Category: Evil Mutants

Evil Mutants

Doomcopter: Jaw Snapping Helicraft (1991)

Posted on by Adam McCombs

Written by Adam McCombs

In the 1989 “New Adventures” He-Man reboot, the Evil Mutants had the coolest toys. That’s true of the figures, and it’s true of the vehicles and playsets as well. My personal favorite vehicle from this line is the Doomcopter, or Skullcopter as it is known in the European market.

Image source: Battle Armor Dad
Image: Grayskull Museum

Design & Development

Doomcopter was designed by David Wolfram, who did the design work for most of the Evil Mutants. His typical style is evident here – a Gigerian mixture of organic elements and technology, with a heavy dose of body horror and skull imagery.

Doomcopter concept sketch by David Wolfram

In my interview with David, he had this to say about the design:

Lots of Giger influence there. I have this one partial sketch. As you can see on both this product as well as Nordor, the skull motif is an an important design element. I really didn’t do a lot of vehicles. I did an early sketch of a walking tank like vehicle which ended up becoming Terrorclaw and the Shuttle Pod. The vehicles ended up being designed by three different people: Dave McElroy, Steve Fouke, and Miller Johnson. Oh, and the Starship was designed by Terry Choi.

David Wolfram

Vehicle & Packaging

Doomcopter was released in 1991, with a trademark filing date of February 2, 1990. The front of the box features some wonderful artwork by William George, showcasing Disks of Doom Skeletor, Battle Punch He-Man and Tuskador:

The back of the packaging has some interesting information about Doomcopter:

I believe the cross sell art here is largely from Errol McCarthy, but I don’t know for sure.

Doomcopter
Night-strike helicraft

Primary Mission: 1) To transport Skeletor from space base Skuldor to the battlefield, 2) To launch suprise attacks against Guardian forces

Main Base: Space Base Skuldor on planet Denebria’s hollow moon

Battle Specs: 1) Guardian grabbing jaws for hand to mouth combat, 2) Rip-rotor for wrecking guardian strongholds, 3) Skull shield glows in the dark for midnight sneak attacks

The above description gives it a different appellation than the front of the box – it’s the “Night-strike helicraft” rather than the “Jaw snapping helicraft.” It also refers to “Skuldor,” which appears to actually be referring to Nordor. Perhaps Skuldor was an alternative name for it early on that didn’t get corrected on the packaging. Skuldor is also referenced on the packaging for Butthead and Terrortread.

The toy itself is lightweight but very nicely sculpted, with a little blue overspray on the purple body.

Rip-Rotor detail

The skull façade glows in the dark very weakly, and can be a bit hard to capture:

Here is a scan of the instructions, which go over the various features. The snapping jaw was controlled by the lower button, and the higher button would release the flying “Rip-Rotor” once it had been wound up sufficiently. It featured stirrups as well to help keep the figure in place, although it didn’t fit every figure.

Comics & Stories

To my knowledge, Doomcopter never appeared in the various international comic book stories (UK MOTU Magazine, German Ehapa Verlag, Italian Magic Boy, etc.) It did, however, appear in a couple of He-Man magazine issues that featured toy photography with inventive dioramas to tell stories and, of course, sell toys.

1990, Issue 2: Gefahr Für Primus

1991: He-Man News

Jetlag Animated He-Man Series

Doomcopter in the Jetlag New Adventures of He-Man Series is pretty faithful to the toy design. One liberty taken with it is that it has a laser cannon mounted inside the mouth, which Skeletor uses as its primary attack weapon.

From “You’re in the Army Now,” a story involving Adam on trial for allegedly deserting his post and betraying the Galactic Guardians. The story is largely told in flashback. In this particular instance, Doomcopter ends up crashing into the side of a mountain.

From “The Running of the Herd,” where the Evil Mutants ambush the Guardians on the planet Equinos during Sagitar’s people’s ceremonial “running of the herd:”

Because it appeared at the tail end of the New Adventures line, unfortunately there isn’t a ton of media or artwork for this vehicle. Still, it’s a fun design and definitely worth picking up for any New Adventures collector.

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Evil Mutants

Optikk: Evil Mutant Spy (1990)

Posted on by Adam McCombs

Written by Adam McCombs

Optikk is widely regarded as one of the best figures to come out of the 1989 He-Man line. Featuring a giant eyeball for a head and a metallic bronze costume, Optikk remains a fan favorite to this day.

Image source: Battle Armor Dad, from the 1990 Mattel catalog.
Image source: Battle Armor Dad, from the 1990 Mattel catalog. Note this version has a copper-colored weapon
Image source: Battle Armor Dad, from the 1989 Sears Wishbook

Design & Development

Optikk was designed by David Wolfram. In my interview with David a few years back, he explained his design process, with Optikk originally being intended for the original Masters of the Universe line:

DW: It was always one of my favorites. He was originally something that I did for a MOTU theme testing board, and he made it into the first wave of evil New Adventures figures.

As designers, we had been asking for quite a while for some nice molded metallics, and we finally got them. I know I used a lot of that dark bronze and copper over the next few years. We actually had a fairly limited palette to work from based on the Munsell color system, and unfortunately many of the colors were too ‘pretty’ for my design ethic, so I ended up using the same colors over and over again. To get any new colors into the system took forever, and took an act of congress. Later, as we started working on more licensed properties where we had to used specific colors from a style guide, that system was abandoned.

Organic-looking Optikk concept by David Wolfram

DW: In the early sketch of Optikk, the thought was that his eye would be removable and go into the forks of the staff. We were looking at making the eye like the compasses that went on car dashboards at that time, but I imagine that approach ended up being too expensive, so we went with the simpler execution. The eye tampo design was the same one that I had designed and used on “Boglins”, another Mattel creature line from that time.

In the space pirate concept below, we can see parts of Optikk’s design on the lower legs. The upper body design was adapted for Disks of Doom Skeletor:

Image courtesy of David Wolfram

In the Power and the Honor Foundation catalog and The Art of He-Man, a couple of other iterations of the idea were shown. One was “Eyeyik,” a strange cyborg creature with purple skin:

The other was a rendering of Optikk closely based on the original “organic” concept, but this time with a technological costume added over top.

Image source: The Power and the Honor Foundation/The Art of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe

Update: Thanks to Nigel Willis to pointing me toward a full version of the above concept art, dated March 18, 1987. It was retrieved from the DK Masters of the Universe Book, although I’m sure it originated with The Power and the Honor Foundation:

Update: I found another piece of Optikk concept art buried in a post in the Geeks_Antiques instagram page. This is a full rendering of Optikk, closer to final but with red and gray armor. It was found included with some Captain Power artwork, and dates to April 25, 1988. You can see this color scheme on Optikk in his appearance on the cover of an Italian notebook cover, toward the end of this article.

A hand-painted prototype model of the figure appears below:

Image via Grayskull Museum

Figure & Packaging

The figure featured a dial on the back to move the eye back and forth. The arm was also spring-loaded for a “quick-draw” effect.

The card provided a short bio for Optikk, which I’m reproducing below:

Evil Mutant Spy from the foggy polar region of evil planet Denebria. The Denebrian fog is so dense here that he has a spyball eyeball that sees through almost anything. His rotating spyball and his Photon Neutralizer weapon make him one of the meanest mutants in the Tri-Solar System.

Mission: To assist Skeletor and the rest of the Evil Mutants by keeping his eye on He-Man and the Galactic Guardians from planet Primus.

Battle Equipment: Photon Neutralizer weapon.

We get another nice image of Optikk on this Spanish playing card, which comes courtesy of Mundo Masters:

Animation

Optikk appears as one of the primary Evil Mutants on the New Adventures of He-Man cartoon series. In the show, he has quite a darkly-colored costume, possibly because the hand-painted Optikk prototype costume looked much darker than the final figure. His pupil looks robotic rather than organic. His job on the show is typically as navigator for the Evil Mutants. There is a longer discussion of his appearances on the cartoon here.

Optikk in an upgraded costume in “The Games”

In the series Bible for New Adventures of He-Man, we get the following information about him:

Comics & Stories

Optikk appears in three of the four minicomics produced for the toyline. In these stories he’s typically portrayed as the kind of bumbling henchman often seen in the original Masters of the Universe stories. (Minicomic images comes from the Dark Horse MOTU Minicomic collection.)

From Skeletor’s Journey. Image via the Dark Horse Minicomic Collection

From Battle For The Crystal. Image via the Dark Horse Minicomic Collection

From The Revenge of Skeletor. Image via the Dark Horse Minicomic Collection

Optikk appears in the 1990 UK MOTU Annual, in Into The Deepest Dungeon:

He’s also given a short bio, which is similar to the one on his cardback. The main difference is his “Photon Neutralizer” is called a “Fazer Flash Gun.”

He also appears in “The Drumskalan From the Denebrian Swamp.”

Optikk appears in a number of the later UK Adventure comics, including this 1990 story, “The End of He-Man.”

Optikk also appears in a poster included with issue 23:

There was a series of German MOTU magazines with stories that were illustrated using still images of the figures, set within dioramas. Optikk appears in several of the later issues:

Optikk also appears in this Italian storybook, “Cosmic Explosion.” Unfortunately I only have an image of the cover:

There’s an interesting image of Optikk that appeared in an Italian school notebook (branded as Masters of the Universe rather than He-Man). The image depicts Thunder Punch He-Man (the New Adventures version) hitting Optikk (who features a red and black costume) while tossing Karatti (in early concept form) over his shoulder.

The pose in the artwork above is actually copied from an earlier minicomic, The Masks of Power, illustrated by Alfredo Alcala:

Within the notebook there is a short comic in Italian which also includes Optikk:

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Evil Mutants

Disks of Doom Skeletor (1990)

Posted on by Adam McCombs

Written by Adam McCombs

Disks of Doom Skeletor is the first Skeletor variant in the “New Adventures” of He-Man toyline, after the original 1989 release. It’s got quite a striking design, with a costume that looks like something like a cross between H.R. Giger and the heavy industrial art deco aesthetic of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.

Design & Development

Disks of Doom Skeletor was designed by David Wolfram, who worked on figures like Laser Light Skeletor and Snake Face in the original MOTU line. The concept originated with an abandoned space pirate idea. In my interview with David, he explained:

The skull armor was something that came out of brainstorms of new MOTU segments. One one my proposals was mutant space pirates, with many of them wearing variants of skull armor. Once we started working on the new line, I adopted that for the Skeletors that I designed.

David Wolfram

The above design has the general Disks of Doom theme down, with the skull face on the chest armor and the bulky helmet. The legs of this costume design would eventually go to Optikk. David developed the following more finalized design for Skeletor in the drawing below, which appears to be a black and white photocopy of a color original:

The figure was to have a cocking spring waist feature, allowing it to fling disks from a hand-held launcher. It would also have LISA (light transmitting plastic) eyes, so that light from behind the figure would pipe through the back of the head and make the eyes appear to glow red. A similar feature was used on the Inhumanoids line.

[Disks of Doom Skeletor] was one of my favorite figures in that line. Mattel was very gun-shy (no pun intended) about using projectiles. By using the discs, we got around all the safety concerns. I also liked that a child could cock the figure, and then launch the disc using the trigger. It also gave me the opportunity to use the styling that I had been playing around with, and as a twofer I also got the LISA glowing eyes.

David Wolfram

In the image below, included in the 2009 Mattel art book, we see an illustration of Disks of Doom Skeletor battling against his 1990 counterpart, Battle Punch He-Man (whose shield in this illustration is quite different from the actual toy design). Unfortunately no information is provided about the provenance of this illustration. The design for Skeletor’s costume matches pretty well with the final figure, but all the metallic elements are gold, or perhaps somewhere between gold and copper:

Image courtesy of Jukka Issakainen

The cross sell artwork (below) as well as the illustrations on the packaging show Disks of Doom Skeletor again with a differently colored costume compared to what was used on the final toy – he has copper helmet and chest armor, rather than silver.

We can see the hand-painted final prototype in Mattel’s 1990 dealer catalog, with revised metallic colors:

This late prototype lacks the extra latch on the helmet that the final toy had. Image source: Battle Armor Dad.

Production Figure

The production figure came with a copper colored “Psychotronic Disk Launcher”, two “Disks of Doom”, and a wrist clip. He has the familiar pale blue skin, which is bristling with technological implants. His boots and gloves are a dark bronze, with copper skulls at the knees. The boots are tall and architectural, almost like he’s walking around wearing 1930s-era skyscrapers. The iron skull design on his chest looks very heavy industrial. Unlike the 1989 Skeletor, Disks of Doom variant returns to the classic Skeletor face coloring of yellow and green.

The mask closes and highlights Skeletor’s glowing eyes. Unfortunately the hinges on the mask are just a thin plastic crease, meaning the plastic will often become stressed with repeated closing and opening over the years, causing it to tear.

Waist cocked.

Helmet closed.

Packaging

The front of the packaging for the figure features artwork by William George (or at least I think it’s his work):

Closeup of illustration

The back of the card features some information on the background and abilities of Disks of Doom Skeletor:

The ultimate evil lord of destruction! While hiding on the dark moon of Denebria, Skeletor discovers the secret entrance to the long forgotton space base, Skuldor. There in the heart of the ancient underground caverns he finds The Disks of Doom, psychotronic weapons so powerful that they could turn He-Man into a mindless slave!

Mission: To destroy He-Man’s will with the mind-bending power of the Disks of Doom. With He-Man in his power, there will be no stopping his Mutant star-legions from conquering the peaceful people of Primus and spreading his evil empire throughout the galaxy.

Battle Equipment: Psychotronic Disk Launcher, 2 Disks of Doom

In the packaging description, somehow Skeletor can use the Disks of Doom to make He-Man a mindless slave. That doesn’t really make much sense – I would have thought Skeletor’s glowing eyes (which strangely aren’t mentioned on the package) would have more to do with that ability. “Skuldor” may be an early working name for the Nordor moon base.

Instructional illustration
Bio illustration

Phantasy Star III

Curiously, an almost identical design is present in the principle villain (illustrated version) in Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom (thanks to Stradlemonkey for pointing this out). The game was released in 1990, the same year as Disks of Doom Skeletor. Disks of Doom Skeletor’s trademark was filed on November 16, 1989, and I’m certain the artwork is based on Mattel’s design rather than vice versa. Perhaps it was originally commissioned for He-Man, but never used. The artist might have reworked the face and repurposed it for the Sega Genesis game instead.

Animation

Skeletor acquires his Disks of Doom costume quite early on in the animated series. In episode 6, “Sword & Staff”, Skeletor discovers a crystal that temporarily magnifies Quakke’s power. Skeletor later uses the crystal, which originated on Primus and was responsible for the creation of Nordor, to become more powerful himself. His costume is altered in the process.

Advertising

Disks of Doom Skeletor shows up of course in Mattel’s catalogs. I haven’t found an example of the figure in a retailer’s catalog so far. If I come across anything, I’ll be sure to update the article.

The above comes from Mattel’s 1990 Dealer Catalog. Image source: Battle Armor Dad

The above comes from Mattel’s 1990 Dealer Catalog. Image source: Battle Armor Dad
The above comes from Mattel France’s 1990 Dealer Catalog. Image source: Grayskull Museum

Other Appearances

Petteri Höglund helpfully pointed out that Disks of Doom Skeletor appears in the box art for several New Adventures oversized items, as well as on the cover of this promotional VHS tape:

I’ve mentioned before, I think that all of the Skeletor designs from the New Adventures line stand out as unique little pieces of pop culture modern art. Even if you don’t collect the 1989 He-Man line, the Skeletor figures are certainly worth owning.

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Evil Mutants

Skeletor: Ultimate Evil Lord of Destruction (1989)

Posted on by Adam McCombs

Written by Adam McCombs

The 1989 He-Man reboot included no characters from the original Masters of the Universe line, other than He-Man and Skeletor. The so-called “New Adventures” line is filled with colorful, oddball villains (and, frankly, some less-than-exciting heroes). My favorite figures from the line are the various Skeletor variants, and the 1989 version is no exception.

The New Adventures series isn’t well loved by most He-Man fans, but in a way it seems like an effort by Mattel to step things up a notch. These figures that had better articulation, more sculpted detail, and quite a bit of painted detail compared to the original line, and with little or no reuse of parts.

All of the New Adventures Skeletor variants were based on designs by David Wolfram. The initial 1989 release was technically designed by Mark Dicamillo, but it had been modeled on Wolfram’s original Laser Light Skeletor design.

Laser Light Skeletor concept art (working title: Bio-Mechazoid Skeletor), by Dave Wolfram
Laser Light Skeletor, released in Europe in 1988.

The broad conceptual ideas were carried over for the New Adventures design, but the color scheme was modified, initially with a lot of dark blue and red details, with a purple cape. In the concept art below (drawn up by David Wolfram for presentation) Skeletor was also given some kind of pouches at his legs, and a new red staff design featuring a human skull with a bat on top. He was given different boots and, for the first time, gloves. He also features a helmet rather than his usual cloth hood:

Concept art by Dave Wolfram, from May 25, 1988. Image via The Art of He-Man.

The concept version of the character actually makes an appearance on a 1989 bag, although this version has a red cape:

A CGI version of the concept Skeletor (albeit with a finalized staff) also appears in a promotional video (thanks to Dušan M. for the tip):

In the produced toy, the color scheme was altered again, with much more red throughout the costume, and contrasting purple boots and gloves. The staff was redesigned, with some prongs at the end that look like they could shoot bolts of electricity. The helmet and staff were molded in gun metal gray. The pouches he was wearing on his thighs were changed to cybernetic implants.The final figure has a white face with a forest green border around it – the only Skeletor to feature that particular color scheme.

A hand-painted version of the final figure appears in the 1989 French He-Man catalog:

Image source: Grayskull Museum
Image source: Grayskull Museum

In the 1989 German He-Man magazine, Skeletor is depicted a couple of times wearing a bizarre-looking helmet. I’m not sure exactly what it’s supposed to be:

Hand-painted final prototype on a Spanish playing card. Source: http://cuevadelterror.blogspot.com

The final production figure appears in the US 1989 dealer catalog:

One of the coolest things about the figure, in my opinion, is some of the sculpted detail on his back and the back of his head. This is obscured by his cape and helmet normally. It’s quite creepy looking:

Update: I just learned about a paint variant for this figure from the excellent German site, He-Man-NA.de. Some versions sold in Europe and Canada had a fully painted belt and a painted mechanical piece on the back, which matches how the prototype figure was painted:

The staff has a rather creepy looking, chitinous creature around the back of the skull, which wraps its tail around the upper handle:

Skeletor has a fun but rather subtle action figure. When you turn his waist his hands raise up, making him lift his staff as if he’s in battle.

Cross sell artwork. Image courtesy of Jukka Issakainen.

The commercial for the electronic He-Man Power Sword actually has really great footage of an actor dressed as “New Adventures” Skeletor. This costume also shows up in the He-Man vs Skeletor commercial shown earlier in this article.

Skeletor was sold on his own card and in a gift set with He-Man. The artwork on the front was painted by long-time MOTU packaging illustrator, William George.

Packaging art by William George. Image from The Art of He-Man.
Note that this version of Skeletor has a darker cape
This packaging could be reused to include Flogg or Slushhead – hence the generic “Evil Mutant” on the front of the card.

According to the 1989 Sears Christmas Wishbook, Skeletor was supposed to be available in a gift set with Hydron, but I’ve never seen an example of that:

Image source: http://www.wishbookweb.com/

There were four minicomics produced for the 1989 He-Man reboot, and all of them featured Skeletor. In the first, The New Adventure (illustrated by Errol McCarthy), Skeletor interrupts Prince Adam as he transformed into He-Man, and is badly injured. In Skeletor’s Journey (illustrated by Carrol Lay), he uses bionic replacements to heal himself and we see him finally in his new costume.

The character looks particularly dynamic in the Bruce Timm-illustrated The Revenge of Skeletor:

In the bottom right panel, we get a look at the cybernetics on Skeletor’s back.

The New Adventures of He-Man animated series (produced by Jetlag Productions) features the character for a surprisingly few episodes before he’s upgraded to his Disks of Doom variant costume. The series starts off on Eternia, before He-Man and Skeletor are whisked off into the future, but both of them already sport their New Adventures costumes. Unfortunately Skeletor has some off-putting and comical-looking eyes for the first five episodes. Otherwise his costume is fairly true to the toy, minus the electrical implants in his body:

By episode six the eyes are blackened, but he also changes to his Disks of Doom costume by the end of the story:

Character-wise the New Adventures version of Skeletor was a more comical figure, manipulating and flattering rather than pounding his fists and demanding. He wasn’t leading his own army at this point – he was dependent upon the cooperation of the Evil Mutants, lead by Flogg.

Initially Mattel had planned to ask Filmation (the studio that had produced the first He-Man cartoon), to animate the new reboot, to be titled He-Man and the Masters of Space (information via Dušan M./James Eatock). Filmation went out of business in 1989, but they did create some artwork and a basic storyline for the pitch. Skeletor’s visual depiction is somewhere midway between the original concept design and the final toy:

Image via the Ancient Library of Grayskull Facebook group/Dušan M.

The 1989 He-Man series was featured in the UK He-Man Adventure Magazine. In this story Skeletor is beamed aboard the ship of Flipshot and Hydron, but Prince Adam tags along for the ride. Strangely we don’t get an explanation for Skeletor’s costume change (images are from He-Man.org):

UK He-Man Magazine pinup
Pinup from German He-Man magazine. Artwork by Giuliano Piccininno – information is from the MOTU Art Facebook page.

There was a series of Italian notebooks that featured New Adventures artwork. The cover of one of them features a concept-art inspired Skeletor (thanks to Petteri H. for the tip):

The Italian magazine Magic Boy featured quite a few New Adventures stories. In one of them, Skeletor acquires a magical chest harness from a six-armed statue and soon after grows six arms of his own (images are from He-Man.org):

Overall I think the rebooted 1989 Skeletor has quite a compelling design, and is worth picking up even if you’re not, generally speaking, a New Adventures fan. In fact, all of the revamped Skeletors are worth a look.

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