Written by Adam McCombs

There used to be an excellent resource for MOTU Gift Sets at Grayskull Museum. Sadly that website is no longer available (you can see the archived Gift Sets page here). I think it’s valuable to have a guide to the gift sets, so I’ll be putting out a series of posts covering them all, starting with the US versions. I’ll address Canadian and European sets in separate posts. Update: apparently Grayskull Museum has been archived at a mirror site! However, I will also be covering some sets not listed at Grayskull Museum.

What is a gift set? It’s any boxed MOTU item containing two or more toys. Some of them, like the He-Man and Battle Cat set, are very well known. Others are much more obscure. Some of these were produced in quite low numbers, and so are very hard to find today.

Unfortunately I don’t have good images for every gift set. In some cases I don’t have any images at all. If you are reading this and are able to contribute better images of any of these sets, please let me know! It’s also possible that there were other gift sets I’m not aware of. If so, please let me know. The nicer images I have tend to come from auction houses like LCG, Heritage and Hakes.

One note on the standard Mattel sets – some of them were reissued in subsequent years, and so they had updated cross sell art on the back to reflect the latest toys. To keep things clean, I’m just going to visually represent the original release for each of these sets.

Mattel MOTU Sets (1982-1983)

He-Man and Battle Cat (1982)

Approximate release date: 07/02/1982

He-Man and Wind Raider (1982)

Approximate release date: 08/08/1982

Skeletor and Panthor (1983)

Approximate release date: 09/02/1983

Battle For Eternia 1 (1983)

Approximate release date: unknown, sometime in 1983

Teela and Zoar (1983)

Approximate release date: 11/02/1983

Skeletor and Screeech (1983)

Approximate release date: 10/21/1983

Heroic Warriors 1 (1983)

Approximate release date: 08/14/1983

Evil Warriors 1 (1983)

Approximate release date: 08/14/1983

JCPenney MOTU Sets

JCPenney offered sets of two figures in a rather plain cardboard box, with uncolored cross sell artwork on the front. Inside the figures were poly bagged, and included all of their accessories and minicomics. I should also add that I believe Montgomery Ward also offered these gift sets, but I’m not sure if there is any difference between them, packaging wise.

He-Man and Teela

Man-At-Arms and Stratos

Skeletor and Beast Man

Skeletor and Mer-Man

Man-E-Faces and Faker

I should also make note of some advertised sets that I’ve never seen pictures of anywhere. I’m not sure if they were all made, but someone on Facebook mentioned to me that they remembered getting the Beast Man and Stratos set.

• Stratos and Beast Man (advertised as “Winged sky baron and his savage henchman!” by JCPenney)
• Beast Man and Mer-Man (Montgomery Ward)
• Ram Man and Skeletor (JCPenney)
• He-Man and Trap Jaw (JCPenney)
• Tri-Klops and Trap Jaw (JCPenney)

Check out the full series of Gift Sets articles!

• Gift Sets of MOTU
  • Gift Sets of MOTU (1982-1983)  
  • Gift Sets of MOTU (1984) 
  • Gift Sets of MOTU (1985-1986) 
  • Canadian and European Gift Sets 

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