RIP to Tony Guerrero, the genius sculptor behind the first Masters of the Universe figures, who passed away 14 years ago today. Here are some quotes from He-Man designer/creator Mark Taylor about his friend Anthony G. Guerrero:

“My friend the sculptor Tony Guerrero was one of the best sculptors I’ve ever worked with ever. He was a friend of my father-in-law’s… he did all of the figures, he did them better than my B-sheets. A lot of you’ve seen my sketches, they they are certainly not shy and Tony when he did them he took them even a step further. Sometimes I’d look at it and I’d go holy mackerel that’s much better than my B-sheet.”

“And the other important guy for the line was Tony Guerrero. Tony Guerrero was a historic sculptor, who worked at Mattel, and it’s said that he also sculpted the first Barbie. Tony sculpted all the first figures himself, and he had that classical education about art and sculpture and he did an amazing job.”

“I was lucky. There was a great sculptor. His name was Tony Guerrero. He had known my wife’s family when he was growing up in Los Angeles. He’d known my wife’s family before he and I ever met. When we met, I speak a little Spanish and especially slang. And we got along great. He would take my drawings. He took one look at him and he says, I want to take a crack at this. His boss didn’t want him to. Nobody wanted him to. But he was a really good sculptor. So they’d give him some slack. And he started working with me and we started bringing stuff out. We started with the figures and we did something entirely different.”