Origins (Basic Series, Deluxe Series, Cartoon Collection, 200X Cartoon Collection), Masterverse (Vintage, Movie, Princess of Power, New Adventures, Revelation, Revolution, New Eternia, New Etheria), and now Chronicles; how many different lines does Masters of the Universe need at once?!
If the only thing to fear is fear itself, then no being is more terrifying than the Lord of Subternia, Scare Glow. His ghostly light can paralyze even the bravest of Eternia's warriors.
Like Poe once said, it's a damn shame Scare Glow never got to be in Mo2K as anything other than a single comicbook appearance. The Four Horsemen could have done so much with him! As it is, it took until Netflix's 2021 MotU Revelation for him to be anything other than a mildly interesting visual - in fact, the very concept that he's the ruler of the underworld, which this toy's bio uses, didn't exist before Revelation made it up. We always praise when old franchises, like GI Joe and Transformers, introduce new ideas, so we're definitely going to do the same now for He-Man. "King of Terror" > "mean ghost."
As is always the case with Scare Glow, his head is
a bare skull (though this one does get a lot of nice shading to accentuate all the little nooks and crannies in the sculpt, rather than being stuck being a huge blank slab with eyes and teeth), though already we're getting a new feature none of them have ever had before: rather than simply being a plain skull, this one is wreathed in flame, like Ghost Rider. It's just a translucent green piece that slips around the neck and rises up behind the head, but it instantly looks like something that should have been there all along. And if you don't like the new addition, it can be removed and you'll have a more traditional look.
Scare Glow's vintage look was a Skeletor body with a purple cape; the Mo2K comic spiced things up a little, making the cape more ornate, giving him a stylized belt and loincloth, and adding mummy wraps around his forearms and groin; Classics gave him one interesting
new accessory, at least, but did nothing with the design; Revelation updated the boots a little and gave him a skirt instead of fur underwear, but was otherwise pretty simple; the super deluxe Mondo version took cues from Mo2K, but pushed everything to extreme levels, which just makes us madder that the Horsemen didn't get a chance to do that themselves two decades prior. Chronicles, meanwhile, starts with the 1987 original and ignores everything else, but still brings the character to a level he's never reached before!
The cape itself no longer has a collar, but Scareglow wears armored pauldrons that sort of serve the same role. A chain clasp closes the cape
in the front, and he has thicker bracers buckled around his forearms. He is still wearing furry underwear, but this time has a heavy metal belt that features a winged scarab skull emblem in the center, and features both a flap of (sculpted) cloth and thin leather straps hanging down from the front, plus, a series of delicate chains with three silver rectangles hanging from them - does Eternia have dog tags? There's a really cool little Easter egg on his right shin, too: a chain is wrapped around the armor, with a padlock right below his calf. It's not something any Scare Glow has had before, but it feels like a reference to the Grayskull reliquary Classics introduced.
Previous Scare Glows were intended to be a freestanding skeleton inside a transparent body - like, he had a body, but you could see his skeleton inside him. That isn't something a typical articulated action figure can really do, sadly, so the best they've managed
is to have bones painted on his surface. Chronicles changes that in an interesting way: instead of a blank body with bones painted on it, the bones are actually sculpted elements, while the body around them is done with long, thin lines to suggest muscle striations; in other words, he's not transparent, his bones are actually sticking out through his skin! That is so cool! Yes, it suggests he has a spine running down the front of his abs, rather than his back, but still, this is a really interesting way of doing it.
But, Mattel is Mattel, and you know what we always say: Mattel has never met an idea they couldn't do wrong. Since 1987, the defining feature of every Scare Glow (every Scare Glow worth naming, at least) has been that he glows in the dark. It's part of the name!
And while this new one does glow... sorry, I'm just very sad about this... the only part that glows is his head. All those other exposed bones, from the tiny ones on his hands and feet to the giant ones on his thighs? Nothing but plain paint, absolutely dark as the night when the lights go out. Obviously they couldn't do the thing they normally do, where they mold the entire thing from GitD plastic and then just paint the black on top to create the bone shapes, but glow-in-the-dark paint does exist, and there's no excuse for not using it here. THE BONES WERE ALREADY BEING PAINTED!! The body is molded from that nearly-black plastic, so the bones get paint apps, why would you use plain paint instead of glowing?!? For eff's sake, Mattel, do your job right! We'd be willing to forgive the fact you skipped the paint apps on the shoulderblades if the other bones at least glowed the way they're supposed to, but no, now we're going to call it crap because they don't.
At least the articulation is good. Very good! If Scare Glow is indicative of how MotU Chronicles is going to be, we can look forward to swivel/hinge/swivel ankles, double-hinged knees, balljointed hips, a balljointed waist and chest, swivel/hinge/swivel wrists, double-hined elbows, swivel biceps, balljoint/hinge shoulders, a balljoint neck, and barbell head. That's superb! Where has this Mattel been for the past few decades? Interestingly, the biceps are done as a separate piece that fits over the actual physical connection beneath - that is to say, the part of the arm that plugs into the shoulder and the part of the arm the elbow joint connects to are the same part, completely hidden by the arm's meat-sleeve. Unusual!
Of course, Mattel needs to muck something up, so the figure stands more than 6¾" tall (not counting the flames), making Chronicles the same scale as Masterverse. How hard is to grasp that all we want is a He-Man who will be the same size as Captain America or Batman so we can have one big happy cross-company display? The size is fine for a mystical monster like Scar Glow, but it's not just going to be Scare Glow, is it? It's going to be He-Man and Skeletor and Teela and Man-At-Arms and King Randor and anybody else they make, too, all of them too big to fit with any other toyline. Chronicles was a fresh start, Mattel, and you've already squandered it.
[Mattel says the other figures will be shorter, closer to the correct 6" size, so why start with the one who isn't? --ed.]
Since the neck-flames are removable, they may count as an accessory, and the figure includes alternate hands, but otherwise all he gets is his big axe thing. It has a nice dragon design, but it's solid grey and so feels a little disappointing. Yes, that's his traditional weapon, but Mondo found a way to turn it into a more appropriate scythe; could Mattel not? Are they not as clever? They own MotU, so anything another company comes up with toywise becomes their property, so it's not like Mondo could have prevented them from just using that weapon's design. Imagine him with a big Bloodborne-style weapon that could switch modes between axe and scythe! Or, if that's too complicated for you, at least include the reliquary and key Classics came up with!
The Chronicles packaging (designed by
Manuel Eduardo Caritas) is really stylish, black and gold with a dynamic painting of Scare Glow (by Simon Eckert) next to the viewing window and a tab on the side identifying it as an "inaugural edition." So far he's only available at Walmart - released during their spring Collector Con - but it's not clear whether he's their exclusive, or just available there first. The figure is showing up in stores, not just online, but you may still have to hunt for him: even the physical locations that do have it may not display it prominently. Look for the weird little carded Skeletor, and if you see that, odds are good that store is carrying Scare Glow, as well.
This is definitely the best Scare Glow there's yet been, but it's far from perfect: mediocre accessory choices, a towering size, and lack of his signature action feature drag the quality down. If it turns out Chronicles really is in 6" scale and Scare Glow is just a tall character, that'll bump him up a little, but you'd still going to have to repaint his bones to make him anything other than a disappointment. Watch them do an SDCC exclusive or something that paints him properly and has better accessories.
-- 04/13/26
What are the odds we'll see a "definitive" edition of this figure? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.
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