[YouTube] Masters of the Universe Merchandise

https://youtu.be/fG-wo-QOgBc

It's been quite a while since I made a video, and this one isn't of any Masters of the Universe toys, just other products that are fitting for the time of year. During the month of August many parents shop for back-to-school supplies, and more than half of these items can be considered a school supply. As a kid, it was fun to get anything that featured my favorite cartoon characters, even if it was intended for use at school.

First up are a couple of pencils, perhaps the most important item everyone needs for school. These unused pencils each include a character head as a topper, of which I have Man-At-Arms and Mer-Man. If you take the character head off, there is no eraser, it's just a plastic bit on the top.

Since the pencils don't include erasers, we'll need some of those. These Orko and Ram Man erasers are a little dirty, but never used. When not being erasers, they make for nice miniature displays.

To take notes it helps to have some paper and this small memo pad will do. Unfortunately, I wrote on the cover. It says "Intellivision" a couple times and inside I jotted down various game scores on a bunch of the pages.

How about a folder, or two, to carry around papers. While I did write on both of these as well, it makes more sense here, though I'm not entirely sure if I ever used them for anything. As you can see in the photos, I wrote my name on the "Master" line and I put the name of  my elementary school on the "Planet" line. The images are the same on the front and back, with the only difference being the back has a barcode.

Licensed stamp sets were available for many popular franchises. I showed the A-Team stamps previously, and here is another one. This packaging doesn't completely match what's inside the box, as it was likely produced before the product was finalized. It shows Teela on all sides of the box even though she doesn't have a stamp. The four stamps are for He-Man, Man-At-Arms, Skeletor, and Beast Man. You can also see on the box that the plastic stamp holders are red, black, blue, and maybe another shade of blue or purple. The actual product comes with two red and two blue stamps. Activity sheets are listed on the box as well, but if my set is complete, the "activity" sheets are blank paper. Another item that is inaccurate is the He-Man stamp sticker. The sticker on the stamp shows him facing right, but the stamp has him facing left. Surprisingly, the Man-At-Arms ink pad hasn't dried up like the others, and the markers have a little bit of life too. This one has a Toys "R" Us price tag, or part of it, showing that it cost $3 and change.

The remaining items wouldn't be considered school supplies. One is a flashlight made to look like a tower from Castle Grayskull, and the window acts as the switch. I can't show it working because the bottom is broken off, and I don't know if I still have that part.

Next is a jigsaw puzzle that I mentioned previously in a post about, you guessed it, jigsaw puzzles. I'm thinking my mother purchased this at a garage sale, which might explain the masking tape, and why it is missing seven pieces. It's a cool image, I just wish had all the pieces to show it completed. In the picture, the bad guys appear to be attacking Castle Grayskull on foot, which is not a smart move, while the heroes control the skies and the ground with a Wind Raider, Talon Fighter, Attack Trak, and Battle Ram.

Here are two bonus items: I found a Nestlé Quik sticker of Tri-Klops and a piece of wrapping paper inside of one of the folders. The other folder contained some action figure cards, but you'll have to watch the video to see those!

Year 10: July Update

The last update was in February, and not too much has happened since then. I'd meant to make at least one toy video this summer, but that hasn't happened. Life has gotten in the way and I've been a bit lazy I suppose. After building the new PC, I thought I'd play more games this year too, though I have not done that either. One thing I did do was visit Arizona, someplace I'd not been since 2014, and that gave me a little bit of time to sift through some boxes at my parent's home. They were boxes that were primarily my sister's things, however, I found some items that were mine, such as Mego Superman's cape, a Hot Wheels coloring book, and instructions to Tomy's Cosmic Clash game. Unfortunately, I didn't find what I was looking for, which would be the clothing to some 12" Star Wars figures. I want to make a video of those and I will if I ever find Obi-Wan and Luke's clothing, or at least some of it.

In the post before this one are magazine scans of the original Masters of the Universe movie, and this week I saw the new movie. I don't consider it to be good, maybe average. At nearly 2.5 hours long, I'd expect more character development, more locations, and more Battle-Cat. I'll pick a few things apart, and there will be some minor spoilers here. The movie begins with a young Adam and then he is suddenly in his 20s, and we don't know what happened when he got to Earth; who raised him? Of course, everyone's development got fast-forwarded, and we don't see what happened to Man-At Arms and Teela after a battle, and the next time we do see Man-At-Arms, he is an alcoholic. Also, Adam is very dumb, which I think is the worst part of the film. In the cartoon he acted clumsy and clueless at times to hide his identity, but he wasn't stupid. Here he makes Skeletor look like a genius by comparison. Good or bad, there is an android that, if you're a Star Wars fan, will keep reminding you of Rogue One's K-2SO. Obviously, the movie is not meant to be serious, and the writers do have fun with the silly character names, but the story could have been much better.

Speaking of movies, Hasbro is celebrating the 40th anniversary of Transformers: The Movie with a 4K theatrical release September 17th. That had been announced earlier this year, and more details have come out for it and many, many other things this weekend at San Diego Comic Con. There is plenty of news about Marvel movies, like a Ghost Rider film coming in 2028 that will star Ryan Gosling, and confirmation that Deadpool and Peggy Carter will appear in Avengers: Doomsday. Marvel will be publishing a new Indiana Jones comic book too, with the first issue coming in December. Last year, DC had announced an animated film trilogy based on the 1993/94 Batman comic book story Knightfall, and that will be available digitally on August 25th, and a physical release will follow shortly thereafter. 

It may seem way too early for Christmas, but Hallmark has already released new ornaments for the holiday season. I always mention these because they usually feature licenses related to what I talk about and are cool miniatures, and some can be displayed nicely year round. A few of the newest highlights include a PlayStation that plays the start-up sound, X-Men '97 Blackbird that plays music, and a Batcomputer from the classic TV series, with lights and sound.

And last but not least, it's LEGO time. I write the blog updates so infrequently that there is always a new LEGO set, or two, worth mentioning. One of the best video game consoles of all time got the brick treatment: Sega Genesis! You can even choose to make it a Mega Drive instead. It was announced in May and released in June at a price of $39.99. For Nintendo fans, LEGO is releasing a Donkey Kong Arcade with playable level on August 1st for $199.99.

By the way, you might notice some sort of links (blue text in a white bubble) on posts. I have no control over those, they are automatically being added by Blogger.

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Thanks for reading!

-Jonathan

The Masters of the Universe Movie (He-Man and the Masters of the Universe Magazine - Spring/Summer 1987)

Earlier this month, a new live-action Masters of the Universe movie was released. I've not seen it, so I cannot give my opinion, but I will say that I thought it looked terrible after viewing the first trailer. However, many reviews are above average and although I don't typically agree with my sister, she liked it a lot. As I write this, Rotten Tomatoes has a 68% consensus from critics and 86% from audiences. Not too bad, though this post isn't about that movie, it's simply a reason to take a quick look back at the 1987 film starring Dolph Lundgren as He-Man. I did see that movie, however, not in a very long time. It was silly, of course, with the heroes traveling through a portal to Earth, and the majority of both critics and fans didn't enjoy it. 

I've scanned a couple short articles from two issues of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe magazine. Surprisingly, there isn't a lot of movie coverage in the Summer 1987 issue featuring Dolph on the cover. There are two pages, one of which is only photos of the characters, and it does include a poster I never removed. I also scanned two pages from the Spring 1987 issue; one is a very small preview before the film's August 9th release, and the other is about a contest winner.

Summer 1987

Spring 1987

[YouTube] Masters of the Universe: The Evil Horde's Slime Pit

https://youtu.be/QPWUVRu8TBk

The Evil Horde was first introduced in the Masters of the Universe (MotU) toy line in 1985 but the antagonists never actually opposed He-Man in the original MotU animated show. Instead they ultimately became She-Ra's primary foe. While I didn't follow the She-Ra show closely, I had (and still have) the first set of Horde action figures as well as some of their accessories. Their leader is Hordak who was joined by Leech, Mantenna, Grizzlor, and robot soldiers called Horde Troopers. A couple non-traditional action figures include Modulok and Multi-Bot (this one released a bit later in 1986) that both consist of various body parts that can be put together in a variety of ways. I do own some of the Snake Men that are considered part of the Horde at times but I'm going to stick with the core group here. That being said, it's the Slime Pit accessory that's the real focus of this post.

Mattel's Slime Pit is a fairly basic toy: it's a gray L-shaped plastic base with a skull on top and a claw at the bottom to hold a figure in place. Users are meant to fill the skull with slime and pour it onto an action figure they place in the claw's grip. In the cartoon universe, the Horde's slime transforms people into monsters that obey Hordak's commands. It may not be a toy with a lot of features but it's certainly a memorable one; what kid doesn't love slime? Canisters of MotU slime were sold individually so even if you didn't have any interest in the cartoon/toys you could buy the slime to play with outside of the pit. I've still got a slime container but my only original slime is dried up. I'm not too sure if I could add water to turn it back into slime and don't want to try so I attempted to make new slime to demo the pit in the video.

Many toys get recolored and/or redesigned to be used in later toy lines and the Slime Pit is no exception. In 2002 Mattel based the Harry Potter Slime Chamber Playset on the Slime Pit. Mattel wasn't done sliming He-Man either as it created a new pit in 2003 for what was then the latest Masters of the Universe toy line. Called the Mutant Slime Pit, this one doesn't actually look similar to the original at all. Instead of dumping slime on an action figure, characters are dropped into a pit of slime. From what I can gather the slime looked different for those two play sets and the Harry Potter toy's slime was glow-in-the-dark. Mattel actually began selling slime in 1976 though it wasn't the first company to do so. If you're interested in toy slime check out this video from Toysplosion: Slime - The History of a Classic Toy.

In the individual character photos below I didn't include the lame weapons (that you can see in the group photo) most of the Horde figures come with. They're plastic crossbows that sort of mimic firing and the figures look better without them. Some of the Horde do have unique features, such as Leech being able to suction to objects, Mantenna's eyes can bulge out by using a switch on his back, and Grizzlor is, well, furry. I'm posting this on Halloween and Skeletor has the perfect face for the holiday so I chose to slime him. Hordak and Skeletor are both bad guys that sometimes work together though they wouldn't be called allies so it's not too much of stretch that Hordak would like to be in control of Skeletor (not to mention the slime canister has the bad guy Beast Man being slimed). At the very bottom of this post is the Escape From the Slime Pit! comic book that was included with the Slime Pit.

More Slime Pit

Slimed

The Evil Horde

Hordak

Horde Trooper

Grizzlor

Hordak and Mantisaur

Mantisaur (has a broken leg so he is standing funny)

Mantenna

Mantenna (eyes out)

Leech

Modulok

Multi-Bot

More Slime Canister

Escape From the Slime Pit! Comic Book