Faker is just like He-man. Except he’s blue. And he has dark red hair. And he’s wearing an orange version of Skeletor’s vestbra. And he’s got an orange sword. But otherwise hey look, it’s He…man?
Eternians have some bad eyesight…
But in all seriousness or something, I have always loved Faker based on the fact that I love Bizarro and Ultraman, two evil Superman concepts that formed the basis for my love of evil versions of good guys that are just slightly different in various ways.
When I was a kid I never thought that Faker was just waltzing around looking like a bench-pressing Smurf and fooling everybody. It was less about the literal faker aspect and more about the fact that he was overtly an impostor. He ain’t fooling anybody. Eternia is weird, man. Things don’t have to be literallyliteral there. Dude’s a robot He-man. He’s just there to give Skeletor’s side some much needed muscle.
Faker was the first time that the bad guys had someone that could stand blow for blow with He-man, and that meant tussles. Tussles aplenty. Tussle is a pretty strange word when you use it more than once in a paragraph. Tussle. Tussle. What the hell?
The Masters of the Universe Origins Faker is…you guessed it, He-man with Skeletor’s vestbra. This time around we get the vintage version of He-man’s head, which makes Faker about 135 percent more awesome. There’s just something about the vintage head that really churns my butter. I’m open to other takes on He-man’s head, other artistic deviations and whatever, but that squint and that grin are imprinted on the lizard internal workings of my brain.
You know the drill by now. Faker gets the increased articulation in all the right places that all of the Origins figures have received: elbows and legs, hips and shoulders, and even the neck. Everything is just a little more without being a lot more, while keeping the familiar vintage silhouette. This line has sucked me in deeply with the sheer retro cool of it all.
Something weird occurred to me when I was opening the figure up. I got to his accessory baggie and was expecting him to have an orange Power Sword, axe and shield, but he only came with the power sword. I had completely forgotten that the vintage Faker only came with an orange Power Sword and had no axe or shield. The Classics Faker had overwritten my memories of what the vintage figure came with. I found myself really missing the axe and shield, because more and more I find myself returning to the axe and shield as the default weaponry for He-man and wanted faker to have the same stuff going on. If they’re planning on an accessory pack of some kind those seem like perfect inclusions.
The Power Sword is a full version, unlike the half-parts that we’ve seen with other figures. It fits in his hand fine.
Faker has painted on mechanical details on his chest in place of the sticker the vintage version had. It looks like he can get AM radio on that thing.
This figure is another nostalgia bomb from a bygone time given a minor update that retains the old while upgrading with some new. It’s nothing revolutionary, but it’s got style. Hard to argue with that.
Source: Fwoosh
