He-Man

I’m not generally known around these parts for a great love of the Masters Of The Universe, but I can assure you that in my youth, I had a ton of MOTU toys. In fact, while seeing the Shogun Warriors Daimos as a gift hidden in a closet is my earliest toy memory, the earliest time I can remember actually seeing toys in a store was in 1982. I was a wee lad of 7 and our local Bradlee’s had this awesome new toy on the shelf called “Castle Greyskull”. The enormous box and fantastic artwork made a huge impression on me. This was before the cartoon had aired and my only points of reference for this type of thing at that point was Conan and Thundarr, both barbarians.

Now an adult, I don’t aggressively collect these toys I had as a child, but a few years ago I was offered this large (18″) blow molded bootleg of He-Man and just couldn’t say no.

It’s a pretty bare-bones example of the character and does not include his iconic sword, shield or chest plate.

Sadly, there’s also no power punch feature. But at least this one can stand up without any help! It included 6 points of articulation with rotating joints at the neck, shoulders, waist and hips.

I’ve seen other large sized blow molded He-Man toys before (often originating in Mexico) but to the best of my knowledge, this is the biggest one out there. It absolutely towers over the figures from the original line.

As you can see above, I eventually started to pick up some more MOTU stuff here and there. I don’t know much about Masters Of The Universe variants but I’ve been told that this toy is interesting because of the color of the hair, which is apparently based on a rare Wonder Bread premium, since the hair is brown rather than the classic blonde.

But for me, the most interesting part of it is the sword. Compared to his regular sword, it’s pretty plain looking but it sure looked familiar for some reason. I felt pretty dumb when, after owning this toy for at least 2 years, I finally realized why. It is the same sword that came with the Clover Big Machine Dunbine!

OK, I guess I better wrap this up before Josh fires me for putting a huge He-Man on his website, but that sword is pretty interesting, huh? Yeah, pretty interesting…