by Adam McCombs
Tomart’s Action Figure Digest #202 features one of several articles from the magazine dedicated to the vintage Masters of the Universe toyline. Almost all of the concept art in the article below comes from former Mattel designer Ted Mayer.
The author of the article (who is not named) gets the general thrust of the history of the toyline right for the most part, although there are several factual errors. For instance, the author identifies several variant He-Man and Skeletor designs made midway through the line as early concept versions of the original figures. They also conflate Ted Mayer’s green witch concept with Evil-Lyn (they’re unrelated) and seem to place Vulture Man before Screeech or Zoar (Vulture Man came after).
Still, it’s a fun article with lots of interesting concept art and prototypes. Selections from issues 89, 90 and 91 are available from both He-Man.org and Grayskull Museum (there is definitely some overlap between those articles and this one), but I’m not aware than anyone has shared scans from this particular issue before.
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Thanks for sharing this. I never bought this magazine – I was always a Toyfare guy! Always looked forward to Twisted Mego/Toyfare Theatre!!!
Thanks for sharing 🙂
In France, we had a similary magazine who was called “Dixième Planète”.
Some vintage and modern toys was shown with explanations, interview etc…
The unnamed Tomart’s Action Figure Digest 202 author is really wrong to claim “Masters of the Universe was a creature of its time when comic books were still 25 cents”. DC Comics Presents #47 (“From Eternia — with Death”), Arak/Son of Thunder #15, DC Comics Presents #51, Fury of Firestorm #6, Justice League of America #208, Wonder Woman #297, Batman #353, Daring New Adventures of Supergirl #1, New Teen Titans #25, Superman #377, Legion of Super-Heroes #293, Warlord #63, Action Comics #537, All-Star Squadron #15, Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew #9, Detective Comics #520, and New Adventures of Superboy #35 which all included “Fate Is the Killer”, and the first MotU #1 (“To Tempt the Gods”) published by DC Comics had a 60 cent cover price. The Star comics volume released four years later started with a 75 cent cover price and jumped to $1.00 with issue 7 (“Long Live the King”). In general, the overwhelming majority of comic books already cost more than 25 cents in the late seventies.
Thanks for posting this article. I never saw it!
I am amazed at how many concepts I contributed. 98% of all sketches were mine. they even produced some of the figures after I had left the company.
That’s great Ted! I figured a lot of these were yours. I think there were originally published in earlier issues of this magazine, and then re-published later in this particular issue.