Phony Baloney

Faker is another MOTU character I wasn't concenred with as a kid. He was just this oddball evil blue He-Man clone that wasn't given much focus. Not to mention, he pretty much flew under the radar. Honestly, I don't remember ever seeing his toy at the store. As an adult toy collector, I'm aware he was just case filler and the most blatant repaint in the line. Also as an adult, I fully recognize just how awesome he actually is. 

Depending on the fiction Faker is a robot either created by science or magic. I like the magic origins because it makes him seem like some weird Eternian Golem. This new toy follows the Origins model perfectly in that it's literally a blue He-Man with red hair and an orange Skeletor outfit. Of course there's the requisite sticker of all his circuitry. How else would you know he's a robot? He has the 'vintage' He-Man head that comes with some figures on the standard He-Man Origins body. There's a ton of articulation included with that. Of course he's sporting his orange take on Skeletor's outfit with a fake orange version of the Power Sword. There's a Powercon Exclusive version of Fake with a slightly different deco and Dupli-Cat. Dupli-Cat is his evil robot clone of Battle Cat. The pun based names never end... thankfully. It's hard not to like Faker, he's a Halloween colored evil robot clone of He-Man that relishes in it's ridiculousness. In the included mini-comic of this wave, it's shown that Skeletor has an army of Faker clones. There's not one fiber of my being that doesn't love that.

Faker Than A Three Dollar Bill

On Eternia, if you see He-Man committing an evil act... and he only kinda looks like He-Man... you've just witnessed Faker in action. As his name and appearance would imply, Faker is an evil duplicate of He-Man. Obviously a blue skinned repaint of the classic He-Man toy with Skeletor's armor in orange and a robotic sticker on his chest, he is still pretty neat.

Faker didn't show up in a lot of MOTU fiction. Clearly the toy was a low budget solution to getting another figure on the shelves fast. So it stands to reason that not a lot of attention was paid to him afterwards. However Faker does appear in one episode of the classic cartoon. In it he's a near identical clone of He-Man causing trouble. This idea got revisited in 'The New Adventures of He-Man' with another near identical clone named He-Slave (no really). 

Faker does have various comic appearances, including a mini-comic late in the line despite being one of the earlier toys. His origins range from evil robot clone to magically created clone to random member of the Evil Warriors. I do like the classics take on Faker, in which he's a failed robot duplicate of Prince Adam. Man-at-Arms thought it would be a good idea to have a fake Adam to stand in while He-Man was off on adventure. The robot didn't work out and ended up in the hands of the Evil Warriors and reprogrammed. The idea is to fool the people of Eternia that He-Man had went evil. Pretty standard evil clone stuff admittedly, but it works. 

I mainly like Faker because of his colors. The blue contrasts with the orange in such a weirdly fun way. I've made my joke about Eternia being full of living Halloween decorations a million times before, and I'm going to make it again. It's most obvious in his Battle Armor variation. With it, Faker has an orange version of Skeletor's battle armor that makes you wonder why he wasn't a seasonal special edition. Despite the very basic nature of the toy, Faker is pretty popular and generally gets a good amount of merchandise. Which I'm sure Mattel is only to happy to produce.