THE STRANGE LINK BETWEEN METAMORPHO AND THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE

The mythical Masters of the Universe (MOTU from now on) toy line from the 80's was founded over only three basic molds which were combined to create most of the action figures we know today just by modifying his head and sometimes one limb or the torso. If you are around my age, the odds that you owned or played with one of this is very high.

I remember myself swapping arms between them for fun and it was not a much time until I noticed two or more of the action figures had the same body just different for the colors. But not all of these characters shared the same molds and I want to mention specifically Two-Bad, a figure introduced in 1985 which was one of the few characters that required for its construction a unique mold in its entirety.

Although the original concept for this character was having two beings, one good and one evil, inhabiting the same body, marketing technical aspects made Mattel to tag this as "double-headed evil strategist" and side him with the evil warriors.

If you look carefully, the toy resembles Metamorpho, the figure's left side is identical in color and share the same "scaly" texture than the Element Man and although the right half is blue, a great deal of his chest is orange, same than the right side of Metamorpho. The toy has in large extent the same color combination than Metamorpho due perhaps to the good partnership both colors make to create a vivid character and an impacting visual detail.

Is it a coincidence? Did the creator of the line Roger Sweet in any given moment read a Metamorpho comic and came up with the idea? Difficult to know but I am not the first person who finds a similitude between both characters, read this extract from a forum you can read for full here:

"y'know I watched He-man right after Justice league. it was the first part of the arc with metamorpho (love them DC villaiin names then again I AM watching HE-MAN) anyway I was commenting to my friend how much the character's design reminded me of the old MOTU Two-bad figure I had. lo and behold we got a MOTU Two-bad introductory ep just a few minutes later. gotta love irony folks!."

As you see, it is not only me who thinks both characters are visually similar and you really do not need a closer look to see immediately the likeness between both. The scaly factor we see on the purple half of Two Bad is identical to the Metamorpho action figures' purple half and although all Metamorpho action figures in existence were made after 1985 the common source for both is obviously the comic-books from where I think Roger Sweet or any other of the designers took the idea.

If you take a look to every figure from the line, all of them are symmetrical with a few exceptions. The MOTU TV show from the 80's by Filmation is in great part responsible of this since the show was well known for brazenly reuse the animation cells over and over again, even these cells were flipped over to be used from the other side as well so asymmetrical characters would ruin this process.

Mattel depended of the show more than he had wanted but the show's huge success catapulted MOTU to become a global cult phenomenon hence the toy line and the company itself received maximum exposure this way. The influence of the TV show was so strong that it dictated many of the directions followed to create the actions figures, so the asymmetrical characters was not a rule but an exception.

After we consider this, we now understand why in the cartoon Man-at-Arms has protectors on the four limbs (the toy has protectors only on the left limbs), Clawful's pincers are the same dimensions (the toy has the right one bigger) and Modulok received only one head (the toy has two).

Asymmetrical characters were rarely seen on the cartoon and their appearances were very limited: Two-Bad (5), Spikor (5), Fisto (4), Multi-Bot (3), Jitsu (1), Roboto (1). In a total of 130 episodes plus the Christmas Special we have that this asymmetrical characters did not appear even in 5% of the episodes with the only exception of Trap Jaw with 36 appearances (perhaps for the weight of his importance as a villain). 

When Two Bad was introduced to the line in 1985 along several other asymmetrical characters. That year was the last year asymmetrical figures were created with the exception of Multi Bot one year later. 

The reason of this could lie in the fact Mattel requested Filmation more exposure on the cartoon for the new action figures and Filmation managed to give them at least a few appearances but with the consequent problem of having to create cells they could not flip over to reuse. My guess is Filmation and the designers of the MOTU toy line probably did not have contact each other and they did not know the way the others worked until Filmation told them to create only symmetrical characters since this would made easier and faster the episodes creation process.

The MOTU fever as all other fevers started dwindling, the show was cancelled and the newly released symmetrical characters to be included in the asymmetrical-unfriendly show never had a chance. 

Two Bad stood apart from the rest of the action figures of his line in many ways, not only for his design but for his very unique nature. In the same way Metamorpho stands aside of the rest of the superheroes of the comics world for having a very unique design.

I want to end this writing by doing a memorable mention of another MOTU character probably inspired by Metamorpho, it is a spin-off of the original series called He-Ro and tells the adventures of the adopted son of Prince Adam/He-Man. 

This concept was a proposal for a TV series set several years from the events of the classic MOTU show, there was a solid proposal but the project was never executed and it is shelved till today. The show would use revamped versions of characters from the original saga and although some of them are familiar to us some of them have no relation at all with the characters we knew.

I want to refer particularly to the revamped Man-E-Faces which heavily resembles Metamorpho in the use of a torso with halves of different colors. This similarities were noticed by the writer of one of the most complete articles I have found on the web about this subject, here an extract of his comments about this character (full article here):

"The cast included a couple of newer characters...With them as well would be a very 'Metamorpho' (Editors note: Metamorpho is a classic DC comics Super-Hero) looking Man-E-Faces who like Ram-Man, was also a classic MOTU character re-imagined!!"