This is my non-official, non-commercial site about the beloved Masters of the Universe. My intention is to spread and share my enthusiasm about this fantastic toy line that accompanied my childhood.
I totally understand that some people don’t like watching Family Guy. They go far to far sometimes, no, often. I love it. I do not like my crossover. Not because it is especially bad, or boring, no because it happened to be quite scary. Mostly Chris, who is now Creech, and even that name sounds intimidating, His leechy teeth look awesome, and he’s got green suction cups. Peter is Horde Pooper, the red bat goes well with his white shirt. He looks funny with no neck.
Megstor, Dragstor as Meg works well too. Both are kind of permanent victims of evil people.
Mosquitor and Stewie, that makes Mosqwie. His face impression is a bit weird. Maybe he’s insecure with the snozzle for his nozzle.
But his Teddy, Rupert, is the cutest Grizzlor ever. Lets call him Ruzzlor. He could easily tear them all apart, but he decided to enjoy the family life.
And last but not least Herbert with four legs and eyes apart, that’s Manbert the Hypno!
I made this drawing some years ago, and looking at it now I wished I had made it a bit more MOTU, and less Family Guy. What do you think?
The original Leech toy from the 80s was never my favourite, but I always liked it. It might have been the enormous size, or the dark green color in combination with the red Horde symbol, and the orange rings around what must be the leeches wrists.
Mattel gave Leech a unique body, like Two-Bad, Extendar, Grizzlor, Mantenna and some others. The huge round feet make a stable stand, though my Leech had always a bit wobbly legs. The photo is taken under uv light, and the worn off area in his inner legs fluorescent pretty strong for some reason. His arms are strong, but his muscles not as defined as the more human figures, they kind of remind me of Bud Spencer. His hands are real working suction cups! In the 80s She-Ra: Princess of Power series Leech would use these hands to drain energy from enemies by holding their head between the hands. On the original box, Leech holds Man-at-Arm up, using his mouth, not his hands. It says ‘Leech sucks the power from his enemies ‘. Because neither the hands, nor the mouth of the toy were made to hold another figure, it never really worked for me that he sucks energy. The mouth was a more sophisticated suction cup. It was flat, painted teeth on it, with a soft seal, the lips around it. A button on the back allowed us to pump a vacuum, when you pressed Leech against a flat surface. That worked well on glass, you could hang the heavy green horde member for some seconds. The hands wouldn’t hold him.
For the longest time I thought the flat mouth of the toy would be a compromise for the production. In fact the toy looks more like a leech than the more reptile-like cartoon version. Too bad I haven’t had a close-up of a real leech in the 80s! Making a leech one of the bulkiest members of the universe, with strong arms and legs, that’s what I love MOTU for!
It is the only green horde member, but he’s in good, green company. Mossman, Whiplash, Merman, Triclops, Man-at-Arms, Kobra Khan, and King Hiss are all very green.
Quality wise Leech is a great toy without flaws. The rubber is very durable, and the color rock solid. There’s a tiny bit of black mold on his hands, that’s it.
The horde trooper is a very controversial character to me. I’m a huge fan of the evil horde, and I have many good memories of the 80s cartoons. But, the horde trooper is none of the real MOTU characters. It’s a soldier from mass production, more or less a walking bucket with no strength except for the shear number Hordak produced them. As a toy, it didn’t make sense, if you haven’t had dozens of them.
So all my childhood this figure was a gap filler unfortunately. And it’s quality didn’t help.
My problem was, or his problem was the instable flap. The Hordak-embodied button was cool, but the mechanism was not stable, so that the lid would open uncontrolled. You lift an arm, an the flap drops. Turn the head, drop.
Apart from that issue this figure is a cool looking toy. It has a fierce face, and a nice combination of pale grey, red and black. Other grey figures are few, Hordak and Stratos basically.
In terms of aging the Horde trooper is pretty good. Mine shows some yellowing on the legs, and the button made of soft rubber looks a bit worn off, but otherwise the material is pretty stable.
Hefart’s titfortat goes into the next round! MOTU Snakeman vs. Horde, we thought that is just history. But now this battle?! Hordak couldn’t be banned for long obviously. He definitely pulls some strings.
But this fight very much looks like the snake King himself wants to send a message. Of course to Hordak. The old enemy.
No way that Tung Lashor, the anaconda, the muscle man of the snake warriors, would seek the battle with Hordaks mysterious red thing. The two headed, or two one-headed, six, five, four or less legged set of living pieces.
30 points, 2.5m high and 190kg of pure strength vs. 31 points for the living meat bits. What can possibly go wrong?
Fight! Tung lashor is a squeezer, even his poisonous tung is made to squeeze.
But how Modulok is gonna fight is so hard to say. Usually you only see him shooting from a hideout. Is he a fighter at all?
The snake immediately runs towards Modulok, grabs him and pouw! the red devil seems to explode! Is that it?
For sure not. His parts, all over the area, start crawling towards the irritated Snakeman. Arms grab, mouths bite and the power snake doesn’t know how to squeeze. Tiny opponents are not his’. He starts stepping on the parts, but this is not how he is used to fight. His legs are now covered, he tumbles! Falls! But then he uses his tung, green, and poisonous. A few seconds of contact and the pieces turn dark and seem to die. He throws, licks, smashes, until finally nothing moves. Modulok is beaten.
What a miserable fight. What a mess. #tunglashor #modulok #snakemen #evilhorde #motutitfortatÂ
Grizzlor is in my opinion one of the MOTU masterpieces! They managed to draw a fine line between a scary monster, and a furry funny toy. Grizzlor is one member of the Horde, which I found all very well done and unique. He has a lot from a gorilla, except that a gorilla is black, and Grizzlor is brown. I would say he doesn’t share any obvious parts with other MOTU figures. The most prominent feature is of course his fur, which is of excellent quality and never came off or went smelly or anything. The shape of his torso is hidden under that dense fur, and I wasn’t able to find a photo of a stripped Grizzlor. So it remains a secret to me, how his torso looks, and I guess that’s for the better.
His arms and legs are also brownish, but without real fur. Instead the arms have an embossed fur-like structure. His hands are a bit plain, clumsy, shapeless, without any hint of claws or anything.
The legs are more standard shaped, but with the same structure of the surface. He is wearing black boots.
The head is not really distinguished from the body, there is just the mask of a face placed at the top of the torso.
He’s got the same crossbow as most horde members, his is green. I think no other crossbow was green. It goes well with yellow straps of his armor, which in this case is only a huge horde bat.
The combination of colors is well done, the brown fur with lighter brown arms and legs make him look like a creature that lives outdoors, and can take it cold, but also sunny.
The yellow straps are a nice eye catcher, while the bat is not that obvious. The dark green crossbow supports the idea of a gorilla living in the forests.
I can’t help myself, but the fur, and its color, remind me of another toy of the 80s, but luckily Mattel mastered the art of designing a serious horde member despite the similarities. You might remember the Monchichi? That slobby thumb-sucking monkey-hedge hock thing? It’s fur is a bit darker and lesser reddish, but else I see some similarities.
What I find most irritating on Grizzlor, is the fact that the body has no shape. He is from the top of his head to his hips just a hairy egg. No neck, no waist. That egg shape could easily result in a funny looking fur monster, but the long legs, and the really great, powerful face make him look awesome. I wouldn’t even see him look funny if someone would do his hair, but I won’t encourage anyone to do a make over with him! Grizzlor!
I always missed that kind of fur on Beastman. He would have deserved at least a bit of it, in orange of course. For all the other figures, even Battle Cat and Panthor, I’m glad they didn’t get “real fur”.
The UV only showed the dust on this Grizzlor, otherwise he would have looks pretty cool.
