If the talented contingency of third-party customizers and kit-makers has taught us anything, it is that there a lot of properties out there that are just begging for the full-on and official “Classics” treatment that Masters of the Universe has been enjoying for so many years now. The MOTU Classics aesthetic fits as a perfect tribute to the origins of the property, but Masters inspired (and has inspired by) so many other cool toy lines and mythologies that getting some of these other characters added in DIY fashion has been just about as fun as collecting the official line.
So, over the past couple of years I have been hip-deep in collecting some of the amazing custom kits that have been provided to supplement my MOTUC collection. Properties like Warlord, Fire and Ice, and others eventually lead me down a rabbit hole because when one of the third-party guys opens the door with one character, I have a tendency to need more from the property, even if I don’t have a nostalgic attachment to it. That speaks to a couple of things: first, the amazing talent of guys like Mat O’Toole, Joe Amaro, Evil Mike and others is just too hard to resist; also, the MOTU property and its mythos is so fluid and accessible that it is easy to fold other characters and stories into it for a fun and cohesive expansion to the official action figure line. Yep, I am having just as much fun with the non-Masters MOTUC figures and building up that giant collection is made even better by these offerings.
The thing is, I believe there is still opportunity for a lot of these properties and characters to be produced in an official capacity. Sure, the numbers might not be there to make them works from a sales perspective, and some of the rights are probably mired in the seventh level of ownership hell, but that does not make them any less appealing as figures. The cohesion piece is the thing that gets me every time, and since the Four Horsemen have already laid such a fantastic groundwork with the MOTU Classics library that if, in a hypothetical world where sales numbers where no object, it would be really neat to see some of these properties come to life in plastic.
That is my entire point with this article (and what I hope to be a series of articles): to show how nicely some of these properties slide right into that Classics aesthetic, and also provide an opportunity to show off how great and universal the Horsemen’s work can be, and how talented the independent guys and customizers really are. So to begin, I want to start with a property that, in a weird sort of way, is a bit of a precursor to Masters of the Universe: Blackstar. For those of you that don’t know, Blackstar was a Filmation cartoon from 1981 that pre-dated Filmation’s MOTU about an astronaut from Earth who, while one a space mission, crash-lands on the planet Sagar. You can read the details on the Wikipedia page, but a quick Google Image search should show you that Blackstar shares a lot of commonality with MOTU, especially in terms of aesthetics.
Aside from the cartoon, Galoob released action figures based on the show after the MOTU line took off, and somehow, I completely missed it. The cartoon was before my time, but I cannot believe that I was unaware of the toy line because it would have been right up my alley. As you can see, the heroic and evil characters made for some great figures in the 1980s, and they were pretty compatible with the MOTU line. So why can’t we have that now? I cannot be the only one who thinks this, right? OF COURSE NOT. I am not even close to being the first person to think it, and many customizers have produced some pretty cool figures from the property in a more updated style.
However, the one that grabbed my attention and started my love affair with third-Party stuff was a kit offered by Alvis Undergound for all of the parts you need to transform a basic MOTUC body into your very own Blackstar. As soon as I got this kit, I was hooked and placed Blackstar on my MOTUC shelf and did a bit of personal canon re-write to have him as one of the He-Men of old (a little tribute the Filmation She-Ra series provided in the form of Blackstar statue hiding in a background). However, it did not take long for the urge to have more characters from this work inhabit my shelf, so I knew a project was in order to help make it so. What you see in the pictures herein is the result of that project and the work of a lot of talented people. The craziest thing about starting this project was that I am, in no way, a talented action figure customizer. I can throw some paint on a figure and pick out good parts from existing figures to build a new one, but there was going to be a lot of work involved with bringing this idea to reality.
So, while showing that the MOTU Classics aesthetic fits this line perfectly, I will also share the recipes for each of these figures, too. I mean, I think Blackstar makes perfect sense for a line Mattel should let the Four Horsemen tackle, but that probably isn’t realistic. So since we will have to probably build this “sib-line” ourselves, if you have a bit of customizing talent, you can “make it so.” Things just seemed to fall into place with a lot of these figures and I was surprise by how much of the MOTUC library could be used to sensibly adapt these characters into Classics, and how many other pre-existing parts were available.
BLACKSTAR
As I said, it all starts with Blackstar himself, and sing the praises of Alvis Underground for making this kit possible. With it, I got the John Blackstar custom head, belt, necklace, and translucent yellow Starsword. Adding those on to a MOTUC Jitsu body with a bit of gold paint on the bracers completes the trick, and this one was an easy get for me to set the foundation. I think for many, just having Blackstar himself will be quite enough and this kit is really great, so it is within your grasp. You can visit the Alvis Underground Facebook page to see all of the goods that are currently being offered in the store. So thank you for creating this, Alvis, but you also sent me down a rabbit hole from which I have yet to emerge.
MARA
If you are going to have a Blackstar contingency, you need to make sure you include his closest allies for that fight against the evil Overlord. Mara is the resident and power mage of Sagar, and she is essential to the collection. Now, while Mara did have a vintage Galoob figure, there weren’t any parts that could be used because, well, that figure is pretty ugly. So, as for a lot of things for this project, I enlisted the help of Fwoosh pal and resident customizer-extraordinaire Ibentmyman-thing to help me with the pieces I knew were above my ability level.
What I got from him for Mara was a great custom head sculpt that was build off of the Queen Marlena head. As you can see, it makes for a great update. Benty also smoothed down a Battle Ground Teela body to better fit Mara’s costume. After that, I just combined that base with some Adora bracers and boots, some styrene arm bands, and gave it a new paint job. Mara as born from mostly Classics parts and she fits with the aesthetic very nicely.
KLONE
Klone Cloudcat is the shape-shifting ally of Blackstar and he has the ability to morph into the form of various animals. The vintage figure accomplished this with some overlays and part-swapping, but his basic form is pretty simple. The great part about the vintage Galoob line is that the head sculpts for all of the figures are pretty sold (Mara notwithstanding) and are in scale with MOTUC. So for Klone, and many of the other figures, I just used the vintage head, and I think it works nicely. His body is Snout Spout with Palace Guard arms and a Prince Adam vest. I know the latter isn’t perfect for his tank top, but I think it works okay for using existing parts. A bit of paint, and Klone is done.
TROBBITS
Okay, so Blackstar’s little Trobbit (that is, Tree Hobbit) friends were either going to be the easiest or the most difficult part of this project. They are essential, there is no doubting that, and the good news is that the vintage Trobbit pack-in figures are still very much compatible with the MOTUC scale. So, some of them were easy to come by, so Balkar, Carpo, Gossamear, and Poulo are resin casts of the original figures that benty made and I painted. The other three were not as easy to come by on eBay and when they would pop up, Rif and Terra always went for more than I was willing to pay, and Burble was never even produced. So these three represent benty’s crowning achievement with this project as he sculpted them all from scratch, and if you do not know these characters by name, I challenge you to pick which are casts and which a benty originals. I still cannot get over how great of a job he did with these. Keep an eye on his eBay store; he has casts available periodically.
WARLOCK
Warlock is Blackstar’s trusty dragon-esque steed, and, at this time, I have not found a good update for him. However, pictured here is the figure from the original line. As you can see, the sculpt holds up pretty well, so I considering just repainting this and calling it a day.
OVERLORD
Ah, now we move into my perennial favorites – the bad guys! I love the look of all of these characters and building them from existing Classics parts was a real joy. Not having to make anything from scratch is my kind of custom job, and with some small exceptions, everything you see with these guys came from the original 1980s figures or the fodder bin.
That is the case with the awesomely evil Overlord. This figure is essentially Snout Spout again with a giant rubber band belt, cape from the DCUC Kobra figure, and head from the vintage Overlord. Paint it all up and you are done and are left with a pretty decent facsimile of the original. I say decent because I have not skills and I did not need them to create this figure, just a little bit of patience with painting. Oh, and the Overlord’s half of the Star Sword is the Power Sword, and I got that from the amazingly awesome Shapeways site of Evil Mike. He does such a great job with these pieces (of which we have previewed before), that I knew his work would finish the job on the Overlord perfectly.
NEPTUL
My favorite of the Blackstar villains, Neptul is the obvious “Mer-Man” of Sagar. I think his look is just awesome and everything that I needed to build him was right at hand. So, starting again with the vintage head, I put that on a Snakeface body with Mer-Man arms, Vykron (Space Ace) armor, a JLU Superman cape, and tossed in the golden version of the Classics Mer-Man trident. Again, a little bit of painting and he was ready to go. I think his color palette is really appealing to me and some of the extra fins on the Snakeface shoulders add some detail to the figure. Sure, there are a few embellishments here and there, but that is what happens in the “Classicizer.”
GARGO
Let’s see, a giant orange bat guy for my shelf, yes, please! Building Gargo took a little more thought than Neptul, and some of the costume elements did not translate over quite as well, but I think the same basic spirit of the figure is there. Gargo is a Skeletor body with Count Marzo forearms and skirt (though, looking back, Nepthu’s skirt would have probably worked better), styrene for the upper part of the toga, DCUC Man-Bat wings (trimmed and glued), the vintage Gargo head and an Outer Space Men bat staff. The Marzo skirt forces a bit more detail into the lower toga than I probably would have liked, but the paint scheme can help bring it all together.
TONGO
Tongo was actually the first figure from this project that I completed, and aside from the horrible need to paint an entire figure yellow (yellow paint is a bitch), he builds pretty easily. The head is vintage, of course and the body is mostly Stratos with Chief Carnivus legs and feet, and Skeletor shins. The necklace is a combination of the vintage and the chain is from some tubing off of the old ToyBiz Marvel Legends Apocalypse figure. I know he had a blowgun in the original line, but I liked the look of the Weapons Rack spear for him, so that is what he got.
KADRAY
Of all of these, Kadray is probably my least favorite just because I don’t think he is quite as successful as the rest. A lot of that has to do with my paint skills, but also that the parts aren’t quite as successful here. Kadray utilizes the vintage head and helmet (along with the vintage bazooka weapon I forgot to photograph), an old DC Superheroes Batman cape, Mostquitor body with Snout Spout boots and gloves, and a Preternia Disguise He-Man shirt. The garish yellow bullet bandolier was swiped from a DCUC Deathstroke to finish off the look. Again, while not my favorite, everything is out there to make this guy.
PALACE GUARDS
These henchmen of the Overlord were by far the easiest to put together for this project. The heads and helmets are vintage (well, these are benty casts of the vintage), and the rest are just Pundor bodies with styrene used for the weird shoulder armor, all painted up. I knew I would not be content with just one of these guys, so I HAD to have two and I like the way they look flanking the Overlord. Now, the guns are just from Plundor as well and not really close to the vintage, but they work for me in this case.
ICE PALACE
Okay, I LOVE using vintage playsets as backdrops for my modern collections. I do this with MOTUC, Ghostbusters, and a couple of other lines as well. So, I KNEW I would want the Ice Palace for these guys, but man, it is really tough to find a vintage one on eBay, and when you do, it is either in terrible shape ore REALLY expensive. So, I just decided to buy a Timmee Battle Mountain on Amazon and paint it blue and white with spray paint. It is not perfect by any stretch, and could definitely be bigger, but it works as an affordable backdrop for my collection.
So that is my little Blackstar collection and thanks to some very talented people, I was able to put most of it together with very little of my own effort or skill. Personally, I think this property lends itself perfectly to fitting in with MOTUC, and while I still have some characters like Vizir, Lava Lok, and others to figure out, it feels pretty complete. Now, that being said, these are hand-painted customs, so I would still love an official line by the Four Horsemen so that the figures could be “bathtub ready” (thanks, craarl) and available to all. The MOTUC base is so much fun, there are a lot of properties I would to get in this style with compatibility to Classics.
Whew. I hope this has been a fun little article because I plan on hitting more properties in the near future, like Fire and Ice and the Warrior Beasts, so be on the lookout. There are so many updates I would love to see in the Classics style. In the meantime, what properties would you like to see done in the style of Classics? Got any cool customs that show how perfect it could be? Drop me a line and let me know!
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