With a few hints here and a couple of namedrops there, it seems like Mattel has been teasing us with the Unnamed One for quite a while. We all had our own theories as to who this character might be. (Personally, I thought it’d be the devil from the episode “The Wizard of Stone Mountain”.) But after all was said and done the Big Bad of MOTU turned out to be an evil Trollan.
At first I wasn’t too thrilled about UNO’s identity, or the fact that his origin story shares a lot in common with the Guardians of the Universe in the Green Lantern books. But over the last couple months I’ve grown to really liking this figure, and that always makes it easier to ignore any characterization or back story that you may disagree with.
The coolest thing about this figure is the sculpt. Ignoring the fact that he’s the Unnamed One, just having an evil Trollan on the shelf is pretty neat. Unlike his good brethren, UNO is loaded down with tattered robes, armor and a utility belt carrying various pouches and even a knife. There’s even a disturbing bloody skull hanging from his chest. This dude is a wizard/warlord and the Four Horsemen did an amazing job detailing him. Like Vikor and Demo Man, the Unnamed One could easily fit into a pulp adventure like Conan the Barbarian.
To mix up the sculpt a bit more, UNO comes with two different heads. The first is a more classic Trollan look with a long and pointy mage hat that covers most of his head. He’s also wearing a tattered veil to cover up his black face, but those evil yellow slits for eyes still glare out.
UNO’s other head is a bit more intimidating. With its spiked rivets, sharp Mohawk, and toothy mouth guard, this helmet definitely gives off a Death Dealer kinda vibe. It even has this cool little dragon skull emblem on the forehead. This is a fantastic piece, unfortunately the ears kind of throw it off. Without them I’d have already made an evil barbarian for He-Man to fight. Unfortunately picking up an exclusive figure for just his helmet isn’t going to happen any time soon. Continue to page 2…
Gotta disagree with you this time. Disregarding the fact that, as the “Unnamed One”, this is a total dud, the sculpt is just not that special, nor does it make much sense. Leather armor over a tattered rob and…a veil? Seriously? And that’s not even getting into the fact that we paid $25 for what amounts to about half a figure…
The stand is a mess. I really wish he had Orko’s stand and with a heavier base. My UNO falls over all of the time.
He’s not a bad figure, he’s just written that way! I liked him well enough. He’s not the greatest. He’ll end up in the back with some of the others, but he’s not as bad as is made out to be. I mostly blame the “love letter to the fans” nonsense. This was definitely not that.
You forgot to mention that the Un-Named One actually has a name! Gorpo was his Name-O
the sculpt looks nice with some cool accessories, and I do agree that when they’re allowed to, the 4H knock out some great stuff, but it’s a pass for cost issues.
Orko got paired with Adam. This guy gets…an alt.head and a green blob? yeah, no.
had he been paired with another Trollan, or even another full figure like Orko, it would have been worth it. Even Kowl got packaged into a weapons pack (and a 2pk re-deco with Lookee?). I’m glad I don’t have a sub for these reasons alone.
oh, and some great lighting on some of those pics!
the funny thing to me is, if you exchange his heads, you’ll see his neck is a giant ball with the usual motuc neck ball joint within… but you immediately get the idea that his head was intended as a ball within a ball neck plugged into the torso, which would have helped him get some more expressive head movement (maybe… i suspect the removal of that joint wasn’t cost related, it was due to the head sculpt making the joint functionally useless… but it could have been cost too)
the damned spell blob thing bugs me because it’s so overweight. i have never gotten the figure to balance w/ the blob extended while on the hover-post. you could have weighted the post, since the base is hollow, or you could have hollowed most of the length of the spell blast to lighten it. but i guess creative problem solving doesn’t fall under the description of the in-house engineer’s pay grade.
I’m really unsure why I’m liking the look of this figure so much. I’m no He-Man fan by any stretch of the imagination, but strictly aesthetically, its appealing to me. I just picture a little bastard floating around wreaking havoc.
Maybe if enough people hate it, I can pick one up on the cheap. Hah!
Good review, and great pics.
I’ve come to accept this guy as a well-sculpted little figure, but he was way too overhyped, leading to overly high expectations. The stand is crap; besides not having a ball-joint, it seems too flimsy to hold him up for expended periods. I predict a lot of headers from this guy.
What waste of material & all the hype for this figure. At least the mini comic was worth getting. Matty no more surprises okay.
Yeah, the stand sucks (no ball joint and the MOTUC stand’s always been too tiny and light). But other than that, I LOVE this guy – the look, the concept, the lot. The (oddly unrelated) minicomic was pretty fun too.
(I think I might just a sucker for evil Trollans – I’ve been using a MO2K snake-trapper Orko for just that purpose, hanging out on my MOTUC shelf with Adam’s disembodied head in his outstretched hand…)
Good review but nowhere has it been stated that UNO is the big bad of MOTU – he’s just a trollan gone bad who created the Snakmen. He’s one of my favourite figures this year.
This is one of the more interesting MOTUC figures released in quite a while.
Although I find it interesting they could do all the new tooling and sculpting for this figure instead of making a slimmer body for figures that require body so they do not look as heavy like Hydron, NA He-Man, King Hisss and Sea Hawk etc.
I think I enjoyed all the negative knee-jerk reaction to this fella even more than I did the figure itself. Perhaps I’m in the silent minority (or for all we know majority) of folks who actually like Unnamed One and think he makes sense story wise. Sure it’s similar to other works of fiction, but everything borrows from everything.
As far as the figure itself – I like it. It’s a 100% unique sculpt and something different than just another figure with the same male buck-sculpt we’ve seen dozens of times.
Two valid criticisms though are the heavy magic effect construct which his thin little arms simply are not strong enough to support (and I suspect over time would weaken the joint) and the fact that his stand did not come with a ball joint. It’s a tiny detail — but one that I think makes a big difference.