MattyCollector’s Facebook Page has been updated with an interview about the inspirations behind the design for Battleground Evil Lyn. they talked with Four Horsemen and Terry Higuchi from Mattel Design.
He-Fans and She-Ravers,
Ever since we announced the new version of Evil Lyn coming out this fall, their has been a lot of questions over her design and look. To understand this better we went straight to the mouth – the Four Horsemen’s mouth that is. We talked with them and Terry Higuchi from Mattel design to understand the inspiration for this new version of Evil Lyn.
TERRY: Part of the feel and look of the vintage MOTU line has always been the strategic use of shared parts (Stinkor and Mer-Man anyone?). To help capture that feel in MOTUC, we very deliberately use shared parts in MOTUC even when sometimes a new part could be called for. Bow and Optikk are both great example of this. It is part of the look and feel of the brand.
FOUR HORSEMEN: When designing Battleground Evil Lyn, we used a combination of new parts (new head, cape) along with thought-out reuse parts (tunic, Catra hand) to capture the charm and nostalgia that reuse parts evoke uniquely with MOTU. While we are always trying to go the extra mile for fans, sometimes our efforts do not jive with what the fan base is looking for (She-Ra 1.0’s mask attachment, Space Explorer Marlena in Green are good examples).
Fans have also asked why the new 2.0 female buck was not used for Evil Lyn. At the time this figure was being sculpted the 2.0 body was not developed yet. We knew that it was coming, but it didn’t exist for us to work off of. With this in mind we felt that it would be better to go with this simpler version rather than sink a lot of tooling into a version that didn’t have waist articulation, better hip function, etc. If we used up the tooling now, it may have killed the chance to do a version that 100% satisfies all of the fan requests. Now that the 2.0 body has been created and worked into the line, the door is open to do this version in the future.
TERRY: Clearly fans are looking for more new parts on a grey skinned Evil Lyn. We will certainly take this into account when looking at future variants of the evil warrior goddess. There are lots of ways we can update her down the road and just as we did a She-Ra 2.0 and multiple versions of He-Man, Evil Lyn is clearly a popular enough character to warrant multiple versions.While we do not have another version of Evil Lyn on the books anytime in the immediate future, don’t count her down for the count. She could very well be back when you least expect it!
Battleground Evil Lyn, available November 2011 only on Mattycollector.com (note she will have turning articulated wrist guards, an additional helmet-less head and a second swapable orb piece for her staff that glows in the dark!)
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Hope that cleared up some design choices and we can’t wait to see what the Horsemen are working on next!
See you all at Power Con on Sept 24th and 25th!
Matty