
Written by Adam McCombs
I recently got a limited edition He-Man prototype replica from Aaron (aka Snobro), a customizer based in Germany. It’s a recreation of one of the non-articulated He-Man prototypes sculpted by Tony Guerrero in 1981. Since it relates to the history of Masters of the Universe, I thought it was only appropriate to review it on the Battle Ram Blog.
Tony Guerrero’s He-Man prototype
Tony Guerrero is known by He-Man fans for his fantastically detailed sculptures of the early Masters of the Universe figures. When I interviewed Mark Taylor many years ago, he talked about the process of working with Tony on He-Man:
Tony was a great artist and a really nice man and it was my honor to work with him. I also worked on another project, TMNT with a nice and super talented guy named Scott Hensey. Working with both of these sculptors allowed me to break custom by adding a step to the development process. On the He-Man line we did a looks-like beauty sculpt, non-articulated from my “B” sheet (design sketch) for testing and sales and until we got the first shots from China. This was Tony’s idea and without this extra step, the confidence in this “weird” concept wouldn’t have happened. I repeated this process with the Turtles.
Mark Taylor
Wax Prototype
Tony sculpted a number of prototype versions of He-Man. One of the most famous is the early horned helmet version, which he sculpted first as an unarticulated “beauty sculpt” (as Mark called it) before it was molded and resin copies were created. At least one of the original wax sculptures still exists, in the collection of Luis Villagomez of The Power and the Honor Foundation. Below are some images of it from Luis and from Pete L. This version had shorter horns than the versions you’ll see a bit later in this article. You can see in the second image that it sustained some damage at one point in its life:


This wax version also showed up in an old edition of Tomart’s Action Figure Digest:

Resin Prototypes
A number of resin copies were made. One of the most famous used to be owned by Roger Sweet. As I understand it, several people who worked on He-Man were given copies of this prototype at the time. It was originally unpainted, but Roger Painted his copy in his preferred color scheme:




You can see an original, unpainted copy of the prototype in pictures of the Battle Ram prototype:



Snobro’s custom is based on the unpainted version shown in the Battle Ram Polaroids.
Snobro He-Man Prototype replica
I was lucky enough to be one of about 40 people who got their hands on the replica prototype He-Man created by Snobro. His process was actually to reverse engineer Tony Guerrero’s original sculpture by starting with the Formo Legends of Dragonore Barbaro. Barbaro’s physique was based on the the original Tony Guerrero sculpture, although it had a different costume and head design.


Snobro resculpted the feet, lower legs, forearms, hands and head. The pelvis piece was made by making modifications to a vintage Masters of the Universe pelvis. You can see the final results below:




Here is the prototype replica compared to a vintage He-Man figure:


The replica came packaged on a collector friendly card, with Roger Sweet’s memo related to the development of He-Man on one side, and a black and white version of Mark Taylor’s He-Man B-Sheet on the other. The side with Mark’s B-sheet is signed by Rebecca Salari Taylor, Mark’s widow. The pre-production Masters of the Universe logo (probably a temporary placeholder logo created by Alfredo Alcala) is a nice touch.


Also included inside the packaging is a card designating the production number, with a photo of Rebecca on the reverse side. There is also another replica of the memo related to He-Man, and a picture of one of the unpainted prototypes sculpted by Tony Guerrero on the opposite side.


Finally, there are some of the photos Snobro used as reference for his project, as well as some quotes about Tony from Mark Taylor, Roger Sweet, Martin Arriola and Martin Arriola and The Power and the Honor Foundation. Throughout the project Aaron (Snobro) and I chatted about the history of this prototype, so it’s nice to be able to hold it in person now!


As I understand it, a few extras may be auctioned off later, so if you’re interested you’ll want to follow Snobro on Instagram to stay up to date!
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