He-Mike brought his amazing collection of He-Man themed customs to Power-Con again this year, along with a bunch of brand new customs. Click through for more pics of his incredible work!
He-Mike is one of my favorite customizers working right now. I find his MOTU work inspiring (because they are so cool) and daunting (because they have a professional polish I don’t feel like I have ever hit with my custom jobs), so I was overjoyed to spend time drooling over these figures last weekend.
One area in which He-Mike excels in customizing is character selection. He’s making the figures I want to own. His inspiration ranges from all over the MOTU related world, from Golden Books, Filmation and the live action MOTU film; to Remco, Fuerza T, and other knock-off lines; to fan fiction, concept, and brand new characters. He-Mike creates MOTUC-style figures of characters the hardcore fans would love to see from Mattel but probably never will.
The top row are MOTUC versions of Defenders of the Planets, He-Man knockoffs.
L-R Lower Row – Goat Man, Pig Boy, Spectror, Tiger Man, and a Goat Man
The Defenders of the Planets figures were not knock-offs I loved as a kid, but He-Mike has made them into great looking figures in the MOTUC style. I love Goat-Man. He looks like he is straight out of the books. Pig Boy grown up is a pretty brilliant idea and the MOTU parts used work great.
Spector is a Fuerza T wave 2 prototype character that never made production. The way the green hands and limbs fade to the clear plastic limbs is one of the coolest looking custom paint jobs I have ever seen.
Vultak, Rachney, Ferros, and Oozor
The top row here are Fuerza T characters. Fuerza T is a foreign toy line that purchased He-Man molds from Mattel and created their own sort of official Knock-off MOTU line. The color and parts combos are really fun, and I’ve wanted to see these guys in MOTUC since I found out about them, so it’s always really nice to see them in custom form.
Tiger Man here is based on the Sungold Galaxy Warriors line. I love the use of the Realm of the Claw figure head sculpt here. I would have thought it too large, but He-Mike makes it work here.
I’m not sure who this guy is, I think he’s an original character, but he fits in perfectly with Tiger Man. The fabrication on his chest harness is really cool and professionally smooth.
Again, I’m not sure if this is an all-new character, or inspired by something that exists, but he’s awesome. The scream, the mohawk, and the modified Beastman gear all read like a perfect barbarian fantasy opponent for the Heroic MOTU warriors.
Ferros and Rachney are Filmation Horde members that come to Eternia when the Sorceress we know was just a young girl. With Filmation rights, these two Horde members may yet show up in MOTUC, but He-Mike has made them so cool that I’m not sure Mattel versions will live up to these for me.
I’m an army-builder guy, and Goblins feel like a natural for MOTU, so I covet this trio big time. It’s a perfect army-builder set in that they look quite alike, but are different enough in armor and details that they are individual. It’s a tough balance to strike.
The little details are great on these three. He-Mike added tiny little skulls and upper furry parts to the standard MOTU belt/loincloth combo that make these guys unique, but feel like they belong in the MOTUC line.
Vultak is a one off character from the She-Ra episode “the Zoo.” I can’t claim to have remembered this bit of info, but my daughter actually pointed him out to me as “That bad-guy from the Zoo episode of She-Ra!”
The Fuerza-T figure Titano was basically a Fisto repaint with Man-At-Arms armor. I like the way He-Mike gets this idea across, but modifies the armor and uses the MOTUC head with the 2002-style crown to jazz up the design a bit. The modifications change one of my least favorite Fuerza-T designs into a must have.
These Skeleton Warriors were inspired by Harryhausen’s skeletons from “Jason and the Argonauts.”
Harryhausen + MOTU = cool in my book. I spent quite a while grilling He-Mike on how he completed these figures, and it’s quite an impressive amount of work to get these Skeleton Warriors as well articulated as the standard MOTU figure.
The ball-jointed shoulders and elbows were articulated by grafting ball joints from Star Wars Geonosians and swivel joints from legos. Some of the head sculpts are Demo-Man extra heads with the jaw transplanted from a Skeletor, and some are Scareglow’s with the crack sculpted over.
I’d love an army like this from Mattel.
He-Mike has a custom thread on our forums, but the links are all down, so if any of you have a link to a site with all of his custom pics in one spot, I’d appreciate the link. He also takes great pictures of these awesome customs.
