Hasbro double joints (hinge and rotation on one joint) at both the top and bottom of his boots, giving him rotation just above the knee and just above the ankles. The only other joints I had to add were in his right arm, a bicep rotator and an elbow.

Mer-Man was painted in his cartoon colors, yellow armor with blue and orange accents as needed. I used a gloss paint for his skin, rather than flat, to give him that wet, slick, fish-scale texture. I painted his claws and the little teeth on his armor and weapons in bone off-white, 'cuz it made sense more than leaving them in yellow or their original cast bronze color. After all, that trident is clearly made of large bones and shark teeth!

Huh . . . this one wasn't NEARLY so long as the others. I'm becoming . . . concise! Oh the horror!

By the power of Grayskull!