Back in the day I was one of the most ardent He-Man and the Masters of The Universe fan you can find in my neck of the woods. Apart from not missing a single episode of the Filmation cartoon series on TV, I was also also the proud owner of the action figures that Mattel produced during the '83-'86 heyday. Well, almost all that is. My brother had half of 'em so that makes the both of us as the owner of the collection but you get what I mean.
Many years later, when my brother had long since lost his interest in collecting action figures (and our He-Man collection of yore long since disappeared too), I found myself still ogling at the prospect of having a complete He-Man and the MOTU (that's Masters of the Universe for youse uninitiated!) collection once again in 2008 but this time in the form of updated action figures from Matty Collector. You know how the story goes. Matty Collector is/was a branch of Mattel that focused on the adult collector segment. Not THAT adult toys but He-Man figures ('MOTU Classics' figures as a matter of fact because it's not just He-Man in the whole gosh darn Eternian universe) in general.
Let us leave that MOTU Classics discussion for another day because today I'm gonna show you something that had survived the 80s and somehow made its way back to me today in 2019. It's very much related to MOTU in fact.
If you're familiar with Ladybird Books (yup, it's them guys who taught us how to read through their Peter and Jane books) then you might have come across their Masters of the Universe books way back in the mid 80s. There were many MOTU print materials back in the 80s but Ladybird produced about 10 in the catalogues and you might wanna check the full list of 'em at this cool website if you're interested to know more.
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Right, back to my ancient relic.....
What I stumbled across the other day at my mom's place while I tried looking for m lost M.A.S.K. toys (sadly I didn't find the ones I was frantically looking for) was one (out of ten) of the books from the Ladybird - Masters of The Universe series. This series ran from 1983 to 1986 and what I found here is a book from the '86 run titled The Iron Master.
I'm pretty sure I had more of these but I can't seem to find any of the other books. I can safely assume that they didn't survive the shifting of houses that my family and I went through all those years ago. I am pretty stoked to see this back in hands! Its condition leaves much to be desired but holding something that has been dear to me during the height of the MOTU craze in the 80s in 2019 is just crazy!
I remembered reading through this many times during lazy weekend afternoons while I assembled a whole bunch of my MOTU figures right in front of me. All that's left from that original 1980s MOTU collection is just He-Man's powers sword which I keep safe in my action figure relic drawer bin today.
Several missing pages and random stains are evident in some pages. Those are not coffee stains as I wasn't a hardcore coffee abuser yet until I hit 12 or 13 so I'm guessing that those are natural oxidization that happened with most print materials kept over a long period of time.
Mindblown
Right here is one of my most beloved art from the book. It shows ol' bonehead looking upwards and hence proved to the 7 year old me that Skeletor has a neck with all of his boney tendons stretching out while he gazed towards something up in the sky. So Skelly's head is not just floating in mid air inside his hood! It's incredible how these kind of revelations used to blow my mind out back when I was a kid trying to figure out the secrets of cartoon characters on TV.
Imagine the impact of discovering Skeletor having an actual neck was to me....and how I had shown this page endlessly to a bunch of buddies of mine to dispel their 'Skeletor's head is floating in mid air' theory!
Good times!
This one right here is another favorite of mine. A page that shows our favorite heroes on the Battle Ram! I often stopped by at this particular page to copy the art and I would show those proudly to my buddies at school.
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe was, still is and always be one of the few properties that had really defined my childhood. With my modern classic 2008 MOTU collection in place (I don't have them all but I have most of them) I now proudly share my passion with my better half (who's a crazy She-Ra fan herself!) and our son.
Now excuse me as I head back to my mom's and dive right back into that unknown pile of mystery boxes. I might find more of these He-Man Ladybird books. Or not.
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All together now......"BY THE POWER OF GRAYSKULL!"
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