Toyzinger
The collection of figures of Masters of the universe vintage (MOTU), was undoubtedly one of the most successful of the decade of the 80’s, at that time, either for reasons of logistics or reduced manufacturing costs, it was very common for a toy company like MATTEL to collaborate with other toy companies around the world, giving them the rights to create and distribute the figures of their franchise;
These toy companies created the figures in their factories (using molds provided by MATTEL) and distributed them in the agreed markets. The fact that different toy companies created the same figures in different places, and the lack of a stricter quality control, made that the same figure had slight changes depending on the place of manufacture.
These different figures are known today as variants, most of these variants undergo minor changes in paint color tone, a change in country marking and little else, but there are a few of these variants that stand out from the rest, as their changes are much more obvious.
These variant figures are the holy grails for many “hardcore” collectors of vintage MOTU, and bring to the table monetary figures that may scare more than one. Here we list the 5 most desired variants by collectors:
Rattlor is one of the components of the snake army, this maroon colored humanoid has the action of stretching its neck when a button on its back is pressed, the vast majority of figures of Rattlor have a yellow collar, but in one of the Taiwanese factory runs, they put the collar in the same color as the body, so we can find a red collar variant.
This time we traveled to Brazil, in this case the local toy company ESTRELA was responsible for the manufacture of MOTU figures, many ESTRELA figures have colors a little different from the standard, but there is a figure that stands out above the others, and this is the figure of Merman, as well as in the rest of the countries, the accessories and the eyes of Merman are yellow, the Brazilian variant has a strong orange color.
Here we come across one of the most famous variants and that is the Grizzlor Dark face, manufactured in Mexico to be distributed in the United States, this figure changes the color of the face, arms and legs to a much darker color than the rest of Grizzlors that used to be brown, the legend says that these figures were removed from the market and replaced by the standards, as they were very scary to children and no parent wanted to buy them;
In Argentina the toy company in charge of the manufacture was TOP TOYS and the truth is that many of their figures can be considered important variants, as a Modulok with green pieces or a Stratos with pink wings, but there is one of them that stands out above the rest and it is a Mosquitor with the blood of his “action feature” of black color, in addition, the weapon that came with this is not the one that corresponds to him, but the one of Man-e-faces. This variant caused the liquid used to emulate blood, initially red, to darken over the years due to oxidation until it became completely black.
We arrived at the most famous and most desired variant by all MOTU collectors, and to find it we would have to travel all the way to India.
In this case, LEO was the toymaker in charge of manufacturing and distributing the figures throughout the country, just as in Argentina many LEO figures are considered important and difficult to obtain variants, having a great variety of colors in figures like Skeletor and He-man. But undoubtedly the most sought-after Indian variant is Faker, in this case it is not for the color but for the fact that they added two accessories that in principle he should not wear, the skirt and the Skeletor’s staff in the same orange color as the rest of the accessories, plus he was painted a black envelope in the eyes that no other Faker has.
When we talk about variants there is also a name that is always on the table and this is the Argentine version of Kobra Khan, the “camouflaged Kobra Khan”, in this case, the snake man sports a camouflage-type paint job instead of all green. For a long time it has been the most desired variant, it was so successful that even MATTEL decided to include this variant as a new character in the canon called Camo Khan.
According to its creator Dario, the owner of the Argentine toymaker TOP TOYS, Camo Khan is a new MOTU character, so we can no longer consider it as a variant.
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