Top 10 80’s Masters of the Universe Toys I Just Hated!

When a new product comes along and is a new hit, it’s only natural for the creators to want to expand that line to make more money. This has always been especially true when it comes to kid properties. From Teenage Mutant Turtles to Batman to Pokemon to whatever else you can think of. The problem is that after awhile, you start to run out of ideas, and your audience starts to fade because of competition from other properties. So in the attempt to compete and to keep your audience,  you begin coming up with things that either make no sense..or are just plain dumb!

      

In the 80’s the Masters of Universe toys were all the rage. I had more than a bunch of them and wish I still did. And the vehicles and the Castle Gresyskull and Snake Mountain playsets. Of course there was a little TV show at the time called He-Man and the Masters of the Universe which helped the action figures sell even bigger! Problem was as the series went new ideas were harder to come up with. Here are ten of the worst. And for the record,  I am judging based only on the original 80’s toy line and am not including how the character appeared in any animated or comic versions.

Ok now for my the stupidest…


#10.Prince Adam

The Prince Adam toy was lame because, well, what the hell were you supposed to do with him exactly??? Yes I had one, for some reason.

#9.Faker

A lot of people hated Faker but he never bothered me. He was supposed to be an evil version of He-Man created by Skeletor. Though you do have to wonder, why was he blue? And why did he wear an orange version of Skeletor’s armor?





#8.Rio Blast

A lot of people hated Rio Blast because his power was using guns…but I don’t remember hating the figure. Don’t remember loving it either.





#7.Clamp Champ

This is Clamp Champ. He used a clamp. Pretty lame. Who do creators think that just putting a black character in the line up is enough? You need to make them interesting! 

#6.Roboto

For an action figure this wasn’t really all that bad. But…a robot? In Masters of the Universe? Remember when Rocky IV had a robot in it, and it didn’t fit? Yeah the toy wasn’t bad, but Masters of the Universe is about magic and sorcery and this did not fit.  For a different toy line, this would have been pretty cool. He was in an episode of the cartoon which, even for the cartoon, was clearly an ad for the toy. At least with the Man-E-Faces episode they made the character interesting. FYI I loved Man-E-Faces.





#5.Battle Bones

Anyone else have the cool Darth Vadar case to hold you Star Wars figures? I loved that! Well MOTU tried the same idea with this lame gimmick. It would have been OK if they had just sold it as a case, but no they had try to make it a character! It’s basically supposed to be the reanimated bones of along dead species, when he breaks free from Skeletor’s hold he helps He-Man. Wow, who needs sky sleds or cool vehicles that fly..let’s use a pair of slow moving bones to get us there! It was lame and didn’t even really work as a carrying case (I seem to recall it did not hold the figures that well, especially if you picked the thing up). Why they tried to sell it as more than that I will never know. Though you gotta admire their attempts to make this seem like it wasn’t the cheapest thing ever made.



#4.Extendar

Oh god was this stupid. This was a, robot? cyborg? whatever….where you could extend his limbs and make him taller. Yawn. He never made it into the show because the show was going away at this point. And this figure screams “We’re out of ideas!!” It doesn’t even look like it belongs in the Masters of the Universe line!





#3.The Rock People

Oh how dumb. This is what I meant before, trying to grab onto the trends to save your dying franchise! These were aliens (I think) who could transform into rocks. Yeah, hours of fun with these toys! Hey, wasn’t there another toy franchise in the 80’s all about transforming? Nah, just a coincidence, I’m sure. Yeah these toys were about as boring as it gets. So lame I couldn't even find a decnt pic of them in package. 





#2.King Hiss and The Snake Men

But as bad as those last two were, this was so much worst. Where did they idea come from? Actually I take that bad, this really wasn’t a bad idea…for the cartoon. As an action figure good god was this stupid. King Hiss disguises himself as a human, but can shed his human-like “skin” to become a twisting mass of five snakes from the waist up. The problem was the “disguise” part of the figure was awful. Remember the Pretender Transformers? The thing looked fake, could barely do anything. Oh and did I mention how hard it was to keep the pieces for the human disguise together?  So then you get the snakes…that do nothing. Yeah this toy really sucked. The Snake Men were no better, Tongue Lasher had a tongue then would come out like snakes tend to do. Oooh. And Rattlor whose tail, well, rattled! Of course we had Sssqueeze who had ridiculously long arms. Again while these were part of the MOTU line they never appeared in the He-Man cartoon. These were all stupid and it was about this point I stopped buying these figures.

So who have I saved for last?



#1.Moss Man & Stinkor

I put these together since they were obviously meant to match each other. And they’re both equally boring. Moss Man is just that, he smelled nice and can talk to plants and animals. Hours of fun! He did make it into the cartoon but just barely. Stinkor didn’t make it into the cartoon, and no wonder. While it was cool that the figure did come with an odor, the appeal doesn’t last. This figure was so boring they re-used the same mold as Mer-Man, plus he wore the same mold of armor as another boring figure, Mekaneck. And the shield he was just old shield they had lying around.  There is nothing unique about this guy, except he smells!! Way to be original guys! (Oh hey did I mention Moss Man was just Beast Man dyed green?) This idea was so bad it was laughed at when it was brought up to the TV producers, which is why this guy never made it into the original cartoon. I had Stinkor and yes it did smell bad…and that’s about all I remember about this one.



And there were probably later toys which were lame, including from the She-Ra line, but I stopped playing with the toys so I can’t comment on those. Rotar & Twistoid I found in my research, and look dumb. And what the hell was Scare Glow???



Before I go I wnated to discuss on more thing which was all over the place. Stupid He-Man and Skeletor Variants!



What do you do if you are really stuck on an idea? Release old characters with a new gimmick! This is what we had, check it out…

Battle Armor He-Man/Skeletor-You could punch the center and the armor plating would shift to reveal a dented shield. Then an even more dented shield. Then you could turn it back to the non-damaged shield.


Dragon Blaster Skeletor-Skeletor had a dragon wrapped around him which could squirt venom at people. In reality it was a tiny water gun. And that’s what we used to use it as.


Flying Fists He-Man-He had different armor and his arms could move in different ways with new accessories. Yay.


Teror Claws Skeletor-Even lamer, you could put claws on Skeeltor’s arms.


Jet Sled He-Man-Really?????? Exactly what it sounds like.


Laser Power He-Man and Laser Light Skeletor-In the 80’s the big thing was toys which could emanate light. Oh excuse me, “laser”. Yeah Laser Tag was the rave. Remember Light Speeders? Yeah me either. So yeah these two could shine light at the opponents. About as awesome as it sounds. And it needed a power pack to work which made the figure to cumbersome to use. There was also an Beam-Blaster & Artilleray feature where you had to aim the light at the right spot on your opponent to stop him..I don’t know it was stupid.


Thunder Punch He-Man-This was kind of awesome, why? You could move his arm and make it punch, but that wasn’t the cool part. In his backpack you put a tiny ring cap, so when you made it punch it really made a POW sound, just like a cap gun!! Ah, the 80’s. When kids could play with dangerous things.





Ah action figures. As always, this is just my opinion. These are the toys I didn’t like as a kid, if you did or if you had some that you hated more comment and let me know. Oh and yes the playsets weren't spared either. They had an eternia playset so lame it was laughable.