I don’t have a specific memory of Mantisaur, but he was immediately familiar to me when I first encountered him as a grown up, so I must have bumped into the toy at some point. He’s a rather unique and sharp-looking creature, and a probably under-utilized mount for Hordak. Sadly he never caught on in the popular imagination like Battle Cat or Panthor or Swiftwind.
Mantisaur had the working name of Mantor in this July 13, 1984 illustration by Ed Watts, which was created just a few months after Hordak’s toy look was finalized by Ted Mayer. He is an apparently organic giant purple praying mantis outfitted with green armor.
Another artist at Mattel did a treatment on a number of different variants of the concept. All of them are based around an actual organic praying mantis, outfitted with weapons, a saddle, and in some cases armor. Many versions of this concept have upturned attachments at the end of the creature’s arms, which seem to have been added with the toy’s feature in mind.
We can see the final version of the figure in the cross sell artwork. The final version looks almost entirely robotic, with hints of an organic creature underneath visible only in the head and perhaps along the underside of the body.
Toy Archive uploaded some interesting images of a hard copy pre-production prototype Mantisaur:
Figure & Packaging
Mantisaur was released as a single packaged figure, and as a gift set together with Hordak. The front artwork for both was done by Joe Chiodo. The artist for the action illustration on the back is unknown.
Mantisaur was quite large, and stood on two legs with two “trapper arms.” His “action feature” was essentially that his arms could be used to manually pick up a figure in front of it. He features the same gray, black and red color scheme as his master Hordak.
Filmation Cartoon
Mantisaur appears in the She-Ra episode, A Talent For Trouble. His figure model is green, with an overall design based on the original Ed Watts concept art:
Comic Appearances
Mantisaur appears in the Between a Rock and Hard Place minicomic. He obeys verbal commands from Hordak, and in one page, it’s shown that he has the power to summon and control insect swarms, which he uses to attack the heroic warriors:
Mantisaur also appears in The Garden of Evil, a story in the third issue of the Star Comics series.
Hordak’s mount features heavily in the UK Comics Story The Power of the Mantisaur. Hordak (or actually a robot clone of Hordak) battle’s He-Man and Man-At-Arms while riding on Mantisaur (who is also, in this canon, 100% robotic) as part of a larger scheme to test He-Man’s limitations. You can read the full story in issue 32 here, courtesy of Danielle Gelehrter.
Mantisaur appeared in issue 3 of the 1987 run of German Ehapa comics:
Artwork
A nice poster by Esteban Maroto featuring Mantisaur appeared in the German Ehapa MOTU Magazine, 1989, Issue 1/2, although the steed doesn’t appear in the actual stories of that issue:
A poster featuring Mantisaur appeared in the third issue of the 1987 German series:
Mantisaur appears along with Hurricane Hordak in William George’s 1986 Eternia poster:
Mantisaur in Action
Øyvind Meisfjord has kindly shared this video of Mantisaur in action!
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Great article! Thank you! Mantisaur is my favourite steed out of the entire MOTU lore. (Mostly because awesome giant bug, but also because it was the only one with any bodily articulation.)
Biology and zoology always fascinated me, so that’s what I went for as a degree. When I was a kid, the extra upturned prongs on the end of Mantisaur’s arms irked me — until one day, I actually caught a Chinese mantis in the vacant lot behind our house, and got to see the structure of their raptorial arms up close.
Turns out the upturned prongs replicate the REAL ends of the front legs, and mantises fold them up out of the way when they’re hunting and eating. When they’re done being predators, they fold the leg-tips back down to walk on them.
I really liked Mantisaur when I was a kid. Mine came from a garage sale, and I have no memory of seeing it for sale in a store. It had a very cool creepy vibe that suited the Horde perfectly, and it saw a lot of playtime, even if I did have issues with a couple of its legs falling off with some frequency.