
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. This article is the second in the series. Update: apparently Grayskull Museum has been archived at a mirror site!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
Other articles in this series:
Mattel MOTU Sets (1984)
Battle Armor He-Man and Battle Cat (1984)
Approximate release date: 10/27/1984


Battle Armor Skeletor and Panthor (1984)
Approximate release date: 10/27/1984


Battle For Eternia 2 (1984)
Approximate release date: unknown, sometime in 1984


Battle Armor He-Man and Road Ripper
Approximate release date: 11/05/1984


Battle Armor Skeletor and Screeech (1984)
Approximate release date: 10/03/1984


Fisto and Stridor (1984)
Approximate release date: 09/04/1984


Heroic Warriors 2 (1984)
Approximate release date: 09/23/1984


Evil Warriors 2 (1984)
Approximate release date: 09/23/1984


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.
Mekaneck and Ram Man

Buzz-Off and Fisto

Jitsu and Clawful

Kobra Khan and Whiplash

Prince Adam and Orko

Man-E-Faces and Battle Armor He-Man

Webstor and Battle Armor Skeletor

I should also make note of some advertised sets that I’ve never seen packaging pictures of anywhere:
- Webstor and Jitsu (Montgomery Ward)
- Battle Armor He-Man and Kobra Khan (Montgomery Ward)
Check out the full series of Gift Sets articles!
- Gift Sets of MOTU
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