Tag: Battle Ram

Artwork

Invented characters in Rudy Obero’s packaging artwork

Posted on by Adam McCombs

Written by Adam McCombs

Freelance illustrator Rudy Obrero left an indelible mark on the Masters of the Universe landscape. He was originally selected by Mattel designer Mark Taylor for his ability to produce artwork in the style of Frank Frazetta, a major early influence on the He-Man toyline. Rudy’s moody atmospheres have made him a fan favorite in a toyline that was blessed with many talented artists and designers.

Today I’d like to take a look at something we often don’t notice in this artwork – the background characters and vehicles that never existed as actual toys.

The artwork referenced in this post includes:

Battle Cat

The original Battle Cat artwork (the first piece painted by Rudy for the He-Man toyline) is pretty sparse. You have He-Man on Battle Cat, some rocks and Castle Grayskull in the background, and not much else.

However, if you look more closely at the Castle, you’ll notice a barbarian warrior manning the laser canon on the castle turret:

In the background, to the left of Battle Cat’s helmet, you can also see a couple of shadowy figures:

In the original charcoal drawing (a piece owned Eamon O’Donoghue, who graciously shared a picture of it), you can also see there were going to be a few more background characters in the illustration, but they were dropped in the final oil painting. Like many of Rudy’s background characters, they look like barbarian warriors straight from a Frank Frazetta painting.

Image source: Vaults of Grayskull

There are two warriors on the turret in this version.

Castle Grayskull

Rudy’s Castle Grayskull artwork has nearly a complete line-up of all the 1982 action figures, with the exception of Mer-Man. But there are also two shadowy figures in the background, behind Beast Man.

Rudy also includes a small fleet of flying Sky Sled-like vehicles. They are v-shaped and each appears to have a single pilot.

Battle Ram

Rudy’s Battle Ram illustration features a barbarian warrior with a Viking helmet, and the suggestion of at least a couple of figures on the turrets of Castle Grayskull.

It also features six of the V-shaped Sky Sled-like vehicles that appeared in the Castle Grayskull painting, each with its own pilot. Some of them are shown in side profile here. The basic design seems to be the front half of the Battle Ram without the griffin figure head, and extended, swept-back wings.

Wind Raider

Rudy Obrero’s Wind Raider illustration features about a dozen warriors at ground level, most in silhouette. One of them, however, is a blue-skinned warrior with red armor and helmet. Update: this may in fact be Stratos. Thanks to Øyvind M. for pointing this out!

The artwork also features three Wind Raiders, each with an unknown pilot, mounting an attack on He-Man, who mounted his own attack against Castle Grayskull.

He-Man and Wind Raider

The illustration for the He-Man/Wind Raider gift set shows the clearest example of an invented character. I used to think this was an off-model version of Zodac, but Rudy has said he hadn’t seen Zodac when he did the painting (indicating this was done before Castle Grayskull). Dubbed the “Warrior in Red” by fans, he is just that. His costume looks a bit like He-Man’s, but recolored. He seems to have some kind of red and gray helmet on, but it’s hard to make out any details.

Behind Skeletor, Beast Man, and the Warrior in Red is a small army of shadowy figures. Presumably they’re aligned with Skeletor.

Special thanks to Shawn, who gave me the idea for this post.

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10
Commercials, Videos

1982 US He-Man Commercials

Posted on by Adam McCombs

by Adam McCombs

For kids who grew up on Saturday morning cartoons, toy commercials were a reason to stay glued to the old Curtis-Mathes.

Curitis mathes
We had this exact model growing up.

The first four years of Masters of the Universe commercials were thematically unified by the underlying cave man chant in the background of almost all of them – “He-Man, He-Man!”

The commercials don’t typically come to us date stamped, so the year of release has to be inferred from the products featured. There are also, no doubt, commercials that were produced which have not yet surfaced.

One of the most fascinating commercials is this “lost” Masters of the Universe  Commercial produced by Filmation, before they produced the weekly cartoon. It contains a mixture of animation and live actors, and features He-Man, Teela, Man-At-Arms, Skeletor, Beast Man, Mer-Man, Castle Grayskull, and Battle Ram. Unlike the Filmation cartoon, the animation here is quite detailed and true to the design of the toys. In the case of Teela, her animated design looks pretty close to the prototype Teela, especially in regards to her spear and shield.

Interestingly, the above sequence where Teela throws her spear to keep He-Man from falling through the trap door is repeated in the 1983 DC Comics story, “Within These Walls… Armageddon!”

24 - Copy
25 - Copy

The first conventional, live action He-Man commercial introduces us to He-Man and Skeletor, who are fighting over the power of Castle Grayskull. Castle Grayskull here (and in the other commercials released in 1982) is not exactly a prototype, but it is hand-painted with a much nicer than typical application of greens and blacks. This version also appeared in early catalogs and print ads:

The next live action commercial released in 1982 features He-Man fighting against Beast Man. This time the focus is more on the Castle and its interior than the characters:

Update: recently the Battle Ram and Wind Raider commercial has surfaced on Youtube, so I’m sharing it below. Thanks to Andrea P. for the nudge!

I’m not entirely sure that the last commercial (below) was released in 1982. I’ve seen it included with in a series of commercial labeled 1982. Based on that I will include it here, with an asterisk. Faker is generally included in the 1983 wave of figures, but there is some indication he may have come out late in 1982. Update: based on additional research into newspaper ads for all the figures, I’m confident that Faker wasn’t released until Spring 1983.

The He-Man vs Faker commercial is a little unique in that it includes a bit of a backstory for Faker. “Skeletor” tells the audience that he created an evil doppelganger of He-Man to destroy  the real He-Man. The actors reference the “He-Man” chant, although it doesn’t actually appear in this commercial:

If I had to guess an order to these commercials, I would say that He-Man vs Skeletor (live action) came first. He-Man vs Beast Man was probably second. The animated commercial was likely third (based on its inclusion of additional characters that were developed after He-Man, Skeletor and Beast Man) and the Faker commercial was almost certainly done last.

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3
Commercials, Videos

Top Toys Commercials

Posted on by Adam McCombs

by Adam McCombs

Masters of the Universe toys were produced under license by various international toy manufacturers in the 1980s. One of those manufacturers was Top Toys, based out of Argentina.

In addition to manufacturing Masters of the Universe toys (including the famous “Kamo Khan”), Top Toys produced some high quality television commercials for the MOTU product line. Here are the five that have surfaced so far, which heavily feature He-Man, Mer-Man, Skeletor, Zoar, Battle Ram, Panthor, Man-E-Faces, Clawful, Spikor, Sy-Klone, Land Shark, Battle Bones, Snout Spout and others.

Special thanks to Andy W. for pointing out the “Top Toys He-Man Offer” video to me, and to “Anonymous” (in the comments below) for sharing the last two videos.

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6
Heroic Vehicles

Battle Ram prototype

Posted on by Adam McCombs

Written by Adam McCombs

In this post I’d like to take a closer look at the Battle Ram prototype. For a more exhaustive treatment of this vehicle, see the toy feature.

Designed by Ted Mayer and sculpted by Jim Openshaw, the Battle Ram prototype was in some ways more impressive than the final toy.

Here is the prototype Battle Ram, from various angles (also shown is the prototype helmeted He-Man figure):

Images 1, 4 and 5 are courtesy of Ted Mayer; images 2 and 3 were retrieved from He-Man.org.

The overall profile is very similar to the final toy, but when you look closely, there are many subtle differences. I’ll go over each photo of the prototype and compare it with a similar photo of the final toy, noting some of the differences in each:

Prototype angle 1
Toy angle 1
Prototype angle 2
Toy angle 2
Prototype angle 3
Toy angle 3
Prototype angle 4
Toy angle 4
Prototype angle 5
Toy angle 5

Notice in the fifth prototype image, the front half of the Battle Ram seems to have a greenish tint (in most images it looks grayish-blue). Perhaps the paint took on that tonality depending upon the lighting. That might explain the greenish coloration of Rudy Obrero’s illustration for the Battle Ram packaging. On the other hand, his color choice may have been determined by the lighting in his landscape.

Speaking of which, Rudy’s illustration is also based on the prototype Battle Ram, although it features the reptilian sticker on the front section from the final toy, as well as a modified missile:

As you can see, his illustration is quite faithful to the source material, although he did elongate the front half of the vehicle. He also gave it a jet engine nozzle at the rear, visible when in flight mode:

Alfredo Alcala’s Battle Ram cross sell art is also based on the prototype vehicle:

The prototype also shows up in the 1981 “Fast Male Action for Licensees” kit:

Licensing kit images courtesy of Michael Jay

It was also featured in issue 90 of Tomart’s Action Figure Digest:

The prototype was very likely based on this control drawing dated May 28, 1981, drawn by Ted Mayer. It matches up almost perfectly with the prototype Battle Ram.

“Catapult Vehicle” – image courtesy of Ted Mayer

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