MotU: In Miniature

I'm obviously getting old. The grey hairs I keeping find in my beard seem to be an indication of my un-young-ness. However, I was a kid once and as a kid, I loved cartoons and toys. The first cartoon I actually recall was naturally He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. I recall quite vividly the Christmas morning that I received the original Castle Greyskull and a bevy of heroes and villains to wage war over it.

I felt so magnanimous and kind that I even remember telling my sister she could play with it whenever she wanted! Quite a gesture from a 7 year-old. Naturally she tested that promise and I wasn't nearly as gracious as I'd like to say I was...but shut up, I was only seven.

Fast forward...a while...and here we are now. A revival of the show has come and gone, itself now over ten years in the past. The redo provided another excellent cartoon and a top-notch toy line, but that came to a rather abrupt end. I do have a fairly extensive collection of said line however and they're way better looking than the originals. At least when it comes to display pieces!

So now here we are and I'm trying to recapture another happy childhood memory, by creating some MotU goodness in tabletop scale. I did some asking around on LAF about models for cartoon characters and was extremely surprised to find out that there were in fact some He-Man miniatures produced back in the 80s. One user happened to have a batch and kindly parted with them for a very reasonable sum. Here's what I ended up with for my cash:

Heroic Warriors

• He-Man
• Battle Cat w/ removable He-Man rider figure
• Teela
• Man-at-Arms
• Orko (this is a Heresy sorcerer based on the 2002 series)
• Man-E-Faces
• Zodak
• Wind Raider

Evil Warriors

• Skeletor w/ sword
• Skeletor w/ staff
• Skeletor rider (he'd fit in the Wind Raider)
• Beast Man
• Trap Jaw
• Mer-man 1
• Mer-man 2
• Weapons Rack

They're a little bit on the small side compare to today's more heroically scaled 28mm figures, but overall I think they're pretty good. A few characters are missing that I'd like and will somehow have to figure out ways to add via conversions or something. I can't sculpt at all so that'll be my only option.

One unfortunate thing is that He-Man is missing his sword. I've been trying to figure out a way to create one but as of yet I haven't come up with anything. The rider Skeletor figure has one but it's a little bit mangled. Worst case scenario I can make a press mold of it and clean it up from there!

Two of the figures, Teela and Zodak, were already painted but I intend to strip them and start on the entire lot from scratch. It's not that the paint work was bad at all, it's easily as good or better than I would do painting them. However, I don't think that the style would quite fit in with how I like to paint my figures so it's likely better to start fresh.

I've based all the rest of the figures on 30mm round lip bases, but Battle Cat got himself a 40k bike base. Granted it doesn't quite match up, but I wasn't sure how else to do it. He's pretty massive on that base and would stand alright without it so that is an option as well.

Eventually I'll have to create some terrain to go with them. A 28mm scaled Castle Greyskull would be awesome, as would a Snake Mountain. Someday, someday...

Once I get everything cleaned and primed I'll post some photos.