by Adam McCombs

Continuing from last week when I covered all of the US toy commercials released in 1982, let’s take a look at what came out the following year. In 1983, Mattel released commercials that technically featured every new product, although there were no ads that I know of solely dedicated to Evil-Lyn, Tri-Klops, Panthor, Zoar or Screeech.

Probably my favorite of the commercials released in 1983 is this ad featuring all of the MOTU product available to date. Note that Zodac is grouped with the Evil Warriors:

The little kid at the end I think perfectly captures my reaction to these toys when I was that age.

The Man-E-Faces commercial has one of my favorite lines of dialogue:

Dad: “He-Man, he’s your friend?”

Boy (speaking as He-Man): “Friend and ally. He’s just kind of weird sometimes.”

The Ram Man commercial shows off Ram Man’s action feature quite well, but also highlights the original play pattern behind the Castle Grayskull playset – that it could be controlled by either the heroes or the villains at any time.

The Trap Jaw commercial uses a stand-off with He-Man to showcase all of Trap Jaw’s unique gimmicks and action features, with the curious exception of the figure’s articulated jaw:

Here is the Faker vs He-Man commercial, where we’re told Faker was created by Skeletor as an evil clone of He-Man:

I don’t remember seeing this Attak Track commercial as a kid, but if I had I would have been begging my mom for one. This thing looks unstoppable (or at least, it can’t be stopped by cardboard props):

There were actually two slightly different versions of the Point Dread and Talon Fighter commercial. One was narrated by Peter Cullen (best known as the voice of Optimus Prime), and the other by an unknown voice actor (hat tip to Grimbot2).

The facial expressions of the kid holding Skeletor are pretty priceless.

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