Written by Adam McCombs

Nordor is one of the most unique and interesting playsets ever created, in my opinion. I never encountered it as a child, but I’ve been fascinated with it since I first saw it as an adult.

Design & Development

When I interviewed former Mattel designer David Wolfram, he gave me some good background information about Nordor:

A lot of projects had nicknames. Nordor’s was the “Galactic Gallstone.” The original model was conceived of and sold in by Dave McElroy. It was up to me to make it happen. I wasn’t in love with the projector, but that was what was sold in initially.

The interior parts went together pretty well. The exterior sculpting was a different matter. The sculptor assigned to the project was much more suited to preschool toys and smooth dolls heads. Fortunately for me, the project was being sculpted in hard clay, rather than wax. No matter how much direction that I gave him, he just couldn’t get beyond mushy. Finally right before the date it was to be turned over to engineering for casting, Martin Arriola suggested the I should take matters in my own hands. So, right before it was set to go, I came in on the weekend, stole it out of his office, and spent at least one day adding fissures and other details. It’s funny, but nobody from sculpting ever said a thing. If you look on the bottom side, you can see some cracks that look suspiciously like the letters “DW”.

David Wolfram

Okay, so a lot to unpack there. Let’s start with the original Dave McElroy concept he mentioned. That concept, called the “Evil Spheroid” appears in The Power and the Honor Foundation Catalog, as shown below:

The Evil Spheroid, dated May 9, 1988 was basically an asteroid base that folds out into a playset, although it lacked the skull motif on the final version. It also seemed to lack any visual reference to the projector feature, but David mentions it was already a sold-in feature of the toy once it got to him.

Once McElroy’s idea was approved, Wolfram was tasked with bringing it to life. Unfortunately I don’t have his concept art for the exterior, just the interior. This was shared by The Power and the Honor Foundation in the 2015 Dark Horse book, The Art of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. In does include the skull theme, visible from the interior side, and an updated throne for Skeletor in the quintessential Wolfram style. Also included is the projector concept. His artwork dates to September 21, 1988, just four months after McElroy’s concept drawing.

In a 1989 German magazine called He-Man Die Neue Dimension, we do get a look at a casting of that rather plain-looking prototype that Wolfram mentioned. The interior is spruced up by the platforms (probably carved from wood) and decals, but the exterior is sadly lacking in detail.

Here’s the prototype in a 1989 French catalog, this time including a white projector and some dark blue or gray cannons. This version also appears to have a much narrower walkway and a gold skull on the throne.

In the corner you can see a crude skull drawing being projected by the prototype projector:

You can see the finalized, much more detailed sculpt in this 1990 French catalog below. It also shows the projector feature at work.

Toy & Packaging

I’ve heard before that William George did a lot of the front-facing packaging art for the New Adventures line. I’m not sure if he did the artwork for Nordor, but it is quite nicely done. The packaging images below were taken from an eBay auction:

Exterior

On the exterior of the playset, you can really see all of the sculpted details added by Wolfram – a collection of cracks, craters, mechanical parts and other details. It’s quite a striking looking playset. To me it’s the Castle Grayskull of the New Adventures line. I guess Skeletor had to go into the future in order to get a skull-faced fortress!

Interior

The playset interior isn’t quite as striking as the exterior, but it’s still cool and a great way to display your figures. My example was missing some of its decals, so I ordered a replacement set off of eBay.

Unfortunately my projector doesn’t work, I believe due to a burned out lightbulb, so I wasn’t able to capture a picture of it in action. However, Cory Howard got a shot of it on his playset, which he graciously shared for this article:

Nordor came with two film strips for use with the projector. I scanned both of them so you can see what’s on them: illustrated action scenes of the characters.

It’s definitely an unusual choice for a playset feature. I believe the point of it is to think of it as some kind of surveillance monitor that Skeletor (or whoever is onboard) uses to keep tabs on his enemies and on battles going on in various locations.

Nordor in Animation

In the New Adventures of He-Man animated series, Nordor was a moon, rather than an asteroid. This version of it actually had its roots in a brainstorming session with David Wolfram and Mark DiCamillo. In my interview with David, he said: “Oddly enough, one original that I did hang onto, probably since it wasn’t product-related, was the drawing I did defining the New Adventures world. Mark DiCamillo and I sat down for a few hours brainstorming, and then I drew this up, which was sent to the writers and animators for the show.”

This directly influenced the look of Nordor moon in the animated series. In the cartoon show, Nordor actually originated from Primus. It had been a piece of ground removed from the planet because it had become infected by an evil crystal. After being blasted into space, it went into orbit around Denebria. When shown in episodes it was usually just lunar terrain, but in intros and establishing shots there were some paintings of the entire moon:

However, in the episode “Queen’s Gambit,” Skeletor’s villains carve out a small Nordor-shaped meteor from the moon, attach rockets to it, and launch it toward the planet Primus. This was closer conceptually to the Nordor asteroid playset than was the moon in the series.

Comic Appearances

Wolfram’s drawing also influenced the minicomics created for the toyline. As seen below, Nordor is the moon of Denebria.

1990 Annual

The moon Nordor is featured in the 1990 He-Man Annual in a story called Inside the Evil Moon. It tells the story of how Skeletor crash-landed on Nordor and discovered its power. He also establishes himself as master over the Evil Mutants:

German Ehapa Verlag He-Man Magazine

The prototype Nordor playset appears illustrated on the cover of issue 6 of Ehapa Verlag He-Man, 1989:

It also appears in a pinup in issue 7, 1989:

I hope you’ve enjoyed this look at Nordor, both as a playset and as a location in the various New Adventures stories!

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