ORIGINAL TOY DESIGNS

With the exception of He-Man, Skeletor and Hordak, there were few character variations among the original toys. Where they existed, the differences were fairly minor, for example the colour of the paint used on a character's shorts might have varied a little. Probably the widest known variant was that of Stratos - he was available with red wings and blue back pack, or blue wings and red back pack.

The He-Man variants were Faker, Battle Armor He-Man, Prince Adam, Thunder Punch He-Man, Flying Fists He-Man and Laser Power He-Man.

The Skeletor variants were Battle Armor Skeletor, Dragon Blaster Skeletor, Terror Claws Skeletor and Laser Light Skeletor.

The Hordak variants were Hurricane Hordak and Buzz-Saw Hordak. All these figures were obvious variations on the main characters, and I'm not going to look into those on this page.

This page is intended to highlight a few of the less obvious variations. I'm sure there are some that I'm not aware about (if you know of any that I've missed, feel free to contact me).

The image of the two Two Bad figures may at first appear to be simply a left and right profile, but take another look and you'll see that the one on the left has a flat back and the one on the right doesn't. The spikes on the armour are slightly more prominent on the figure on the right too. The other difference seems to be in the detail of the paintwork, although it may just be that one of my figures is more worn than the other!

My MOTU collection is nowhere near complete, but besides the two versions of Two Bad, I also have both versions of Grizzlor, which are pictured below. The one on the left is the 'standard' Grizzlor. The one on the right is the figure that has become known amongst fans as 'Black Grizzlor', although strictly speaking he is dark brown. Black Grizzlor is quite difficult to find, and the mint in box ones are expensive.

So why are there two versions of Grizzlor? Well, as he is a bear creature, I guess the designers were thinking they could do a black and a grizzly version. But how's this for an alternative idea - the clownfish effect?

Perhaps I should explain this rather odd suggestion. Something that doesn't appear to be widely known, even among scuba divers, is that those lovely bright orange clownfish (think Nemo if you're still confused) turn black when they get really mad. Having dived the Red Sea on many occasions, I have witnessed this curious transformation first-hand. So maybe, just maybe, there is only one Grizzlor and he is a distant relative of the clownfish.