The Preternia Poster: From Adam to Tyrantisaurus

It’s time for the fourth and final round of Eternian A-Z, or in this case, A-T. Funny that Zodac only made the first poster, while Prince Adam–an action figure of the hero’s mild-mannered alter ego–appears on all four of them. His popularity is definitely a credit to cartoon creators. That, or little boys really wanted a figure of a guy in purple tights and a maroon vest.

This was another promotional poster by William George, released in the final days of Masters of the Universe, probably sometime in 1987. It’s sad that some of the line’s best toys were released months after its doom had been sealed at retail. The big focus here was on the “Powers of Grayskull” concept, which added dinosaurs and avuncular intrigue and all sorts of neat stuff to the He-Man legend.

If you missed the previous posters, here they are:

• The Grayskull Poster: From Adam to Zodac
• The Horde Poster: From Adam to Whiplash
• The Eternia Poster: From Adam to Webstor

Once again, this hi-res scan of the poster is courtesy of He-Man.org poster He-Lurker. Now let’s get started, shall we?

• (Prince) Adam, concentrating on using the Beam Blaster to mess up Beast Man’s shit on the Artilleray, is about to get ka-doodged by Faker. That, or Faker’s just asking him for a turn on the BB.
• Speaking of the Artilleray, Beast Man just got served.
• Sorry, Prince Adam, but the Beam-Blaster just sucks.
• Note to Beast Man: stop sucking.
• Look, Battle Cat is awesome and all, but just by riding Bionatops He-Man’s awesome factor goes up 3,452.7%.
• Blade looks a little too realistic for the poster, probably because he was in the live-action movie.
• Blast Attak is doing what he does best–breaking in half for no reason. Another winner there, bad guys.
• I love how, despite ostensibly being Skeletor’s former boss and mentor, Buzz Saw Hordak is relegated to fighting Rio Blast in the background. Fan favorite my ass.
• Castle Grayskull appears to have undergone some teeth-whitening treatments.
• If he’d been in the live-action movie in the ’80s, Clamp Champ would have been played by Bernie Casey from Revenge of the Nerds. And been awesome.
• Evil-lyn is doing her impression of Earth Kitt’s Catwoman.
• Faker: “Hey, Adam. You feel good–you been working out? Do you like gladiator movies?”
• Hey, Gwildor–get the **** out of my awesome He-Man poster. And take your magic Spork with you.
• You gotta appreciate King Randor‘s willingness to get down and dirty with the rest of the troops. Or rather, high and relatively clean, since he’s on a flying dinosaur. I hope he gives his son a talking-to about nearly blasting him out of the sky.
• After all the Battle Armor and Thunder Punching and Laser Lighting, here we get He-Man Classic™.
• Man-At-Arms is making a perfect Laocoön of himself. (Look it up.)
• Mosquitor‘s not really helping, is he?
• Ninjor‘s incredibly unoriginal name is probably responsible for all the MOTU “blank-or” jokes. Also, that’s the least wisely placed dagger I’ve ever seen.
• Like Ninjor, Rio Blast always seemed really out of place in the MOTUniverse to me. Cowboys and ninjas? Why not a ’30s gangster (“Gangstor”) or a pirate?
• So, Rokkon‘s transforming into a…rock and Blast Attak is falling apart. So who wins here, scissors or paper?
• Is Rotar a good guy or a bad guy? It’s not clear from the context here.
• Is that Saurod‘s tongue or a laser beam?
• Scare Glow: “Oh, you!”
• Am I seeing things, or does that say Sikeletor?
• Y’know, when you think about it, Snake Face is really ****ing disturbing. Snakes for eyes?
• The cartoon Snake Mountain was so  much cooler than the toy and its Muppet-looking face.
• Like King Randor, the Sorceress is “supervising” the battle from above.
• Sssqueeze‘s face looks just like the bad guy leader from Dinosaucers. Which is to say, he looks like a dinosaur.
• Teela is Sure.
• How do you turn a pterodactyl into a Turbodactyl? Graft on some turbine engines.
• Twistoid doesn’t care what anyone says, electric pink is awesome.
• I’m not going to say anything about the Tyrantisaurus, because a giant purple tyrannosaur being ridden by an undead skull-faced sorcerer is pretty much the AWESOMEST THING EVER IN RECORDED HISTORY.