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Mattel has named its November drop: Eldor, at $22, with Club Grayskull first in line

Mattel has listed Masters of the Universe Origins Eldor as item JHK26 at $22.00, and Club Grayskull members get the first twenty-four hours of it.

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Mattel has named its November drop: Eldor, at $22, with Club Grayskull first in line
Masters of the Universe Origins Eldor posed on a Preternian jungle floor, hood up, the staff raised in one hand and the Book of Living Spells open in the other. Mattel product photography.

Before there was He-Ro, there was Eldor. Mattel wrote that line itself, at the top of the product page it put up today. Masters of the Universe Origins Eldor is item JHK26, and he costs $22.00. He goes up at Mattel Creations on 11 November at 9:00am Pacific. For the first twenty-four hours only Club Grayskull members can buy him.1

The listing settles a question the trade press has been answering on its own since late October. Toy Habits called this drop for Eldor on 29 October. It read two teaser macros, a brown and gold book and a blue and white crystal ball on a gold base, against the figure printed on the back of the Origins Snake Lair card. We declined to run it twice, on 29 October and again on 1 November, because Mattel had said nothing and a trade site reasoning from packaging art is not the maker naming a product. The guess was right, and both objects are in the box. Mattel still had not said it, and did not until today.

What Mattel is selling

He is 5.5 inches with sixteen points of articulation. The accessory list runs to a removable hood, belt and jacket, a wooden staff, the crystal ball, and the Book of Living Spells with a detailed interior. The product photography shows what that detail amounts to: the book opens, and the visible spread carries rows of runes around small inset icons, one of them a sword. The hood is a separate piece rather than a sculpted part of the head, so he photographs both ways: cowled in the hero shot, bare-headed in the accessory shot with the brown hood lying beside the staff.

The Eldor figure on white, bare-headed, beside his four accessories: a gnarled wooden staff, a separate brown hood, the Book of Living Spells open to a runed spread, and a blue and white crystal ball on a gold base.

The packaging puts him under The Powers of GraySkull, the vintage-styled sub-line banner. The nameplate under his logo reads Heroic Guardian of the Book of Living Spells! Mattel’s own description gives him Preternia, a wise and mysterious wizard capable of wielding great power. There is no more biography than that. The pack-in is a mini comic titled Gauntlet of the Dead, and its cover has Eldor hooded with both hands raised and a grey-skinned figure in white robes at his shoulder.

The Eldor window box, carded under a Masters of the Universe and Powers of GraySkull banner over painted art of a fanged serpent head, with the nameplate reading Heroic Guardian of the Book of Living Spells.

The twelfth is the first day anyone outside the club can buy him

Eldor has been made once before, and almost nobody could buy that one either. Our catalogue entry for the 2014 Classics figure records that he went out through the MattyCollector subscription rather than at retail, a Four Horsemen sculpt in the 7 inch collector scale, long out of production and only available secondhand. The restriction runs from 9:00am Pacific on the eleventh to 8:59am Pacific on the twelfth. Nothing in Mattel’s wording closes the sale when it lapses.1 If he is still there on the morning of the twelfth, that is the first time anyone has been able to walk up and buy an Eldor.

The fine print says the member window runs while supplies last. Club Grayskull is the same $9.99 a year it was in September, but its own listing copy says that membership does not provide a guarantee to purchase. We watched the same structure in October, on Laser Light Skeletor: the window opened, nothing sold out, and the figure was still there for everyone the next day, carrying a back-order date into 2027. Club Grayskull members go first on the eleventh. Unless he sells out that day, going first is all it gets them.

The pack-in mini comic, standing part open, its cover titled Gauntlet of the Dead with a hooded white-bearded Eldor reaching forward and a grey-skinned figure in white robes behind him.

If you want a wizard this week

Eldor is not orderable yet; Creations has him listed and unavailable until the window opens. The store’s own product data said so this afternoon.2 The figure Mattel names in his first sentence can be bought today. Origins He-Ro was the Club Grayskull membership figure, in the same 5.5 inch scale with the same sixteen points and the same mini comic. The 7 inch Masterverse He-Ro is in stock at BigBadToyStore at $23.99 as of this afternoon. He-Ro is on a shelf today. Eldor is not, until Wednesday morning.

Sources

Product photography: Mattel.

Footnotes

  1. Mattel’s fine print restricts the sale to Club Grayskull members from 9:00am Pacific on 11 November through 8:59am Pacific on 12 November, while supplies last. It restricts who may buy inside that window; it does not say the sale ends when the window does. Mattel used the same wording on King Hiss in September and on Laser Light Skeletor in October. On both of those the public could buy the following morning, so that is the reading carried above. ↩ ↩2

  2. Read off the Mattel Creations product data on the afternoon of 5 November: the single variant carries sku JHK26 at $22.00 and returns unavailable. The window has not opened, so nothing has sold out here. ↩

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