Mantenna

Titfortat 13: Mantenna vs Snake face

Titfortat

Two of the shortest evil monsters of Eternia are in the ring.

This titfortat is for sure not about size, it’s about black magic, about the power to fight without muscles. Monsters are they for sure, not many creatures are less human than these two. Mantenna, an insectoid with huge humanish eyes, Hordaks spy and hypnosis expert is only 1.6m and 70kg. He’s smart and fast, but a weak fighter. 34 points in total.

Snake Face is easily King Hiss’ most feared follower. Medusa could be his little sister, and nightmares are his hobby. 32 points, because his magic is weak. Fast and smart is he too.

We can only guess that this titfortat is happening to eliminate at least one of them. Who ever decides on the matches will it do it with humanity in its mind. Or cruelty? We will see how if one of them manages to survive here. Start.

In the ring, both opponents appear with their eyes closed! Are we seeing a fight in the dark?! That could be a smart move! Both, insects and snakes have the senses for it. They are both super fast, and that’s what we see here. A quick back and forth, careful, evaluating. Without any physical contact, Mantenna and Snake face are in a kind of a dance. They haven’t met before, I’m sure they want to know who’s in front of them. It’s like a ring fight, but a blind one. Mantenna’s movements look a bit weird, his four legs are tipping in a hypnotic way. Snake Face is much more elegant, like a cobra, keeping his head up high. Then the insectoid jumps! Two legs wrapping around the Snake man, while the other two legs stabilize the duo to not fall. It remains a dancing act, but the horde member hammers his tiny fists onto the medusian face. Snake Face uses his hand for defense, obviously doesn’t know how to react. He unleashes the face snakes, but they can’t turn Mantenna into stone when his eyes are closed. But who would have guessed, they’re snakes, so they can bite! Tiny snakes aiming for Mantenna’s eyes, the red and blue insectoid has to retract. He jumps off his opponent, who is now in full fight mode. Mantenna knows that, because of the bite attack. The Snake man’s answer to Mantenna’s attack is a weird forward move, and it seems like he’s reaching for the eyes! Is the Medusa monster so limited to the turn-to-stone thing? He’s obviously trying to open Mantenna’s eyes, to make him look at the snakes! And then an elbow-to-the-chin initiates the horde members response. Another elbow, the little insectoid is on the move. He reaches for one of the tiny face snakes, squeezes it until it dies, and continues one by one, while the snake man slowly bleeds to death. A sight Mantenna doesn’t get, because he found a way to fight without his hypnosis eyes.

Toy review: Mantenna

Toy review

Mantenna was one of my first MOTU figures in the 80s, and it absolutely made sense for me, because I was fascinated by insects and spiders since I could walk. 40 years later I will admit that Hordaks bug man and me, we have a love-hate relationship. And here’s why. When you are familiar with the basic anatomy of an insect, you will have sniffed out that Mantenna’s ears (!) must be a product of humongous fantasy. I mean ears! They do look like a giant version of Hordak’s ears, don’t know if that means anything. As a boy I thought Mantenna is a spider, but there was much more creativity behind that figure. It’s an insectoid bug horde monster thing.

Then the eyes, definitely hypnotic, but otherwise very human as well. No hint of compound insect eyes. I guess it’s a repeating pattern in the MOTU toyline. They don’t make sense, it’s not logical, and that’s what keeps it in your head. You chew on the imperfection trying to understand it.

The eyes-out-feature worked perfectly, great quality! ‘The spy with the pop-out eyes’ as Mattel called him, was able to shoot beams with them. So they might have thought a spy needs proper hearing, what goes of course hand in hand with the size of the ears.

The black patch where you would expect a nose in a face always looked like a spider to me, like a logo, but it would have weirdly aligned 10 legs. It just now appears to me it could be meant as a hole, even a mouth! My photo is taken under uv light, and the mouth looks like a sandworm’s mouth from Dune.

Then there’s two prominent fangs, like tarantulas have them parallel to the body.

What bothered me even more than the ears are the legs. It must have been an economical decision to merge two legs to one, so that Mantenna has four. It makes the legs look weirdly broad, almost like he’s a cowboy in chaps. Counting the arms in, we find six limbs on our Horde creature. Somehow Mantenna’s arms are a bit bent, making him look ready to draw his guns.

Compared to other figures, Mantenna seemed smaller, flatter, and kind weaker, but luckily the toy didn’t look as ridiculous as the cartoon character. His awesome quality, and the decent colors made him a great toy. Together with Leech, Grizzlor, Modulok and Dragstor, the Evil horde was a gang of unique monsters. The kind of monsters that made parents roll their eyes.

Crossover: Family horde

Crossovers

I totally understand that some people don’t like watching Family Guy. They go far to far sometimes, no, often. I love it. I do not like my crossover. Not because it is especially bad, or boring, no because it happened to be quite scary. Mostly Chris, who is now Creech, and even that name sounds intimidating, His leechy teeth look awesome, and he’s got green suction cups. Peter is Horde Pooper, the red bat goes well with his white shirt. He looks funny with no neck.

Megstor, Dragstor as Meg works well too. Both are kind of permanent victims of evil people.

Mosquitor and Stewie, that makes Mosqwie. His face impression is a bit weird. Maybe he’s insecure with the snozzle for his nozzle.

But his Teddy, Rupert, is the cutest Grizzlor ever. Lets call him Ruzzlor. He could easily tear them all apart, but he decided to enjoy the family life.

And last but not least Herbert with four legs and eyes apart, that’s Manbert the Hypno!

I made this drawing some years ago, and looking at it now I wished I had made it a bit more MOTU, and less Family Guy. What do you think?