Though He-Man’s main antagonist was a hooded blue-skinned skull-headed man with a shrill voice, I never was afraid of Skeletor. Perhaps it was because he was mostly portrayed as a bumbling fool during the cartoon’s run. Every episode seemed to have one of those Skeletor moments of a comedic tirade or a bit of physical comedy after which you’d half-expect He-Man to turn to the camera with a goofy smirk and go, “that’s our Skeletor!”
On the other hand, Hordak creeped me out (though I’d have to say the demon octopus Sh’Gora downright scared me as a child). He had a much more terrifying look than Skeletor, for some reason. I think his face is the real clincher. Just plain evil-looking dude, whereas sometimes a skull is just a skull.
As cool as Hordak looks (yes, he’s gone from “creepy” to “cool” now because I refuse to let a cartoon character control me through fear), I always thought his “Evil Horde” couldn’t hold a candle to Skeletor’s “Evil Warriors”. Skeletor’s army always had a nice batch of gimmicks going for them, and while the Horde is gimmicky in their own right, that group always seemed to be the freaks and geeks of MOTU, as if Mattel was running out of ideas and just started coming up with whatever hideous creatures they could.
That fuzzball Grizzlor? No match for Beast Man. Leech (who quite literally sucks)? I’d rather have Kobra Khan. Mattel would later introduced a character called Mosquitor to the Horde lineup (which made for an awesome figure), perhaps realizing Leech was kind lame but the whole “siphoning” of life energies was still a good idea. And this bulgy-eyed comedy character Mantenna (who always reminded me of a hermit crab because of his eyes)? Well, the not-quite-as-bulgy-eyed Mer-Man could easily handle him.
Later Horde characters like Modulok, Horde Trooper and the previously mentioned Mosquitor were really cool, but the line continued to give us some questionable toys/characters like Dragstor (he was… a man-car, I guess?) and Multi-Bot… who did nothing that Modulok wouldn’t and couldn’t already do better. Seriously… why are there two sets of Horde members that share similar gimmicks?
By the way, I had to rewrite this whole stinking post… I clicked “save draft” and the saved product was a blank post. WTFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF!!!!!!!!!
