See a video review of this vintage magazine at my YouTube channel HERE.
A bunch of these have come up on MyComicShop, and so I got one! Probably there is a spike in demand because of the new Masters of the Universe movie!
This is from Summer 1986, exactly 40 years ago. Also, this one announces the contest where a kid will get to be in the movie! This came true as Pigboy was indeed a child who won the contest! (Follow the link for more information…I’m not taking any responsibility for anything you encounter in your searching around with that.)
The main idea of this one…”King Hiss and the Snake Men challenge He-Man” features fantastic Earl Norem artwork of the toy-style Snake Mountain, King Hiss, Cobra Kahn, Tongue Lasher, and Rattlor. He-Man anatomically swings into action with his battle axe and shield! (Yes…Norem was a master of anatomy…as my art friends say). Meteorbs are a minor push in this issue, Create a vehicle has promise, while Start a Summer Power Club sounds ambitious for a bunch of kids under 10.
I have another one of these magazines, and I collect them only for nostalgia purposes. No one should ever pay more than $20 for one of these except for possibly issue #1. You never see these graded, but if you do (I have) then it will be a low grade…more trouble than it is worth. And besides, the fun of this is going back into the past, reading the stories and letters, and seeing the old ads. You can’t do that if you have your magazine slabbed and are asking more than $75 for it, most of that value being upcharge.
You can tell that my copy is well worn. But it is all here! I am going to present photos and then some commentary behind them.
I can’t drink that red dye anymore…but Looney Toons were still popular back in the 1980s. In recent years, the most popularity you see of them is Space Jam. The erosion of values!
The table of contents…pictures on the right would indicate a Meteorb, He-Man with a tree, Kobra Kahn in a cool vehicle, and the Snake Men and Skeletor on the bottom.
There are two posters in this issue!
A Letter from He-Man, Orko Earth Report, and He-Man of the Issue are regular columns, you can read the features for yourself, but we have a movie article here not really mentioned on the cover.
Another add, this time for the Walt Disney Home Videos. You have Alice, the Cheshire Cat, Mickey Mouse in a tuxedo, and Winnie the Pooh. I believe the only feature movie here is Alice in Wonderland if you look close at the photos. Are these BETA-MAX? I looked close, and there’s no indication of Beta or VHS.
He-Man, Grayskull, and the Jet Sled. The Jet Sled was a recent accessory offering in 1986, Do you think maybe they pasted the Jet Sled over He-Man somehow?
I am keeping my magazine together, but removing the posters takes a big chunk out of the included comic book…something that bothered me big time as a child. So I never took them out until the magazine was falling apart. And then my mom WOULDN’T LET ME HANG THEM UP!
The Snake Men poster is the same as the cover, but here is the Meteorb poster.
This was already ripped and then re-stapled by fingernail obviously. The Meteorbs…we didn’t have them as kids. I felt like they were stupid anyway. If you look into it, you will find that they were actually a different, failed toyline that Mattel folded into MOTU. I feel like they were already seeing the need to have transforming toys in order to compete with the Transformers. I also never had Rokon or Stonedar. (Looking at the posters was skipping ahead…, oh reader).
A nice letters column. Notable that I have a letter published in Transformers #10...I have every cover that I could get. And I wonder if these kids still have their copies of this magazine?
I don’t remember which of these I actually had as a child. I had a subscription, though. If I had only known…In fact, if we all would have known we would have bought two of everything and kept one pristine in storage…
So is this our first look at the movie that would be come Masters of the Universe: The Movie? This is so relevant to today because of the recent Masters of the Universe just released on June 5 this year.
Because I already talked about Pigboy, let’s talk about Dolph Lundgren. As a kid, I had seen Rocky IV, and was truly sad when the evil Russian steroid-user boxer killed Apollo Creed, who was dressed in the American Flag, and so happy when the Italian Stallion who actually worked out fair and square took him down. We all knew the USSR were the bad guys…see Top Gun for instance. When I was told that the same villain was going to be He-Man…I didn’t…get it…if that makes sense. I was only 7 years old. He looks nice enough in these pictures. And I am now a big fan of Dolph. I also thought his He-Man was really good back then and now. But it was hard for me to digest everything…I was forming my ideas about what was real and what was fiction. Could I grok ideas behind the making of movies? Casting choices? Budgets? Limitations? No, I could not.
As we go through this magazine…be ready for this to be pushed some more. Kids loved the Statue of Liberty back then…the world was more patriotic. I remember cheering when the Ghostbusters made it come alive using a NES Advantage controller in Ghostbusters 2. (Yep. I out nerded you, readers!) It was apparently the 100th year of the anniversary of France giving the United States the statue. And I guess it was time to capitalize on that also to the smart kids who read magazines.
ORKO’S EARTH REPORT
Labyrinth– I have seen this a few times…they used to show it at school. It is similar to The Dark Crystal and The Never Ending Story. Kind of scary to see at times. When kids see things like that song reference in Stranger Things today…I mean…we lived it.
SpaceCamp– NASA had a real Space Camp, I’m pretty sure. If you were rich! I don’t remember this movie.
Ulysses 31– What amounts to an ad for a different fantasy cartoon…what? But no one remembers Ulysses 31, but everyone remember He-Man. I’m sure it was great, though.
Reading Rainbow– If you are reading this blog, you probably have had the theme song for Reading Rainbow stuck in your head before. I remember discussing LeVar Burton in college with my friends, and how we loved him in Star Trek: The Next Generation. One of my friends said he cried the first time he heard him cuss…
Oh yeah…
This is a cool picture of He-Man. I was glad to see this still in the magazine.
Never heard of any of this. NOTICE. This is the second time we see The Statue of Liberty Magazine pushed.
The USELESS Prince Adam. Now you know why I probably blog with all-caps a bunch of times.
Jet Sled, Cyclone, Spydor, Tongue Lasher, Rattlor, Kobra Kahn, King Hiss, He-Man, and Skeletor. The marketing strategy was SOLID in 1986.
Remember the “Meteorb” from the Table of Contents. Nope. It was a bait-and-switch. Spydor is throwing rocks and He-Man hits them like a baseball player. So 1980’s!
Trunk of Tree a Serpent Be!
He-Man shows a new power with his sword. He breaks King Hiss’s spell and changes the tree back to normal. I also like how he won’t hurt the snakes. The strong women in my family are so terrified of snakes. Deathly terrified. And typically a strong man would use a hoe or shovel to chop off their heads if one was around to ease their minds.
(I find this truly horrifying, Hub City Geeks. Poor snakes. I do feel this drastic action is necessary if it is a poisonous snake that will be around where kids or pets are playing. Most of my family hasn’t had the knowledge to tell the difference, and besides that my mom, grandmother, and aunts were so afraid. But there is a 6ft+ long black snake likely under my house right now…I don’t mind! It needs to be worried about my German Shepherd.)
Seriously…we used to swim at a lake house that my grandparents owned (Sadness!) We were told to stay on one side of the dock, because the other side “had snakes.” OK…the logic…
He-Man won’t hurt the snakes because they are innocent creatures…I love it!
I was a science nut as a kid. And I heard about tornadoes picking up frogs, fish, even people and dropping them in other places as hail stones. So, someone has a hailstorm of snakes. My grandmother and mom would have a true nightmare!
King Hiss’s gimmick…as a kid…me and my brothers generally thought King Hiss was disguised as a good guy, but then would reveal himself as evil. The mini comics and magazines like this pointed us in the correct direction. Also, at this point, shouldn’t the Snake Men have already been prepared for battle? The point here was to roll-call them for marketing purposes.
A classic Filmation move. Bowl the enemies over with a round boulder.
So…are they presenting the Blasterhawk as a potential fan-created vehicle? This was a toy you could buy in 1986! So this doesn’t seem fair. (I never had a Blaster Hawk)
The Bat Pak- I had to look up and see if this was ever produced. It seems so…logical. But they didn’t make it.
Rattle Trap- Wouldn’t this one have been cool to have?! They didn’t come out with any vehicles for the Snake Men faction, and so it makes you think…was this an idea that they decided not to go with?
Up-Scaler- With Moss Man driving. Also, this one looks kind of logical…why didn’t they ever make it? Leech was an action figure with suction cups…in fact suction cups and sticky toys were “cool” in 1986.
What vehicle would the SpartanNerd make…OK. The Sound Shocker. With Rio-Blast driving it. It is shaped like the Battle Ram (without the Sky Sled), but has giant amplifiers on all sides. Rio-Blast or WHOEVER can sit up front with the included guitar accessory, and assault everyone’s ears with glorious noise!
And here is our third mention of The Statue of Liberty Magazine. This time they are giving you a card to bug your parents with.
POWER PUZZLES- This page was all worked by a previous owner. The color-by-number is a picture of Orko. Matching…some of these characters go to more than one place.
True story. My first-grade-self had a true saint for a teacher. She isn’t with us anymore (she’s with Jesus). But I remember taking one of these magazines to her and telling her that she could run copies of the puzzles for the class to do. She just looked at me, and then said “I don’t want to!” I still remember it… But think about it. We were always doing word searches and coloring pages. A kid would like to contribute. So now as an adult, I include any reference to He-Man that I can into work that I create. For instance, Skeletor is one of the multiple-choice answers on my substitute worksheet response to a video about The Human Voice. I even included a picture of the more recent Golden Book “I Am Skeletor!”
This page wasn’t worked, but you can easily tell that the puzzles here are more difficult.
It says there are 17 power swords…they aren’t as easy to see as you think. It took me a minute to find them all.
Mystery Meteorbs. Once again, not a fan of the Meteorbs. In Norem’s poster, did you notice that one guy is a big red ball? He looks orange here. I don’t know…when I see these guys, they look like general 1980’s toys. Like they are an oval ball with an animal coming out. The robot guy and the lion are the best ones…Maybe the elephant. I mean…the crocodile? What croc looks like this? That is one fat bear. I know that Brontosaurus was a hefty boy, but not round like this.
The He-Man club. Anybody remember the movie The Little Rascals. They had a no-girls club called “The He-Man Woman Haters Club“.
So this brings up a question…because in 1986 this was when She-Ra came out…What if…
No question about Mary Lou Retton being an awesome athlete. I didn’t know, but just spent some time on Wikipedia. $30? for a 30 minute video? Notice that Mary Lou is apparently an olympic athlete wearing red, white, and blue. I’m just saying…this vibe with the Statue of Liberty. Wikipedia seems to indicate that she was a big supporter of the Reagan Administration, also very 1980’s. (NOTE: The Disney videos already mentioned in the magazine were also $30).
This is a cool story about Jason Isroff. It was good public service, and it was good that the publishers recognized this to encourage others to do right. I remember the principal of our school had a “Tiger of the Day” award to someone who served the school community. (Tigers was the mascot at Clifdale Elementary…glad they changed that when we became a middle school!)
Yep. I’m a rare kind of guy who has had three careers in the same place. I attended Clifdale Elementary, then as an adult I taught music at Clifdale Elementary. After moving to Cowpens Middle School to teach chorus, what was decided? To move Cowpens into a re-formated Clifdale Middle School. I say often, “The Lord Jesus really wants me to be at Clifdale!”
Check this ad. I remember Rainbow Brite fondly…and I remember the toys of the Popples. But I don’t remember anything about Ulysses 31. All three of these are worth looking at on Dan Larsen’s “Secret Galaxy” YouTube channel.
The back cover is yet another ad. This one doesn’t jump out at you as an ad, however. It invites you to order one of these personalized storybooks. But as you look closer…BAM…Fruit Rollups and Fruit Bars.
I felt like this trip down memory lane was fun, and am thinking about getting more of these magazines as people are putting their copies out for sale or trade while demand is up. Do you have any of these, Hub City Geeks? Let me know in the comments!
spartannerd 