Category: Heroic Warriors

Heroic Warriors

Teela’s Charger

Posted on by Adam McCombs

Written by Adam McCombs

Name: Charger
Faction: Heroic Warriors
Approximate US release date: Not released

In some of the earliest media produced for Masters of the Universe, Teela is often depicted riding a golden horse or unicorn. The animal is never given a name, but is referred to as a “unicorn charger.” Fans have taken to calling the steed Charger for that reason.

Charger’s origins may lie in a January 1, 1981 “He-Man Vehicles & Accessories” idea disclosure form filed by Roger Sweet. In the form, Roger writes:

The Barbie horse, fixed or poseable legs, can be adapted to He-Man by changed color and added parts of armor, etc to make a horse vehicle.

In fact, there was a Barbie horse named Dallas, released in 1980 or 1981, that bears close resemblance to Charger as depicted in the first series of mini comics.

Several Masters of the Universe toys were reused from previous Mattel toylines, including Battle Cat, Panthor, Zoar and Screeech. Charger was never released in the vintage MOTU toyline, but I think he/she would have fit right in.

A concept drawing of a unicorn with a female rider was published in Tomart’s Action Figure Digest issue 90. The artwork is cropped, and we’re not given any information on the artist or the date. It’s possible that this is related to Teela and Charger, but it very well could be an unrelated concept (possibly for She-Ra, from the boys’ toys design team, before it was taken over by the girls’ toys group):

Image courtesy of Jukka Issakainen

Charger appears as a unicorn in the first comic, He-Man and the Power Sword, illustrated by Alfredo Alcala. The mini comic was shipped with the first wave of 1982 figures, and was probably in production in late 1981:

There is a similar scene on the cover of the Masters of the Universe Friends and Foes coloring book (cover by Fred Carillo), published in 1984:

Image source: He-Man.org

Charger appears as an ordinary horse in subsequent mini comics released in 1982, including Battle in the Clouds and The Vengeance of Skeletor. My speculation is that it would have been expensive to add a horn to the Dallas buck, so the concept was simplified to require no additional tooling. Of course it’s possible that this is just a fluke and not a planned change to the design of Charger.

Charger appears a few more times in various forms. One of the most interesting is the Grenadier “Raid of He-Man” paint and play minifigures set. The set includes Teela seated on Charger (as a unicorn), along with Skeletor, He-Man, Ram Man, Stratos, Man-At-Arms, Zodac and the Castle Grayskull weapons rack (images via He-Man.org)

Something that looks like it might be Charger appears in a 1983 MOTU puzzle, illustrated by R.L. Allen:

Charger appears in the 1983 Ladybird story, A Trap For He-Man, as well as in the 1984 story, Castle Grayskull Under Attack (images via He-Man.org):

Charger makes an appearance in issue 43 of the Italian Piú comic book series:

Image via He-Man.org; scanned and edited by MotuFlashes and Tommy.

Charger also shows up in various sticker and coloring books released throughout the first few years of the toyline (hat tip to He-Man.org user Whiplash7):

Finally, Charger (this time with a white coat) makes an appearance in the 1984 German audio story, Höhle des Schreckens (thanks to the anonymous commenter below for the tip):

Image source: He-Man.org

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Heroic Warriors

Moss Man: Heroic spy & master of camouflage (1985)

Posted on by Adam McCombs

Written by Adam McCombs

Name: Moss Man
Faction: Heroic Warriors
Approximate US release date: January 24, 1985

Moss Man is another figure that I have very clear memories of. I remember getting him for Christmas, probably in 1985. Unlike Stinkor, I didn’t remember him based on his smell. His pine scent wasn’t immediately obvious because I ripped him off of his card right next to the Christmas tree, which had an even stronger pine scent. I remember my parents had allowed us to open one present on the night before Christmas. All the lights were out in the room except for the blinking colored lights on the tree. I remember the way that Moss Man’s green and brown flock glistened in the colored lights, and the prickly texture of the figure. It wasn’t until I had got him back to my room that I realized he also had a pine scent.

Like Mekaneck and Buzz-Off, Moss Man was characterized as a spy, with the ability to blend into his surroundings. I remember being a little frustrated that I could still pick him out deep in my mother’s potted plants. His bright yellow belt gave him away every time.

It’s possible that Moss Man was based on the legendary Florida Moss Man – a creature said to roam Florida’s Withlacoochee State Forest.

Moss Man is very simple action figure. He’s a green Beast Man covered with green and yellow flock (small nylon particles), with a brown version of the mace weapon that came with Castle Grayskull. In fact, the only known prototype for Moss Man is just what you’d expect – he’s literally a Beast Man figure that someone at Mattel painted in green, brown and yellow, with some flock added over top top.

Moss Man prototype. Images via Grayskullmuseum.com
Moss Man prototype. Images via Grayskullmuseum.com

There are a few differences from the prototype to the production Moss Man. The prototype has forward-looking eyes and painted fangs. On the production Moss Man, the eyes are looking off to the side, and the fangs are painted over to give the impression of more human-like teeth. It seems to have been an effort to make the Beast Man face seem a little less angry. It was somewhat successful, although Moss Man still seems pretty intense:

Brothers from another mother.

The cross sell art seems to be derived from the vintage toy given his fangless teeth, however his eyes do look forward:

Cross sell artwork. Image courtesy of Axel Giménez.
Black and white version used in ad sheets.

The illustrated scene on the back of his packaging was done by Dave Stevens, who also illustrated Stinkor and Spikor:

Image source: KMKA

An injured Moss Man also appeared on the illustration on the back of Terror Claws Skeletor’s card:

Illustrated by Errol McCarthy. Image courtesy of Jukka Issakainen.

Moss Man was also sold in the following gift sets (second image via Grayskull Museum):

I think it’s likely that both Moss Man and Stinkor were among the first new figures to be released in 1985. Their cross sell artwork shows up first on the back of vehicle packaging, along with the figures released from 1982-1984:

Update: it turns out I was right about Stinkor and Moss man coming out early in the year – they were available at least by January 24, 1985.

Moss Man is the second and final flocked toy in the vintage MOTU toyline. The first was Panthor. Panthor’s “fur” was much shorter and smoother, however.

The Argentinian Top Toys release of of Moss Man had painted fangs, like the prototype, and his mossy “fur” was quite long and luxurious.

Picture courtesy of Axel Giménez
Picture courtesy of Axel Giménez

Although Errol McCarthy didn’t illustrate Moss Man’s cardback, he did produce this artwork intended for licensees. It features a very friendly-looking Moss Man with a more human-like face:

Moss Man and Stinkor were sold with the same mini comic – The Stench of Evil! In the story, Stinkor threatens Eternia’s wildlife with his rancid smell. Only Moss Man is able to overpower Stinkor with his pine fresh scent:

In the Filmation cartoon, Moss Man had the ability to talk to plants and transform his body:

Filmation model sheet. Image courtesy of Jukka Issakainen.

Moss Man appears in a couple of great Earl Norem illustrations that were printed as posters for the US Masters of the Universe magazine:

Image Courtesy of Jukka Issakainen

In the UK Masters of the Universe Magazine, Moss Man was colored brown and gave lessons on manners to kids:

I’m not sure why, but it seems to me that the “cheap repaints” of the Masters of the Universe toyline are among the most memorable action figures. Faker, Stinkor and Moss Man were all entirely made from recycled molds, and yet they seem to be among the most memorable figures in the toyline. Maybe it’s because Mattel tried to make up for that fact by giving them audacious colors (Faker), a powerful and funky smell (Stinkor) or prickly “fur” (Moss Man).

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9
Heroic Warriors

Mekaneck: Heroic human periscope! (1984)

Posted on by Adam McCombs

Written by Adam McCombs

Name: Mekaneck
Faction: Heroic Warriors
Approximate US release date: December 14, 1983

Mekaneck is one of those figures that I never owned as a kid and had limited exposure to in general. I remember seeing him only once in the wild – when visiting some distant relatives for the first time. I remember their son showing me his He-Man collection, which included Mekaneck and Buzz-Off (the first time I had seen either figure in person).

My exposure to him as a character otherwise was mostly punctuated by his appearance in the Filmation cartoon episode, “Disappearing Dragons”, and his inclusion in the He-Man and the Insect People mini comic that came with my Prince Adam figure. More on those later.

At one point I had some doubt that Mekaneck had come out in 1983, based on things like his clamshell armor (a hallmark of 1984 figures) and his inclusion in 1984 comics only. He also doesn’t show up in Mattel dealer catalogs until 1984.

However, there were some pieces of evidence pointing to an earlier release date – one is that he appears in the 1983 Mattel Licensing Kit, along with Orko, Sorceress and Dragon Walker. This seems to indicate that Mattel was ready to promote him as a figure before many others in the 1984 line. Additionally, while Mekaneck first appears in the 1984 Mattel Dealer Catalog, he is not marked as “New for ’84” as all the other figures were (thanks to Matthew Martin for first pointing that out to me).

1984 Mattel Catalog.

However, I did eventually discover that Mekaneck was released as early as Christmas 1983, from the Mattel Fall Promotion mini catalog below.

Later, in searching through newspaper archives, the earliest Mekaneck ad I was able to find dates to December 14, 1983 (in the image below). It turns out that Mekaneck isn’t the only figure released just before the year/wave it officially belongs to – 1987 figures like King Randor, Ninjor and Clamp Champ were available as early as December 1986.

I still think it’s sensible to group figures according to yearly waves as defined by Mattel’s official dealer catalogs. So I would consider Mekaneck to be a part of the third wave, even if he came out a little earlier than the other figures.

Mekaneck’s early working name was Spy Man. The late 1982 Michael Halperin Bible describes him this way:

“SPY MAN – an able fighter, he has the ability to literally periscope his neck above obstacles in order to survey the landscape. This trait comes in handy when he’s with He-Man and they have to know the enemy’s location.”

In this concept illustration by Roger Sweet, Mekaneck has a red shirt, yellow boots and armor, a relatively simple armor design (like the final design, it covers the figure’s mouth when his neck is not extended), and a helmet design that looks a bit like it was cobbled together from a traffic cone and some ski goggles:

Image from The Power and the Honor Foundation Catalog. Concept art by Roger Sweet.

Mekaneck’s periscoping neck worked by twisting his waist. The mechanism was designed by Tony Rhodes for Mattel, and a patent was filed for it on December 29, 1983. You can locate the patent images for him on this page.

The cross sell art used for Mekaneck shows a more or less finalized version of the figure, with the exception of his extended neck, which is red:

Image courtesy of Axel Giménez

He features a quite angular, almost Devo-esque helmet and goggles and  fairly bulky and angular armor that obscures the character’s mouth when his head is in its lowest position. As in Roger Sweet’s concept art, Mekaneck reuses He-Man body, but has a unique head, armor and weapon.

The final club design is quite ornate and, again, angular. It’s a strange weapon choice for such a futuristic-looking character, although one could imagine that some of the geometric shapes on the sides of the club are actually buttons that activate hidden functions.

You can see the hand-painted final prototype in this image from the German Mattel 1984 catalog (image courtesy of Olmo):

He has a superhero-esque color scheme, which represented something of a departure for the MOTU toy line, stylistically. As mentioned earlier in the cross sell art, Mekaneck’s mechanical neck is red, but it was colored silver in the final toy.

The exposed area on Mekaneck’s face, in my opinion, very much resembles He-Man’s face. I suspect that whoever sculpted the head used a He-Man head as a base, and added the mechanical elements over top.

The illustration on the back of the card, as with many others, was done by Errol McCarthy:

Errol produced several illustrations featuring or including Mekaneck:

Mekaneck was also available in several gift sets, including a three-pack with Moss Man and Buzz-Off, a two-pack with Roboto, and another two-pack with Ram Man:

On the instructions on the back of the three-pack, Mekaneck is depicted with quite a different color scheme (Beedo Sookcool in the comments pointed out that the color scheme corresponds pretty closely to Roger Sweet’s original concept art):

In the Filmation episode, “Search for a Son,” Mekaneck’s neck is badly injured in a storm, and Man-At-Arms finds him and gives him a bionic neck. I suppose that’s as good an origin story as any for a character with such an unusual super power, although if I were Mekaneck I’d be questioning whether Man-At-Arms had ever heard of a simple neck brace.

In various stories over the years, Mekaneck was frequently paired up with Buzz-Off. That’s true of the Filmation “Disappearing Dragons” episode (one of my all time favorites), and it’s also true of Mekaneck’s appearances in the mini comic He-Man and the Insect People.

In He-Man and the Insect People, Mekaneck uses his neck to propel his head into enemies rather than as a means to spy on them:

Mekaneck uses his head as intended in The Obelisk:

Mekaneck also appears alongside Man-E-Faces and Ram Man in the 1985 mini comic, Skeletor’s Dragon.

In at least one German comic book and catalog, Mekaneck is described as an astronaut, which seems to track with his general appearance. Check out Jukka Issakainen’s video on the subject to learn more!

Mekaneck makes an appearance in the Golden Books story, Maze of Doom. Strangely, he seems to have his helmet on backwards in this panel:

In box art, Mekaneck appears most notably in the illustration for Night Stalker (1985):

He also appears as one of many characters in posters by William George:

He appears in the following line art used for black and white newspaper and flier advertisements:

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Heroic Warriors

Zoar: Fighting Falcon (1983)

Posted on by Adam McCombs
Written by Adam McCombs

Name: Zoar
Faction: Heroic Warriors
Approximate US release date: September 23, 1983

Zoar, released in 1983, is at once a toy with a fascinating history and a character with a conflicted set of origins.

I was given Zoar as a birthday gift along with Ram Man and Man-E-Faces. I had endless fun zooming around the house with him. There was something fascinating to me about the rubbery texture of his wings and his surprisingly effective wing-flapping action feature.

Like Battle Cat, Zoar was made from a previously existing mold. The Fighting Falcon started life as The Eagle in the Big Jim toy line. Released in 1973, the Eagle featured realistic colors and was packaged in several different configurations.

Indeed, it’s possible that Zoar might have been intended to look exactly like the original Big Jim bird, if this 1982 Masters of the Universe Pop-Up Game is any indication:

Update: Tokyonever has contributed pictures of a potential Zoar prototype. It has a lot of similarities to one of the Big Jim birds, although the exact color scheme is more complex, with a mix of brown, magenta, orange, black and white. Mattel may have been trying out a number of different color combinations for use with MOTU. It can’t absolutely be confirmed the the prototype below is Zoar and not a Big Jim bird, but my opinion is that it probably was, given some of the other authentic MOTU items that were sold to Tokyonever by the same source:

Zoar was soon given a more vivid color scheme. An early prototype image shows Zoar with a reddish color scheme, sitting on an apparently gray perch. The colors don’t show well in the image, so there is some ambiguity here about the exact shades used:

Another stage of Zoar’s design can be seen on the back of this mini comic book. Zoar appears in varying shades of orange, and he’s also wearing green armor outfitted with rocket boosters and bombs:



Notice that Zoar’s tagline here is “Winged fighter” rather than “Fighting Falcon”

As an aside, the cross sell artwork for Zoar was drawn by Mattel artist Errol McCarthy. Here is the original line art:

Image source

The red and orange color schemes also appears in some of the 1983 mini comics, which were no doubt produced while Zoar was still in development. Earlier DC comics feature what appears to be a brown Zoar:

The final toy was given a much more colorful paint job, with orange wings and body and blue and white accents. His stand and bomb pack were a bright red instead of the original green.

As with his Big Jim ancestor, a lever on the back of Zoar’s legs could make his wings flap. His red bomb pack somewhat hindered the movement of his wings, but it was removable.

Zoar is featured quite prominently in this commercial from Top Toys (a licensee based in Argentina):

Zoar was sold in a number of different configurations. As a single figure, his packaging featured an illustration by the amazing Rudy Obrero. The artwork catches Zoar in mid-dive in the foreground while He-Man and Skeletor duke it out in the distance, presumably fighting over Castle Grayskull:

Zoar box art layout sheet. Image via Grayskull Museum
Zoar packaging illustration by Rudy Obrero

Zoar was also sold in a gift set with Teela. It is not known who painted the artwork, but they clearly based their depiction of Zoar on Rudy Obrero’s artwork:

Teela and Zoar gift set packaging illustration

Zoar was also sold in a two-pack with Ram Man, although the box itself was nothing to write home about:

Interestingly, in the early 1970s Mattel produced a flying eagle toy named Zorr (thanks to Tokyonever for pointing that out). So the name as well as the figure seem to have been recycled from a decade earlier.

Although Zoar had sometimes been associated  with the Sorceress (the version with snake armor from pre-Filmation comic books), it was Filmation that made them quite literally inseparable.

In the Filmation Series Guide, it’s made clear that the Sorceress can only leave Castle Grayskull in falcon form – as Zoar. Until the debut of the Filmation cartoon, Zoar had always been referred to as a male falcon. The Series Guide design for the Sorceress is quite radically different from both previous and final designs, of course. Presumably they were trying to move away from the snake armor version of Sorceress, to avoid confusing her with Teela.

Source: He-Man.org

The Filmation cartoon eventually settled on a design for the Sorceress that followed the cues from the toy version of Zoar. Her costume had orange wings, with blue tipped feathers and white accents. When in falcon form, she never wore the bomb pack that came with the toy.

In Zoar’s appearances in the Golden Books, she (as the animal form of the Sorceress) was more or less colored like the toy, but with some additional red accents, and sometimes with a white body:

In later mini comics, Zoar and the Sorceress would be portrayed as white or sometimes pink:

A toy-accurate version of Zoar eventually made it into the mini comics in 1985:

Notice that Teela rides on Zoar (hat tip to Jukka Issakainen). In this 1983 Kid Stuff audio book, Man-At-Arms is also said to ride on Zoar:

Man-At-Arms also rides on Zoar’s back in the Kid Stuff audio book, He-Man and Battle Cat:

Image source: He-Man.org

Like Battle Cat before him, Zoar’s existence is probably due to the desire to flesh out the MOTU toyline with minimal capital expenditure. Despite the cheapness inherent in that philosophy, a lot of truly great figures came to us in that way. I think that says something about the creativity and ingenuity of the Mattel design team.

Zoar battles his nemesis Screeech in this illustration by R.L.Allen.
Zoar in the Mattel 1983 dealer catalog

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