Sketch Book Series Man-At-Arms is up for preorder at Target, $21.99, out 2 October

Masters of the Universe Sketch Book Series Man-At-Arms is live for preorder at Target at $21.99, shipping free against a release date of Friday 2 October, with a limit of two per order and a delivery estimate of 5 to 8 October. Target is the only shop we can find taking the order. BigBadToyStore answers a search for the line with “No items match your search criteria,” and no other retailer on our usual round is listing it today.

What makes the line worth the paragraph is what Mattel says is behind the sculpt. The listing describes figures “inspired by concept art from the 1980s which has never previously been used for Origins action figures,” and the packaging repeats it on a yellow banner reading INSPIRED BY ORIGINAL CONCEPT ART, under a burst that reads SKETCH BOOK SERIES.

The helmet, the copper and the three weapons

The moustache is gone, and so is the face. What sits on the shoulders is a pointed pale-blue helmet with a slit visor, pulled down far enough that it nearly disappears between two copper pauldrons that run wider than the head. The armour is copper throughout, spiked at the shoulders, segmented down the forearms and stacked in overlapping plates along the thighs. It sits over a mantle of dark green, sculpted in heavy matted strands that hang to the back of the knees. There is no harness and no orange breastplate; a small red bird is stamped on the chest instead, and the boots are plain brown leather.

Three weapons travel with him, all of them separate pieces. One is a grey polearm with a curved axe blade and a hooked beak below it, one a grey rifle whose stock runs out into a second hook, and one a copper mace with a spiked ball head cast in the armour’s colour.

Underneath all that, the figure is ordinary Origins product. Mattel’s listing puts both Sketch Book figures at 5.5 inches with sixteen articulated joints. The Man-At-Arms already in the line is built to the same numbers, and Target is asking the same kind of money for both. Mattel is treating unused artwork as ordinary shelf product. Not a convention exclusive, not a collector tier, not a Creations drop behind a membership of the sort Origins Two-Bad went through this month; the drawing goes on the peg at a mass retailer, priced like everything else in the aisle.

An Origins card is normally a colour illustration, but this one is sketch work. Pencil and ink studies of He-Man and of armoured figures run the full width of the card in sepia, with a single finished colour painting of this Man-At-Arms on the right-hand panel. The nameplate keeps the old formula. MAN-AT-ARMS, Heroic Master of Weapons!

Skeletor went first, and shipping on him has closed

The line opened with Skeletor, listed at the same $21.99 and carrying Target’s own “2k+ bought in last month” badge. He is harder to get this afternoon than that badge suggests. His product page offers Notify me when available where an Add to cart button belongs, and sends you to store stock instead, so shipping is shut and pickup depends on what your nearest Target has in the back.¹

Mattel named a source on Skeletor and named nobody on Man-At-Arms. His listing credits a Mark Taylor sketch, and the figure carries the differences you would expect from one. He wears a hood rather than a cowl, a yellow bib across the chest under crossed bones and a silver orb, and no boots at all. The Havoc Staff has a trick in it that Mattel’s copy attributes to the sketch: a cord runs inside the shaft up to the ram’s head, so pulling the head off leaves it swinging on the cord and turns the staff into a flail.

We have covered Mark Taylor’s pre-production work before, in the production materials overview that takes in the 1982 and 1983 character notes and the earliest colour studies. What is new here is the shelf. That material is now at Target, at the standard Origins price, next to the film tie-ins.

Where the rest of the aisle stands

Target’s Masters of the Universe results this afternoon show a line moving at two speeds. Origins movie Skeletor is out of preorders ahead of his 1 October release, reading Preorders sold out on his card. Origins movie Teela, same price and same date, is still taking them.² Our two Sketch Book figures have no film to support and no cartoon to tie into, only a drawing.

Mattel’s listings name no third figure, and we have seen nothing announcing one. But the premise is not short of material. Masters of the Universe development art has mostly reached us through panels, art books and auction lots. Reaching us as a toy is a different thing, and two of those drawings are now on a peg at Target for $21.99.

Footnotes

1. The two listings do not even spell the line the same way. Target’s Man-At-Arms product title reads “Sketch Book Series” and its Skeletor title reads “Sketchbook Series,” so a search on one spelling can return a set missing the other. Mattel’s packaging photography for both figures shows the same three-word burst, SKETCH BOOK SERIES, so the split is Target’s rather than the toy’s. Worth knowing before you conclude a figure is not stocked. ↩

2. Target’s product pages carry no price anywhere in their page text, so every price here was read off the Masters of the Universe search results, where each card prints its own price and availability badge. Skeletor’s search card still offered Add to cart while his product page offered only Notify me when available, so the grid lags the listing. The Teela card also misspells the actress as “Camila Mendez”; it is Camila Mendes. ↩