Yeah, still was making fun of Stratos at that time. Wait...I'm still doing that now.
So Buzz-Off was a favorite of mine when I was little! He had the twist-waist spring-action punch like everyone else, but with WINGS! Do you know what that means? You hold his legs, twist him around, and watch his wings violently FLAPFLAPFLAPFLAP. It was awesome.
Did I mention he is also goofy as hell? Later in life, this guy would be one of those figures that just make my brain percolate with ideas. I've always loved the mysterious technological past in the original MotU story, so Buzz-Off raises a lot of questions. Granted, he was a muscleman so he matched the look of the toyline, but if you look at it in a story sense, he's a muscle bug man that can't seem to finish off the bug look! The helmet provides his missing crosshatched bug-vision, and you can see that his wings have a bunch of mechanics running through them! So why did Buzz-Off have to complete the bug look with mechanical additions? Wouldn't he just be a part of a race of bug people, like in 200X?
My own musings have made up a sort of past for Eternia. Ya know; the standard super-technological super society that created all sorts of affronts to god and all that. I imagine they dabbled in creating life in different ways, and a majority of their experiments probably didn't pan out. So whenever their society collapsed, the world is overrun with various half-animal people. They have the DNA mixed in, but their bodies won't produce the stuff that completes who they are! So the rest is ritualistically finished, like with Buzz-Off's helmet and wings.
Like I said though; that's just my own ideas and what I've thought of over the years. It's one of the things I love about the vintage MotU! 200X made total sense and made the animal people...finished, ya know? Bug people were full-on bug people and so on and so forth. But the vintage stuff was so confusing and strange and weird! I loved it! Sometimes unanswered questions make for a more interesting story.
Oh yeah, and the toy came out pretty awesome!
I already said I loved the original figure, but it was mostly because he was fun to flap around. I never thought of him as awesome, ya know? The figure just turned out great! The wingspan is impressive, he poses well, holds his weapons not sideways for the first time (for the vintage look, anyway) and his helmet actually fits over his eyes! The original just kinda...sat there. I was never sure if it was even supposed to fit, back then. Now it works like a normal helmet!
So overall I thought this figure was a big success. For me. Because many folks were kinda ticked that he didn't come with a 200X head, since Whiplash was a mostly vintage guy with a 200X head thrown in. I can't say I miss it, but I also can't disagree with those that wanted it. The reason they didn't was just....Mattel higher-ups said "no" to random 200X heads thrown in for no good reason.
Meh. Whatever.
I think it would have worked here, but like I said; I'm also not missing it much. I've still got the 200X figure, and he's awesome enough to hold his own.
Buzz-Off was the single pre-Snake Men 200X figure that I never found at retail. (I only saw the Snake Men line at retail once, and it was at a Suncoast, and they only had the lame Skeletor and Mekaneck variants.)
ReplyDeleteAlso, I remember my friend's Buzz-Off that we played with as kids. He only had one wing. And we didn't know his name, so we probably called him "Bug eyes" or some such.
I didn't even want 200X Buzz Off that much honestly; I just found a figure that wasn't He-Man or Skeletor and I freaked out and bought him. Friggin' HATED collecting that badass toyline. It was so awesome but they worked so hard to make sure you couldn't find anything but He-Man and Skeletor. It's sad, because it created a lot of hate for variants that were actually pretty cool in thier own right.
DeleteAnd vintage Buzz Off was just my flapping machine.