After He-Man defeated Anti-Eternia He-Man and closed the portal, the Masters thought that would be the end of trouble from that evil place. But Skeletor hadn't given up on his plans to harness the powers from that forsaken place and, through many spells and trials, he finally managed to summon Anti-He-Man's sword of power. When he called upon the dark power of Castle Hellskull, the magic answered and he was transformed into an ever darker version of his self, the one that would become known as Hellscape Skeletor.
The idea for this one was born when I got my hands on a couple Ninjor bodies without heads or accessories. The body shape and colouring made for a perfect base for a different take on Skeletor. I Threw together some bits I already had and ordered a couple custom casts to fill in the gaps. The chest harness is a repaint of a spare Faker harness I had left over from a different custom and the black sword is, fittingly, from one of the China Anti-He-Man figures. The Alcala head is a resin cast from Eternal Customs. The staff is a black resin copy made by Barbarossa Customs. I painted Skeletor's skull and the one on the havoc staff to match and Skeletor's your uncle. I left the loincloth as is, figuring it worked well and didn't need to be changed for the traditional Skeletor leather loincloth.
By now a pattern may start to appear, revealing that I'm partial to He-Man and Skeletor variants when it comes to MOTU Classics. I have given up the likelihood of acquiring a Battle Armor Faker from the DC-MOTU 2-pack for a decent price and I had a spare Battle Armor Skeletor, so I figured I'd have a go at making one. I actually started this one before the Pitfighter Faker, but as I had a better feeling about the latter, it got finished first.
I largely inspired my BA Faker on the official one, but used steel accents instead of gold ones and used purple as the secondary colour in keeping with traditional Faker colours. In addition to the armour pieces and weapons, I also repainted the hair on my Faker.
The body is one of the China Fakers, which may be factory castoffs or bootlegs (the latter theory gaining more traction). I had to carve some material of the shoulders and sides of the torso as I found out the BA Skeletor torso is somewhat slimmer than the regular one and I couldn't close the armour otherwise. As indicated, I wasn't terribly excited about how this one was turning out and I'm still not now that it's finished, but I guess it does the job.
Skeletor's dark side of the hemisphere is home to many blackhearted individuals, humans and monsters alike and to keep them in check, he has to provide them with entertainment to match their twisted tendencies. Thus were born the bloody pitfights in the arena, over which Skeletor presides like a king or emperor of old. The undefeated champion of these gruesome fights is none other than the evil robot of Skeletor, Faker. Wearing custom armour partly scavenged from defeated Eternos guards, Pitfighter Faker instils fear in more than one unlucky opponent who is forced to face him.
Some posing with his accessories:
This one was inspired by a custom done by Benjamin Maillet that combined a palace guard body with a Faker head and some factory testcast weapons cast in orange. My version is slightly different and uses the body and weapons of a China Faker, the boots, leg and arm armour of a palace guard and then some paint to the weapons and armour to tie the colours together and simulate the wear of repeated use.
Now the Filmation cartoon never went into all the He-Man and Skeletor variants that the toy line did, but the minicomic that came with the original Dragon Blaster Skeletor was clearly inspired by the way Skeletor looked in the Filmation cartoon, so as I had an extra Filmation Skeletor and an extra Dragon Blaster, I figured to mix and match the part to emulate what a Filmation Dragon Blaster would have been like. Now this barely qualifies as a custom, since I only mixed parts from two figures, but the dragon does have a custom head that came with the Dragon Blaster figure I got off ebay a couple years go.
The inspiration (I could have repainted the armour to match the art better, but that seemed like a bit more trouble than it was work and the original armour colours seem to look good on the figure.
Having suffered defeat at the hands of Eternia's He-Man, Anti-He-Man descended in the deepest catacombs under Castle Hellskull in search of ancient weapons of power to enact his revenge. It is there that the spirit of the Castle bestowed on him the Hellskull Battle Armour, infused with all the evil of that place and a set of weapons to match. Armed with these, it is only a matter of time before Anti-He-Man will find his way back to Eternia and destroy his paleskinned double...
Anti-Eternia He-Man in Hellskull Battle Armor and enchanted weapons
I picked up a couple of those He-Man, Faker and Anti-He-Man figures from China that, according to some are factory rejects and to others bootlegs. He-Bro made a good case for the bootleg theory with some notable differences, so I'm going to go with that. Regardless, these make for some great custom fodder as they are relatively cheap basic bodies and there is no guilt over destroying an expensive collector figure.
I wanted to make a Battle Armor variant out of one of the Anti-Eternia He-Man figures, and was hesitating which armour set to use (Skeletor's or He-Man's), but then I saw a loose chest armour for sale from a Castle Greyskullman figure and I thought that would look great in dark red, plus the skull with wings motif also figures on the shield that comes with Anti-Eternia He-Man, so the choice was made. As a plus, no complete figure had to be (expensively) sourced and harmed in the process as this was likely leftover from someone else's custom work.
A quick proof of concept was done by painting over the green stone of the flexible armour pieces in diluted black. Then that was followed by a drybrush of dark burgundy red and topped with a drybrush of scarlet. The grey emblem was just drybrushed with a lighter shade of grey to bring out the detail and the same red from before was used in the eye sockets to give a red eye effect. I felt it looked good enough to soldier on.
A quick mock-up on the body told me the colour scheme was off balance, with all the red touches being in the upper half, so I decided to give the boots the same treatment as the armour, for a worn, scuffed red leather look.
Finally, his all black plastic weapons got some touches of red and grey. Normally I would aim for a smooth covering in successive thin layers, but here I decided to continue the rough stone theme from before, so I went with more drybrushing. Finally, to help protect the paint, all the repainted parts got sprayed with varnish and added back onto the figure.
A more heavily edited picture to get a movie poster effect, for fun.
I am probably not alone in this, but it seems like a terrible crime that the Thundercats Classics range from Mattel was discontinued before we got a Tygra, Cheetara and empowered Mumm-Ra. Using a litteral translation of local expression that probably doesn't work in English, "I put on my bold shoes" and decided to attempt a custom model.
The resulting figure and its accessories:
Looking for options to complete the line-up, I came upon the Mumm-Ra figure from Bandai's 6 inch line. The figure was almost as big as a Classics figure, which was mainly due to having a bit of a pinhead. His head was smaller than his arms and it prevented him from really being compatible with the Classics Thundercats. The unpainted plastic look didn't help either. Then Funko released their neovintage style Thundercats range, made to be compatible with the vintage MOTU range. They were the toys I dreamed of having as a kid, but that were no use to me now. Or were they? From googling some size comparisons, I started thinking the heads seemed close in size to Classics figures so perhaps it would be possible, with some work, to combine the head from the Funko figure with the body of the Bandai figure. Already having bought the Bandai figure and the Funko figures being relatively inexpensive I ordered one and at first glance, the size checked out and some other bits of the Funko figure might also be used. Out came the blades and the Funko figure was stripped of it's head, cape, weapon and bandage wrappings around it's neck. The sculpted on neck needed to be removed from the Funko figure, but once that was trimmed, a quick dryfit seemed to confirm the bigger head would work so much better on the Bandai body and would lift him up to Classics size.
A quick mock-up as a proof of concept, with Skeletor for size.
Some sculpting was required to blend in all the different parts and to hide some of the more unseemly gaps on the figure that weren't really needed for the articulation and then a paintjob where I tried to match the Thundercats Classics Mumm-Ra in his shrivelled form as best as I could. Painting and shading it also helped to make it look less like a children's toy and more like an adult collector's action figure.
The fully assembled painted figure, with the sword of Plun-Darr:
Both versions of Mumm-Ra, side by side:
Mumm-Ra fighting his nemesis: Liono. Mumm-Ra ended up being slightly taller than Liono, which is a good thing. The size difference isn't quite as high as the cartoon would dictate, but it is enough to work.
The original figures (left and right) and the end result in the middle:
All in all, the following modifications were done:
- the head from the Funko figure had it's head trimmed down and added some undercuts to detach the cheekguard from his cheeks;
- the flying ribbons and the nose guard/frontal ornament from the Bandai head were added to the Funko head for added detail. Nose guard was slightly widened with putty;
- wrinkly eyebrows were sculpted to increase the likeness to the cartoon version;
- the bandages around the Funko figure's neck were removed and added to the Bandai body, heat formed to lay flat and blended in with putty;
- the neck stump was built up to leave less of a glaring gap and a new socket was added in the Funko head to fit on the neck peg;
- the grip for the sword was extended with wire and putty, and made thinner, to fit into the Bandai hand;
- the Funko figure's cape was cut off and glued onto the Bandai body (after painting). I also included one set of the flying bandages from the Bandai figure as two would be too busy and not work with the cape;
- paint, paint, paint!
A work in progress before sculpting the new wrists and painting
EDIT: apparently this custom inspired the respected customiser He-Bro to do his own version based on the same recipe. You can check out his video's about it below. Some ideas he incorporated that I like as an alternative for a quick-win is to give a wash of the original Funko face to make it match the Bandai skintone instead of repainting the whole and the fact he managed to incorporate the second set of swirly bandages from the Bandai figure that I didn't find a good use for. The use of O-rings to tighten the neck joint is also a clever idea. You can also check out his YouTube channel for more videos on making your own customs.
Based on the Filmation episode where Man-At-Arms used a robot version of He-Man as a decoy when Prince Adam was captured, this is another minor Megaconstrux custom. It combines parts of an almost complete He-Man with the head of a Terminator and some custom sculpted eyes.
Will the real He-Man please stand up?
Robot He-Man with his brothers from another mother:
Another easy custom consisting mainly in paint applications over an existing Megaconstrux figure. This Wun-Dar figure is essentially a repaint of the He-Man figure (just like the original vintage one). I did use Faker's dark grey belt and wristband as I figured if the black paint chipped, it would be less noticeable with that base. The weapons are repainted copies from a custom Lego weapon supplier (Brickwarriors I believe). I'm looking forward to getting my hands on the Megaconstrux Battlebones though as it looks like he comes with the correct weapons for Wun-Dar.
After taking the pictures I noticed I hadn't actually put on his wristarmour. Here's a quick pic to show it's there though:
