Vault Review: MOTU Classics
Horde Prime

Probably one of the most unexpected figures in the Masters of the Universe Classics line has to be Horde Prime.  Since he never had much of a tangible body in the Filmation series, it seemed unlikely.  But the 4H and Matty found a way.

If you haven’t gotten this figure yet, and you don’t want to be spoiled as to what the alternate head looks like, then you should probably stop reading now.

I have mixed feelings when it comes to Hordak and the Horde.  Hurricane Hordak was the only Hordak figure I had as a kid, and he was one of my favorite toys ever.  He was always the ultimate big bad in my MOTU playing, usually only defeated by the combined powers of He-Man and Skeletor.

It wasn’t till many years later that I saw him on the Princess of Power cartoon and was a bit shocked as to his unintimidating and even goofy behavior.  Instead of a threatening big bad, he was actually not much different than a middle manager for a galactic war machine.  And to make matters worse, he wasn’t even that good at his job.  I ignored POP for years after that first disappointing exposure.

But eventually I came back around, much older and with a more refined sense of storytelling.  The usually funny benefits of a middle manager Hordak were clearer to me, and one of my absolute favorites is that he had supervisors in the form of Inspector Darkney and Horde Prime.  (This line will never be complete for me if I don’t get an Inspector Darkney figure!)  Hordak was now a big fish in a very small pond, and he could be “fired” on a whim from his supervisors.  I liked this aspect, but unfortunately it doesn’t really mesh well with the badass Hordak of my childhood.

As for the Horde Prime figure, Matty did a great job on him.  But I’m still a bit disappointed when it comes to certain aspects.

Sculpting isn’t one of them though.  The Four Horsemen did a really great job of putting this figure together by using a nice mixture of a few old, but mostly new pieces.  One of my favorite areas is his cyborg-like hands.  Not only do they look creepy and menacing, but his right hand has four little spikes sticking out of the knuckles.  Similar to the Borg on Star Trek, I’m pretty sure this is how Horde Prime infects people with the technorganic virus.

As for the rest of the figure, he’s got a new striped cowl piece.  His new chest armor creates a gray backdrop for the symbol on his gigantic cape, which is a really great desing idea.  His arms are Roboto’s, but they fixed the left hand joint and it’s now compatible with the various plug-in weapons.  His loin cloth comes from the Faceless One, but it still has that great 200X Skeletor design to it.  So I’m hoping we’ll see a Skeletor wearing it someday.  Lastly, his shin armor is new and has bat wings sticking out of the sides.

Probably the most interesting area on this figure is his helmet and two heads.  My preferred head on the figure is the secret Hordak-like noggin.  Although Prime is supposed to be Hordak’s brother, he looks more like his Grandpa with those huge ears and beard-like face tendrils.  I also really love his Space Pope helmet, but for the life of me I can’t stop seeing a giant mecha-koi head when I look at it!  The circles on the side and his face opening really look like a fish’s face.  Continue to page 2…

28 thoughts on “Vault Review: MOTU Classics
Horde Prime

  1. Funny, you see a robofish in that helmet, and all I can see “Brute Chieftain” from the Halo series.

    I don’t buy this whole “Horde Prime” thing. If Horde Prime was in charge then why is he wearing Hordak’s face on his chest. It doesn’t fly. Looks like Hordak is the big boss man. I’m looking forward to this guy showing up just so I can do some part swapping and make a even bigger badder and more scary Hordak.

  2. i loved the figure immediately. i will absolutely agree that the red on the face is too piled on, he looks like hordie fae baker there, and it’s not cool. a red wash, preferably in two or three tones of red, would have looked really friggin cool and popped his sculpt detail a bit better… and anyone w/ those gundam paint pens lurking around can have an incredible horde prime w/ highlighted veins in just a short couple hours.

    that said, i love the additional heft, the mechabow hand swapper is fly… i immediately wanted to start telling stories w/ the guy. so far, he’s been changed into hordak’s dad, he’s hired lobo as his body guard, and confessed to his kids that he’s worked w/ lobo once before, in the killing of “grand high horde,” whom he then used black magics on and transformed his dad’s corpus into the Mausoleus Armor he currently wears that protects him completely from death magics and scrying, a phobia he developed after the ancient Horde empire lost Eternia to Scarabus. i’m still considerng where to take this next, but i’m looking at my playsets and noticing that the fright zone completely lacks any trace of the technology that the horde clearly embrace… so i’m thinking HP needs some new digs, or at least, some modification to the existing digs. the term “Horde” is being tossed around, and this dude lacks the support numbers that the word evokes… so he needs a conversion shop. too bad i had to discard my swamp thing transducer some years ago, otherwise i think that would have been a better fit for the big guy. hhmmmm……

  3. Swap that Brit comic book head onto a MAA body and see what that does. I think the Palace Guards have a new recruit. Maybe paint the antennae to match the face.

    Mecha-Koi! Mecha-Koi!

    Yeah, I agree with Fire King, I don’t ‘get’ that everybody has Hordak’s face on their stuff if he’s not large and in charge. I mean, isn’t that somewhat assumed when the dude is named ‘Hordak’ and is group is the Horde?

    UNLESS the entire ‘ruling class’ of the Horde are CLONES and they ALL LOOK ALIKE… hmmmmm. Growing your middle management. scarey. 🙂

    (me? I always thought Hordak was supposed to be an evolved/power-up Skeletor, kind of taking a page from Dr. Doom and forging a skull-like mask to hide/protect his exposed skull face. Then of course POP ruined all that. 🙂 )

    1. After Snake MAA lost his head, and MAA donated his mustache face… Bug head went on original MAA, and looks pretty funny. I’ll keep it like this for a while.

      1. “During one of Orko’s attempts to make a spell to help regain his wand, Duncan was magically transmorphed with an alternate universe Man-At-Arms, where insect/human hybrids rule. Now called Bug-At-Arms, efforts are made to…”

        Oh, that’s just too silly. Just say he’s a dude from the Sectaurs universe. 🙂

    2. I agree regarding the disappointment with Hordak’s inferiority–he was always the top-notch bad guy in the original toy line (how can you top “Skeletor’s Mentor”?). The storyline of Horde Prime is interesting, but perhaps would have been better if Hordak had gotten a “taste” of the power of Grayskull, transforming him into this super version of himself (Horde Prime).

  4. Haha! The terrible wrath of the mecha-koi. Your not alone in that thought tho. i put the helmet in my accessory bin for that very reason since the second i opened him, cant take em serious. Also, a surprise for me was the fact that i actually really like the bug head, more so then The new secret one, idk why, but something just seems anlittle bit off

  5. There is something a little off-putting about that oversized helm, but i kinda like it. In a way, it really works for a line that had quite a bit of odd humor in its designs. He certainly feels worth the cost, simply due to his heft.

    I’m looking forward to the Prime staff. In the mean time, my HP is carrying the 200x power sword from MAA. I never got into that series/look, but the sword sure has a kinda technomancy feel to it that works for prime. At least in my book. Plus, he needs to hold something so he doesn’t look too unbalanced with that huge brain-bucket up top.

    Horde Prime: “Hordak, you displease me once again.”
    Hordak: “Sorry, but i just have to ask: how do you fit through doors with that helmet on?”

    Mabye that’s why he has Hordak do his dirty work. He’s laid up with a bad back due to the top-heavy load he carries around all day…

  6. Fantastic review! Really looking forward to getting this guy (probably on Monday, if the customs charge notice I got this morning is any indication). LOVE the Office Space ref in the last panel, especially as I just took delivery of a Rio Red Swingline stapler a couple of days ago! As soon as Mantenna comes out, I gotta make him a red stapler prop. Mmmmmmmnnn . . . I could set the buildinnnngg on fiiiiirrrre . . . .

    Gotta say, I hate the British-comics-style head. Parts box. The other one, while nifty, looks a bit overly cartoonish for my taste. I think I’ll mostly be keeping his gigantic helmet on, which, if you squint, does look a little like the designs you could see through the smoke when Horde Prime was dressing down a minion on the PoP cartoon.

    And if you want to draw up a petition for an Inspector Darkney, I’ll happily sign it.

    As for the bat-logo’s face, I reckon that since HORDak and HORDE Prime come from HORDE World, the dominant native species all look like these guys, and while Prime is hyperexaggerated, Hordak has a more “typical” face for the species, and the face of the logo predates Anilis’ reign, being a generic Horde Worlder representation.

    1. Got my “spare” Horde Prime today; still waiting for the main June shipment. (I usually order an extra figure outside my subscription if it’s got a cape or other feature I could try to “fix” with a quick bit of customising, then I have a backup in case I royally mess things up.)

      Rassafrackin’ thing had a huge divot taken out of the red on his cranium. And then, for some reason, I had an MST3K flashback, and can’t stop thinking of Horde Prime as the Horde World equivalent of The Brute Man. Maybe he’s on Horde Steroids or something (Monsteroids?), which makes him look like that.

      I need sleep.

  7. Horde Prime’s helmet is reminiscent of the armor that the Jaffa wear in service of the Goa’uld System Lordsin the Stargate universe. The helmets themselves can retract and fold to reveal the face and they are meant to intimidate enemies!

    I too also see mecha-kkoi fish.

    I’m kind of disappointed by the head. I don’t know what I was expecting really, but its kind of like “oh, it looks like an older, crankier Hordak… I’ll call him ‘Get off my lawn! Hordak'”

    It also goes against my hatred of thinking there is someone bigger/meaner than Hordak — just like King Hiss who serves The Nameless One, or Voldemort or whatever.

  8. Despite having grown up reading the UK comics where Horde Prime was a frequent player (even personally fighting against a team-up of He-Man, She-Ra, Skeletor, King Hiss and Hordak) I never liked the idea of Hordak having a superior in the Horde. My mind was made up early, through the 1985 Swedish toy catalogue which explained to my young self that Hordak created and founded the Horde, his personal army of horrible monsters. Because of this, this is the only Horde-themed figure I have no interest in. There simply is no room for a “Horde Prime” in my toy shelf.

    That being said, I love that they included a UK-comics styled head and hope this means some of the unique characters from that series will be included in MOTUC (especially their unique Snake Men, Blaster (not the Transformer) and the unique Horde minions like specialized Troopers). However, that head doesn’t really fit on that body either, since he had a very different outfit in the comics… Ah well.

    As usual the review is well written and very funny, with great pictures!

  9. I have to do a Magicarp imitation whenever I see HordePrime standing around in his awesome hat.
    I wonder if Hordak plays paper football with his helmet during meetings…

  10. This dude is big and well worth the money. My only complaint is that the helmet is so large, he seems about 1/4″ or so too short in the legs and his arms seem kinda puny, as well. Even without the helmet.

    As for what the helmet reminded me of, I was thinking more along Decepticon. What was that Seacon that was a big fish with legs? yeah, that dude.
    http://tformers.net/i/a/universe/sea1.jpg – top right

    I do agree that the red head is just too red, and needs something to break it up. Considering the size of his ears, I’m almost surprised you didn’t have Evil-Lyn making an Oomax joke in there. “It’s all about the lobe, baby!”

    as for the Brit-HP head, I was thinking he would fit in with the Palace Guards, too, once those dang antennae were clipped. Seriously, that dude’s face is NOT scary.

    I had no idea who/what Darkney was, but a quick Google search turned him up, as well as several customs…and “Horde Inspector Adam” aka Amish Adam??? (and an IAT joke!)

  11. A few short years after I first got back into Masters of the Universe, I thought the idea of Horde Prime was incredibly lame. As more time passed, I came to love the idea of Hordak simply being the leader of *that* sector of the Horde, with an intergalactic army spanning….well, the universe. To me, it opened the door for so many possibilities; the icing on the cake for me was knowing that the Horde was the reason that Skeletor exists. I’ve been a die-hard Horde fan ever since, and Horde Prime really grew on me from that point on.

  12. Gary Cole as Horde Prime in a new She-ra live action movie for the win.

    Would Glimmer wear the suggested number of pieces of flair?

    Classic picture caption. You, sir, are a master.

  13. For him not to have a body on the old cartoon show FH did a excellent job of designing him. I’m a Chicago Bulls die hard fan from the Air Jordan era so the Red/Black fits him perfectly!! That red face with those giant bat ears –PRICELESS! I’m not to much sold on the UK head but it will do for now. Cool review!

  14. I liked everything on this guy except for the heads.

    The UK comic one is just silly, plus it doesn’t match the body at all.

    The standard head would have looked great with some paint apps, but I’m not digging the all red look. Should be Hordak colored.

  15. I don’t collect MOTU but I do read your reviews and that friggin TPS reports qoute had me laughing out loud in the airport!!!!

    On my way to the con!!!!

  16. “Yeah…seems like you forgot your cover on your TPS report. I’m gonna need you to remember to include the covers on your TPS reports.”

  17. I like th elook, but agree the “secret” head is just too red-washed. As for the lack of accessories, I took the laser from Preternia Adam, painted it black and red, and voila!

  18. Nice “Office Space” parody at the end there. The helmet looks like something right out of a Jack Kirby comic. I’m glad that the cape is removable because caped figures suck for me in this line. I never got that far into the Filmation stuff to learn about the Horde so along with MO2K Snake Duncan and the Griffin, June was likely the worst subscription month yet for me.

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