Episode 22: He-Man!…..She-Ra!.....Snake Tut?!

Ii-wey! This past weekend, I attended PowerCon in Los Angeles. Established in 2011, the convention’s focal point is providing a venue for He-Man and She-Ra fans to celebrate the Masters of the Universe (MOTU) franchise. This was my first time attending the con and I have to say that it was an enjoyable experience, and I appreciated the organizers’ commitment to their focus on MOTU. I saw a lot of He-Man and She-Ra collectibles throughout the day, took in a panel or two, and even got to meet a fellow McFarland author after virtually meeting a few months ago. As I do at all cons, I look for mummy-related items that I can add to my growing collections, and I was not disappointed. 

With the tagline: There are good guys. There are bad guys. Then there are…The Worst! What better introduction could accompany Super7’s action figure, Snake Tut?! The toy company included a number of details to this figurine that mimics motifs of ancient Egypt. Snake Tut is a five-point articulated action figure (head, arms, legs) that stands 3.75” tall. He has medium blue skin and wrappings that are a pale green hue, but this figure does not glow in the dark (there is however a glow-in-the-dark variant). His blue skin matches his cobra staff, which he can hold in his right hand. His other weapon, a golden dagger, is strapped to his left hip. He has a striped Nemes headdress. The cobra denotes his sovereignty (for evil, of course!). His skirt is black which is unusual. Most images of ancient Egyptian skirts (or kilts) are white. 

Turning to the packaging, Snake Tut’s plastic container is coffin shaped. Based on pictures of the other action figures in this series, each are packaged aliked. The artwork, by Ed Repka, is suitably intimating and hence, appropriate to the character. Repka replicated the motifs on the action figure and included them in his illustration of Snake Tut. The Nemes headdress is similar to Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s death mask. However, Repka left off the falcon that represents Upper Egypt. Since only the cobra is present on the crown, the wearer – Snake Tut – did not rule over a unified Egypt, only Lower Egypt. His collar is suggestive of the artifacts found on Tutankhamun and illustrated on tomb walls and in sacred texts such as The Book of the Dead.

One of the oddities about Snake Tut is his blue skin. Blue was one of six standard colors in ancient Egypt and was made by mixing iron, copper, silica and calcium and represented the sky and the water. “In a cosmic sense, this extended its symbolism to the heavens and of the primeval floods. In both of these cases, blue took on a meaning of life and re-birth.”¹For anyone who is familiar with the geography of Egypt, in ancient times, the Nile was the life giver but could also threaten life (the ebb and flow of the Nile that impacted Egypt’s harvest cycle). With regards to Snake Tut, as one of The Worst group, one can safely assume he is more associated with taking life away. 

Interestingly, this may be the first time in which the boy king, Tutankhamun, is parodied as a bad guy. Perhaps “Tut” is an easily recognizable name in ancient Egyptian history? Or, it’s almost as if Super7 had foresight of this year’s King Tut tour. Anyway, in the Universal mummy films, Imhotep was an early dynastic architect, Ahmanet was a reference to a goddess (spelled Amunet) while Kharis was a fictitious character. A number of the contemporary horror films featuring an ancient Egyptian mummy typically utilize the jackal-headed Anubis, the god associated with mummification and the afterlife. He cuts an intimidating figure from the mythology.

Super7 released the first Snake Tut exclusive, an unpainted (white plastic) “debut” action figure, at the 2016 San Diego Comic-Con International. Super7 posted on their website in early 2017 that The Worst – six characters including Snake Tut or “Serpent God of Destruction” – were getting their own animated series and would be created by Stoopid Buddy Studios, who created Robot Chicken (see here for the post). This announcement was followed up with a 2017 SDCC variant exclusive in which The Worst villains were involved in a Star Wars mash-up. The result: Snake Tut X-2 ("The Unknown"). Regrettably, finding any current news about the series has been lacking and it would seem there has been no love for The Worst. 

Snake Tut was an excellent find at Power-Con. I wasn’t able to locate another Super7 mummy called Wrap Trap that commemorated their MOTU toy line from 2008-2018, but I did see one on display (sadly, not for sale). I learned about two collectibles that are now on my want list: Mighty Max’s Terror of Venom (see here) and Thundercats’ Mumm Ra figurine in its original box (see here). That said, I picked up two film cells from Filmation’s Ghostbusters, which featured a mummy character. I’ll feature those cells in a future musing. 

Senebti! 

Banner photo by author. 

Notes

1. Information on colors was found at Ancient Egypt: The Mythology website dated 2014 (www.egyptianmyths.net/colors.htm). The page highlights green, red, white, black, yellow, and blue.