Evil Warriors, Snake Men

Blast-Attak: Evil Blast-Apart Robotic Warrior (1987)

Like most of the 1987 line, Blast-Attak completely escaped my notice as a kid. He’s definitely one of the more unusual Masters of the Universe characters. He has a strong steampunk vibe and a color palette not often seen in the MOTU line.

Design & Development

The earliest known concept of for a MOTU blast-apart figure appears below, in a piece by Mark Jones, illustrated February 26, 1985, shown in The Power and the Honor Foundation Catalog. This version of the character has a human face, and wears a costume festooned with spikes. You can see his trigger cord coming off of his back in the drawing below:

Later in the year a more familiar iteration appeared, this time illustrated by Richard Lepik on November 26, 1985. This is quite close to the actual toy, although it is more detailed (especially around the shoulders). This image again comes from The Power and the Honor Foundation, and was included in The Art of He-Man, published by Dark Horse. The character’s working name at this point was “Crack-Pot.”

You can see the finalized iteration of the design in the cross sell artwork below:

Blast-Attak in the 1987 Mattel Catalog.

Blast-Attak could be “detonated” via a remote cable. The cable would connect to his back. A trigger/wire running through the cord would released release the spring-loaded latches holding the figure’s torso together. The patent was filed September 16, 1986, and you can see the illustrations for it below:

Toy & Packaging

Blast-Attak came with a large red poleax that continues with the steam punk theme on the figure itself. His trigger cable was actually reused from the Bravestarr Fort Kerium playset, which used the cable to “blow up” a safe.

His packaging, typical of 1986 and 1987 figures, included an illustration of the character on the front as well as the back:

Image via He-Man.org/Jukka Issakainen

Style Guide

According to the 1987 Style Guide, Blast-Attak was affiliated with the Evil Warriors. He is described like this:

Power: Ability to blast apart to attack and knock down enemies who approach him from both sides at once.

Character Profile: Blast-Attak is a robotic muscleman with an extremely short fuse. He loves to surprise enemies with his sudden split-apart power.

Comics & Stories

Blast-Attak came packed with Revenge of the Snake Men. Contrary to what the style guide says, here Blast-Attak is a creation of King Hiss and is aligned with the Snake Men (images below are from Dark Horse and from He-Man.org).

In the Fall 1987 issues of the US MOTU Magazine, Blast-Attak appears in the story Rescue King Randor. In the story Blast-Attak is working with both the Snake Men and the Evil Warriors, and all of the are directed by Skeletor:

The same alliances seem to be in place in The Dark Power of Skeletor, which appears in the Fall 1988 issues of MOTU Magazine:

In the seventh issue of the 1987 Star Comics MOTU series, Blast-Attak is aligned with the Evil Warriors. His power is used primarily to avoid downward sword strikes.

Blast-Attak puts himself back together incorrectly

He appears again with Ninjor and Scare Glow in the MOTU Newspaper story, Ninjor Stalks by Night:

Artwork

Blast Attak appears in posters by both Earl Norem and William George, shown respectively:

Image courtesy of Jukka Issakainen

Because he was at the tail end of the line, he’s not depicted in all that many stories or art pieces, but I’ve included a representative sample, including the advertising line art below:

For more history behind the character, see Jukka Issakainen’s excellent video:

Blast-Attak in Action

Øyvind Meisfjord has graciously contributed the following image and video showing Blast-Attak in action:

8 thoughts on “Blast-Attak: Evil Blast-Apart Robotic Warrior (1987)

  1. Great stuff! Thank you! I never saw any of the full-size MOTU comic books as a kid, so all that stuff is entirely new to me. This was an extremely fun toy to play with back in the 1980s, though I can imagine why it wouldn’t go down so well, these days.

  2. one thing odd about blast-Attak.. fiction seams to debate from appearance as to how robotic he is but, isn’t a Robotic warrior far more in line with the Robotic or atleast Cyborg nature of the Evil Horde? where most of the warriors (despite the heavy magic fiction) are either robots or heavy augmented with robotic parts compared to either the Snake men or the Evil warriors..

    also wonder why since he clearly had a thermometer and pressure gauge, they never seamed to think it was a good thing to use them in the fiction…

  3. He does appear in quite a few of the German EHAPA comics, which were also published in UK. Not necessarily using his gimmick, but at least speaking some lines.

  4. Great article! I showed his action feature to my wife for fun. A piece of gold plastic broke off from the back… Got a replacement for the damaged half, and will never use the action feature again because of the GPS problem.

      1. GPS is a misnomer but yeah.. I kinda said about it also appearing in Mattel produces before with my Jitsu figure but it doesn’t surprise me that a figure like this has it too.. though most of the plastic under pressure is surely the red… and since people often confuse normal plastic wear and degrade with GPS.. mm.. might be GPS or might just be bad plastic..

      2. my five year old son was playing with blastattack, his right half fell on the floor and shattered like glass. I wish that we could get a rerelease of BA in the origins line

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