Written by Adam McCombs
A while back I built the Laser-Light Skeletor figure kit from Barbarossa, and recently I was able to pick up the Laser Power He-Man kit to complete the set. I thought I’d write up a review as well as a provide photo documentation of the process for those interested in building one.
The kit comes with everything needed for the complete figure, including the LED, switch, wires and battery. You will also need some super glue, some paint, and probably an Exacto knife to trim any flash from the parts. You also need a soldering iron and some solder for the electronics.
The parts that come with the kit are the usual high quality that I’ve come to expect from Barbarossa. Compared to the Laser-Light Skeletor kit, there is very little painting required for this kit, so it’s a pretty fast build. I started out with the arms and legs. The boots and gloves are separate pieces that need to be glued together with superglue. I did use an Exacto knife to scrape the surfaces to be glued to make sure they were a bit more flat. The best way to go about this is to apply glue to one of the pieces, hold them together for about a minute just to be sure, and then set them down and let them really cure for about an hour. It’s nice that the boots and gloves come in the colors they are supposed to be, so you don’t have to paint them!
The next step is to screw the eyelet screws in to the legs, and then set the assembly into the two halves of the pelvis piece, as shown below. Then apply super glue around all the connecting edges and hold them tightly together. The instructions advised the use of rubber bands to hold them tightly together while curing.
The next step is to paint the head that your figure came with. You could do this after putting the upper body together, but I figured I was less likely to get yellow paint on He-Man’s back if I painted it before assembling it. Barbarossa was nice enough to include both versions of the head in my kit. For those who don’t know, the original made in Italy Laser Power He-Man came with the head on the left, below. A year later Spain manufactured a different version with the classic He-Man head, shown on the bottom right. I went with the Italian version just to differentiate him more from my other He-Man figures.
Painting the hair isn’t all that difficult, but painting the eyes is tricky. In retrospect I would have done the eyes first. If you screw up the eyes, you’ll need to quickly run the head under a tap and perhaps rub the paint away with a Q-Tip so you can start again. That’s easier to do if the hair hasn’t already been painted. You’ll want to use acrylic paints, which you can get from any craft store. I also used a bit of gloss clear coat on the hair because vintage figures had glossy paint, but you can also get acrylic paints that are already gloss or satin finish. In my case, I did the hair first, and then put it together with the two halves of the torso. It comes with a connector bar that acts as the anchor for both arms, and the assembly is as shown in the photos below. As before, put super glue on all the connecting surfaces and hold everything together for about a minute, and then let it cure for at least an hour.
Once cured, heat up the shoulder area of the arms with a hair dryer to soften them and pop them onto the figure.
The included chest and arm armor needs some silver paint. Barbarossa recommends a paint pen. I got a silver acrylic paint pen from a craft store and was able to pretty easily paint the correct areas. It did require several applications, with time for drying between each application.
He-Man’s belt is a separate piece of flexible silver plastic. I started by gluing the front section and moving around one half of the belt toward the back, and then the other side was glued down after. I trimmed the excess as shown. If it’s not perfectly even on the back, don’t worry – his backpack will hide this area. You can also see I’ve painted on the eyes and eyebrows in the center image below.
The sword requires both gluing and soldering. The soldering part can be intimidating if you haven’t done it before. Some things to note: the included LED fits inside the hilt of the sword, and should be nestled up against the cutout in the blade. The longer lead on the LED is the positive end, and should be connected to the red wire, while the black wire goes to the shorter lead. The leads need to be cut short, so that the wires tuck up inside the hilt, meeting the leads at the empty section inside the very bottom of the hilt.
The included switch already has wires attached. The two wires should be fed through the hole in the backpack before you solder anything. The switch has two screws that can be removed to allow you to insert the included battery.
Ideally some rubber shrink tubing should be used to isolate the leads of the LED from each other so they don’t short out. I didn’t have that, but some tape will do in a pinch. This is important because you want your sword to actually light up! Once you’re ready, glue the assembly together with super glue as before.
Here is the completed Laser Power He-Man without his armor. He has a hole in his back because his original light gimmick was activated when he raised his arms. But in this version, the light is activated with a switch inside the backpack.
Here he is with his sword, armor and backpack!
Overall I’m very pleased with the final results. Barbarossa’s stuff is always high quality, and the ability to get it in a kit is a nice money saver, if you feel comfortable putting it together yourself. If not you can have Barbarossa make you an already assembled figure, for a bit more money. I’m a big fan of the laser figures, and these kits are a great way to get them without dropping thousands of dollars for the vintage versions.
My MOTU Origins Laser Power He-Man coincidentally just arrived as well, so I thought I’d compare the Barbarossa version with the Origins and MOTU Classics versions:
And for good measure, here’s the Barbarossa Laser Power He-Man with all three of the New Adventures He-Man variants:
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