Masters of the Universe… The name conjures up memories of realizing Battle-cat was green months after the show aired because being poor at the time, we only had a small black and white TV. Also fighting with my younger brother because my genius parents decided to only get him MOTU toys and me, AD&D that next fateful xmas. Sure, the AD&D toys were pretty awesome (Fortress of Fangs, and that Skeletal horse, Evil Nightmare!) and I still have a few figures floating around here, but MOTU was the popular toy at the time and I didn’t have any and he was a tad stingy about it. 🙁 Siblings…

And then MOTU wasn’t so popular and my interests went back to Star Wars and GI Joe toys. But I still remember it fondly and it made me want to challenge myself to making a set of MOTU villains, but Cyberpunk styled! (I’ve already begun on some MOTU heros now that I figured He-Man’s conversion out) Villains are always cooler as far as toys, equipment, and such, so I decided to start there.

These four figures are part of the Snake Mountain Private Military Company. Mercenaries for hire that tend to take the jobs that would make other PMCs seem downright moral!

First up was Skeletor. I figured that I’d start with him and see if it was worth doing any others. Sometimes a project sounds cool in your head, but when you start on it you realize that you’ve lost interest/desire to work on it at all! But wow… this really held my interest! I sculpted a skull-masked head using a simple 1/6 resin head as a base and detailing it with hockey tape, epoxy putty, and various bits leftover from other kits. I already had a bunch of sword and knife blanks cut from stainless steel, so I decided to make his sword from one of the Katana. I used pattern blocks which I already designed to create his clothing except for the t-shirt (which I simply dyed blue) and the shoes from eBay. The hooded purple cloak and blue shirt are analogs for his blue skin and purple hood. The armored vest panelswere made using foam, fabric, and rubberized spray-paint.Â It’s something I played with for a while and eventually got right. The panels feel flexible and rigid and have a good armored look to them. Skeletors mask was painted with fluorescent yellow acrylic and “Black 2.0” from Culturehustle. Skeletor combat style is a somewhat crazy form of CQC. Not quite a berserker… but close enough.

Next up was Tri-Klops. Never one of my favorite minions, but definitely a stand-out for the Cyberpunk styling, especially after I googled him and saw the more recent updates to his character from MOTU reboots. Tri-Klops is the “assassin” of the group. Cold, calm, and collected, he uses his special optics and enhancements to silently infiltrate and carry out his mission without fail. So for his style, I went with a fatigue-like jumpsuit with a long overcoat. He uses a silenced machine gun and short sword, along with kunai (throwing-knives). His head is made from layers of laser-cut acrylic and each eye can rotate instead of the whole head-unit rotating like the original character. This gives him more options and visibility allowing him to see nearly 360 degrees with minimal blind spots.

Evil-Lyn was a sorceress in the original series and in the Cyberpunk genre, magic isn’t so much a thing and is replaced by technology. So the next best thing is to make her a god-tier l33t hacker. She can infiltrate any system like… magic. Her mace also functions as a remote computing terminal with a holographic display. The small ring is quick macros and malicious programs she can run during a mission or combat whole the larger ring is a full keyboard/macro terminal. Originally I had fabricated a weird anti-EMP cloak for her, but when I started designing the rest of her outfit, it seemed a shame to cover it up. I didn’t want to make a barely-covered overly-sexy costume design for her, but I did want some elements of the original design to come across. The leg warmers are analagous to her original knee-boots while the head-phones are like her crown helmet. The white mask is a feminine nod to the hacking group Anonymous.

Then there was Beast-Man. He was one of the more difficult characters to figure out a Cyberpunk analog for. I mean he’s basically a weird orange Sasquatch. So eventually I figured I would use a pair of Kotobukiya MSG claw-hands I had in the stash for other projects, giving him large beast-like claw power-gauntlets. These were made from a bunch of Kotobukiya bits, plastics, and metal springs for the conduit running to the power-plant on his back. The orange fur trimmed hood of his vest along with his red hair and beard give him the furry hunchback look of the original character while the white mask with blue highlights is analogous to Beast-Man’s white face with blue eye-liner.

Overall a really enjoyable and nostalgic project! Soon I’ll start on He-Man, Battle-Cat, Man-At-Arms, Teela, and Man-E-Faces. Perhaps Stratos too. I’ve gots the plans.