Pre-Production Gold Belt Stratos

When pictures first started surfacing of Classics Stratos, fans were confused by the color choice on the belt. Instead of the red belt of the original, Stratos was sporting a snazzy gold belt! The figure was changed to the red shortly before production, but some pre-production samples with the gold belt made it out there. I snagged one the other day, and decided to throw up a few quick comparison photos to show the differences in the 2.



The most obvious difference is of course the belt-



The gold version of the belt features a dingy gold base with yellow highlights- pretty similar to Classics Beast Man.



The jet pack harness is also painted differently. The gold belt version lacks the light blue oval paint app at the waist, and the paint used on the shoulder feathers is much darker, almost the same color of the blue plastic used on the harness.



The gold belt version lacks the paint detailing on the finger nails that they red belt Stratos sports. You can also see here on the wrist attachements that the red of the wings on the GB version is much darker-



The dark overspray on the wings is also more prominent on GB Stratos than it is on RB Stratos.

So there ya go... Enough differences to warrant a purchase in my eyes as an "oddity" piece, but not enough that a casual collector needs to go crazy trying to find one.

-James

HE HAS THE POWER!!!!!!

He-Man took to the streets tonight in search of candy and ol' bone face...









And the Beast...*ahem* I mean Wolf-Man tagged along as well!







That's my 2 year old Keaton and my 7 year old Blaze in their finalized Halloween costumes. I love making costumes...the only thing straight from the store up there is Blaze's mask, everything else is homemade or very heavily atered. My buddy Nick did up his 2 year old as He-Man as well. Once I snag a couple pics from him, I'll update the page with his son Mahi as Eternia's defender!

I was pleasantly surprised to see a few people actually recognized He-Man!

-James

Holy Cow! Never Before Seen Unpublished Whitman He-Man Origin Comic!

I am amazed that over 25 years after it started, Masters Of The Universe still has many untold secrets left to be discovered. Like today... Lord Fallen Eldor over at the He-Man.Org forums made a post alerting everyone to some insanely cool ebay auctions that had just hit. The auctions were for a bunch of pages of original art for an unpublished He-Man origin comic drawn by Adrian Gonzales (who supplied artwork on the "Masters Of The Universe: The Sunbird Legacy" book). What makes it so special is that the origin is completely different than any other He-Man origin we've ever seen! Unreal!

The seller (lewiswaynegallery) states that he believes the comic is from 1984, due to the fact it was drawn on Whitman paper, and Whitman held the rights in 1984. I believe it's earlier than that, pre-dating the DC mini-series. Western Publishing (Whitman Comics) had a deal with Mattel very early on, way back before the line even saw release. They were actually the company responsible for the original 4 Alcala mini-comics. That fact, coupled with the limited amount of characters and vehicles shown, really leads me to believe this was something in the works from Whitman timed for the original release of the line. If I were a betting man, I'd say this origin predates any published (or televised) origin of He-Man. What a find!

I saved all the page images, so here they are for your reading pleasure! All credit goes to Lord Fallen Eldor at the 'org for the find and lewiswaynegallery for the images! (If you're lucky, some of the pages may still be available from him one ebay!)

UPDATE!- I'm trying to keep a running list of who owns what, so if you bought one of these pages, could you e-mail me? The unaccounted pages are: 3, 6, 7, 10, 12, 13, 14, 18, 21, 26, & 27. My e-mail is mastersoftheuniverseclassics@live.com As of this writing, there are 3 penciled pages and the 2 page splash still available here, so if you happen to buy those, please shoot me an e-mail as well! Thanks!



























































-James

So it's not really a Classics figure....

...but it's inspired by one!

Both my sons are are just like their dad- they love Star Trek and He-Man. Last year we did a Trek Halloween, with me as Spock, my oldest (Blaze) as Kirk, and my youngest (Keaton) as the Mugato. Well, this year Keaton wanted to be He-Man... which thrilled me to no end. Blaze at first wanted to be Skeletor, but has since switched to wanting to be a werewolf (which is actually a relief because I don't know if I could have finished a decent Skelly costume in time).

One of my best friends, Nick, also has a 2 year old son going as He-Man, so we've been able to shoot ideas back and forth on costuming and such. We both chose the classics figure for inspiration. Here's a couple of work in progress quick snapshots on Keaton's suit. Still have to finish the boots, tighten up the arms, and add the bracelets...but you get the idea...When it's all said and done, the wife will take some really nice clean pictures for me to share with everyone. Oh, and ignore that pesky 2000's power sword! nick has a wooden classics version waiting for me at his place!

Vintage Art Recreation: He-Man Cardback

It's been awhile... but we finally got out to do our second vintage art recreation! Since Teela just arrived this week, the possibilities for recreation expanded quite a bit. The He-Man cardback features her, He-Man, and Man-At-Arms so we went with that one.

Finding a hill with nothing but clouds behind it was a bit of a challenge...but the worst part was keeping all three standing! Everything would look great...then Teela would fall and take out He-Man or Man-At-Arms would fall down and I'd knock He-Man down trying to fix him. Grrrr... And then there were some poseability and scale issues that we had to try and work around (what works in a drawing doesn't always work out so well when using action figures). It all turned out in the end though. I'm especially happy with how Teela looks; she matches the cardback drawing really well in my opinion.


Original cardback art:



Classics recreation:



-James

Vintage Art Recreation: Original Faker Cardback

One of the main things I want to do on this blog is photographic recreations of the original MOTU artwork using the Classics figures. Since the Classics seem to be so much inspired by that artwork, I thought it would be kinda cool seeing them recreating it. Everything is fair game- Cardback art, magazine posters, box art, mini-comics... if it's vintage art, I'd like to recreate it.

We started off with something simple: The original Faker cardback art. Enjoy!

Cardback art:



Classics recreation:

The Masters Of The Universe Classics Blog!

Hey all! Welcome to my Masters Of The Universe Classics blog! I'm creating this blog as an outlet for my love of the He-Man franchise, in particular the current Classics line from mattycollector.com. The blog will mostly be a place for me to post up pictures of the figures from the line in various settings (taken by my lovely photographer wife Bobbi), but will also have some other nuggets of joy sprinkled around, so be sure to check it out! Thanks!