The second figure is a much lighter shade that boarders more on yellow than brown. I had no paint issues with the second Snake Man. His arms and legs were even molded the proper color, so there’s no black plastic to worry about.
One think I really liked about the two heads with open mouths is the glossy layer they used. It really did a great job of making their mouths look wet and a bit disgusting.
Aside from the heads, the Snake Men come with two pieces of armor and four weapons accessories. I really like the new armor designed for these guys. The full plate with the snake symbol on the chest looks sturdy, but the shoulder pauldron with chain mail is my favorite. This piece just has really neat design, plus it looks great on Rattlor. My only complaint is that there’s only two pieces of armor. It would have been nice to get another set of these armors in different colors. That way the snakes could all look a bit more different.
As for accessories, the snakes come with three weapons and one shield. The shield has a classic feel with its triangle design and Snake Men symbol. Kind of reminds me of Hssss’ shield.
The sword and spear are my favorite weapons of the bunch. The 4H did a great job designing these, and I love the snake head hilts with the curvy bladed tongue. These have a great look, and I’d love to see this design show up more in Snake Men artifacts.
The last weapon is a large spiked mace with a spiral-like pattern. I love how huge this club is, and the detailing is nice. I just wish it had more of a snake motif.
I’m really happy with my Snake Men two-pack, and I’m definitely going to hunt down another pack so I can have all four snakes displayed at the same time. But I’m also really hoping that we’ll see these two characters again in green, and maybe even red. With different colored armor and a few new weapons, these two packs could go a long way in building a large enough army for all of Hssss’ Generals to command.
-Vault
I wish the fur pants would be on the other less scaley Snakeman, so it can be a He-Man turned into Snake more easier. He looks fun with the armor on, now only need to find out how to change them pants, hehe.
I hope my Rattlor and Frosta will come soon!
Great review, excellent pictures! Love the Sorceress’ final comment!
I believe Ol’ Green Eyes is meant to be an Eyelash Viper: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bothriechis_schlegelii
I love how the Snake Men look together. They’re usually the least favorite faction of most fans, but I always loved me some Conan-esque sword & sorcery, so evil snake people is something I love!
I wish there’d been a green snake man in this set, but I realize that would have made the four heads less interchangable. Maybe a repaint sometime down the line.
And I’m sure that a Horde Trooper 2-pack is the unannounced $50 item for 2013 they were talking about.
Great review as always.
Yeah, come to think of it, there are Snake Men in a LOT of different fictional properties. Does it tap into racial memories of when our ancestors were all little fuzzballs trying to hide from dinosaurs? Were there actually reptilian sentients on Earth that are now extinct and consigned to legend? Or are sword-and-sorcery thinker-uppers just not very original on the whole?
There’s been some psychological theories that the extremely common phobia against snakes and spiders is a hardwired memory of the time when those critters were an extremely common cause of death.
Or the lack of originality. Hehe.
But yeah, evil snake people is one of those things. Even the Babylonians had them!
I thought one of the Q&As asked about a recolored set for re-release, and they gave the usual “we have no plans for that” or something that didn’t sound very hopeful?
Digging this set the more I see it. Just wish I was custom maker cause I would so make a coral snake out of one of these. Think would be cool for a variant or special troop. With so many different snake species and patterns Mattelbshould have some fun with these.
I keep hearing the coral pattern recommendation, it’s a great idea. I love this set, but the possibilities of different paint schemes based on snakes (desert snakes, copperheads, diamondbacks) offers so many unexplored variations. I know spots are getting more and more limited, but in a utopia this pack would get another run with more decos.
I kind of regret only getting one set now as I want to have four different Snakemen now (for some reason I was thinking the two heads were identical to the open mouthed versions when I bought them at the time). Love that last pic with the Sorceress.
That last pic is GOLD!
i still don’t get how they couldn’t cost out a spare of the snake trooper weapons, any one of them, for rattlor… friggin logistics.
the sculpting on the rattlor buck though, that is a thing of beauty. that’s why the horsemen are crucial to the success of this line, nobody sculpts texture like the horsemen.
Excellent review as always–the best 2 army builder set right now until Horde Troopers are designed!! That armor does look better on Rattlor.
Great Job Vault!
That last pic is really great
also the one of all the snake men…How much do I have to pay you guys to come to the IAT “how to take awesome pics” summer camp this year?
is it just me or does the Rattlor buck snake-man seem good enough for a Killer Croc in MOTUC scale
The mace thingie kinda looks like some mutated Rattlesnake Rattle or a Shekere
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shekere
So a quick question for the math geeks out there: With 2 different bodies, 4 different heads and 2 different sets of armor, how many combinations of snake men can be created? How cool would it be to have a whole snake army made up of entirely unique Snake-men? I used to know how to figure this out, but this type of knowledge was pushed out of my brain a looooong time ago so that I could remember important things like “the complete title history of the WWF World Heavyweight Championship”. Priorities.
I want to say it’s 16.
It’s 12… Due to the snakes being different colors:
yellow snake head 1
ysh1 naked
ysh1 brown armor
ysh1 blue armor
Yellow snake head 2
ysh2 naked
ysh2 brown armor
ysh2 blue armor
Orange snake head 1
osh1 naked
osh1 brown armor
osh1 blue armor
Orange snake head 2
osh2 naked
osh2 brown armor
osh2 blue armor
I was also including the orange heads on the yellow body… even though it wouldn’t make much sense. However, I didn’t include an armorless body as an armor option, so it would go up to 24 different kinds of set-ups.
Thanks for the thinkin’ assist, amigos! I like that this is an “army-builder” that allows some small amount of customization. Pretty cool.
yep, I would give this combo at least 24 mixes.
it’s a great set, if I were into the wilder characters, but I’m keeping my collection a more basic human grouping, even sans technology. (in my mind, Skelly and Hordak are wearing bone masks, like Rattleshirt in GoT.)
Awesome as always (love the sorceress Matty answer) Glad i got 2 sets of these bad boys. I hope they release them in new colors sometime in the future..
if you take the upcoming new adventures of he-man head and put it on that custom he-man body it would make a perfect 200x he-man.
I got stuck with these two guys due to the sub. It’s a good thing that they look more less generic looking than the Palace Guards.
Think I’ll christen ’em “Lou and Norm” in tribute to the legendary Filmation co-founding greats. Yeah!