Mattel opened pre-orders on six MOTU figures at once, and the Origins three are the box art

For most of us the first Masters of the Universe we ever saw was a painting.

The 1982 cardbacks carried illustrated versions of the figures hanging in front of them. The illustrators were working from character designs rather than from a production sample, so the paintings ran ahead of the plastic: collars larger, proportions that belonged to a comic rather than to a five and a half inch body with eight joints in it. You bought the toy because of the painting on the card behind it.

Mattel opened pre-orders this morning on two separate Masters of the Universe lines at once, and Entertainment Earth has every figure in both. The Origins 2027 Wave 1 trio, He-Man, Beast Man and Battle Armor Man-At-Arms, runs $23.99 a figure with an estimated December 2026 arrival. The Chronicles trio, Flight Armor He-Man, Mekaneck and Clawful, runs $29.99, the first two estimated for January 2027 and Clawful for February. Every one of them carries a live pre-order button rather than a notify-me box, after a month in which several Masters announcements arrived with nowhere to spend money! [1]

The Origins wave is the artwork, not the toy

He-Man is the clearest case. The chest harness is grey and carries a dark red H where four decades of figures have carried the iron cross, the belt is orange, and the trunks and boots are a reddish brown rather than the usual pairing. Toy Habits reads the wave as a set of homages to the vintage cardback illustrations, and the He-Man supports the reading. [2]

Beast Man goes further. The collar is enormous, the shoulder spikes curve rather than sit flat, and the blue circle on his chest is a flat graphic shape in a way no Beast Man toy has been. Battle Armor Man-At-Arms is the odd one of the three, since he is a variant rather than a reinterpretation, but his armour is asymmetrical in the way the painted Duncan always was, and his mace is moulded in translucent blue.

Each figure holds the Origins line’s familiar numbers, around five and a half inches with sixteen points of articulation and removable parts, and each one carries a piece of a seven inch Shadow Beast. Mattel’s own retailer copy says so on all three listings. But Toy Habits counts the full assortment at six figures, so three more names are still to come and the Shadow Beast cannot be finished out of what went up today. [3]

The packaging is the other departure. Each box carries a character illustration on its side panel, and the panels are meant to combine into a single battle scene; the back panels run a comic strip, one section per package. It is the Origins line putting illustration back on the box.

Chronicles gets Mekaneck, and the neck bends

The Chronicles half of the morning is the 2026 movie line carrying on, at six and a half inches with thirty points of articulation, and the interesting one is Mekaneck. His neck is a long bendable silver accessory with a segmented surface, so it can be posed curving rather than ratcheting straight up the way the 1984 toy’s did. Clawful is the other arrival, with a shell of layered red plates and an oversized claw. Flight Armor He-Man is the quieter one, an armoured variant with a removable helmet, a sword, a dagger and swappable hands.

Where to buy, and where you cannot yet

Entertainment Earth is the only place any of this can be ordered today. BigBadToyStore returns nothing for either wave, and the company facet on its own Masters searches does not list the assortment at all. Amazon carries the existing 2026 movie Chronicles figures, but not one of the three new ones. Toy Hype USA expects both retailers to follow, and they usually do within a week or two of a Mattel listing going live, so a reader who wants a Pile of Loot has a reason to sit this one out for now. [4]

The rest of the line is on our MOTU Origins shelf, and Battle for Subternia is in stock now if you missed it.

The paintings were always the better product, and in December you can finally stand one on a shelf.

Notes

1. Read first hand on all six Entertainment Earth listings, 1 November 2026: items MTJPM05, MTJPM06 and MTJPM07 at $23.99 with schema availability PreOrder and an “Estimated to Arrive in DECEMBER 2026” line, and MTJPM89, MTJPM90 and MTJPM91 at $29.99, the first two reading JANUARY 2027 and MTJPM91 reading FEBRUARY 2027. Every page carried an active “Pre-Order: Add to Cart” control rather than a notify-me placeholder.
2. The cardback reading is Toy Habits’, not Mattel’s. Entertainment Earth’s own product copy says only that the figures are “inspired by the vintage MOTU toy line”, which is the phrase Mattel uses for the whole Origins range and settles nothing either way.
3. The six-figure count is also Toy Habits’. Entertainment Earth lists three, and its search returns nothing useful on the wave name, so the other three are reported rather than confirmed.
4. Searched 1 November 2026. BigBadToyStore returned the explicit “No items match your search criteria” string on the Chronicles wave and a single unrelated Iron Studios She-Ra statue on the Origins one; Amazon returned forty-eight result cards on each query with no match on “Flight Armor”, “Shadow Beast” or “Build-A-Figure”.

Sources

• Masters of the Universe Origins 2027 Wave 1 He-Man Action Figure, Entertainment Earth product listing, read 1 November 2026. Companion listings MTJPM06, MTJPM07, MTJPM89, MTJPM90 and MTJPM91 read the same day.
• MOTU Origins Shadow Beast Build-A-Figure Wave 1 Preorders, Toy Habits, 1 November 2026.
• MOTU Chronicles 2027 Wave 1 Preorders, Toy Habits, 1 November 2026.
• Mattel Masters of the Universe Chronicles & Origins Figures Pre-Orders For November 1st, 2026, Toy Hype USA, 1 November 2026.

Key art: Mattel, via Toy Habits.