Inspired by He-Man.org’s Roast Gooble Dinner podcast, welcome to PGPoA’s latest MOTUC Bio Discussion!

Grizzlor Bio
Real Name: Gur’rull Gu’Rrooowarrrkâ„¢

Originally a peaceful creature from the planet Junguliaâ„¢, at the young age of 428 Gur’rull was kidnapped by the Horde Empire who erased his memories so he would serve loyally in their armies. Renamed “Grizzlor” he traveled with Hec-Tor Kurâ„¢ to Eternia in search of He-Roâ„¢. His ferocious attacks were so frightening that even after being banished to Despondosâ„¢ along with his master, Grizzlor’s legend lived on, becoming a myth told to young Eternian children. Prison Guard for the Horde, Grizzlor is ready to unleash his fierce claws to attack the forces of Eternia!

Portrait Art Source: Original Card Back

First off, much of this bio is borrowed from issue #62 of the British Masters of the Universe magazine.

Here’s the synopsis from the He-Man.org page for the issue:

Feature Story 3: “Secret Files of Scrollos: Grizzlor”

The origin of Grizzlor. It explains that Grizzlor comes from a jungle world named Jungulia, on the outer edge of the spiral arm of the N24 galaxy. By the age of 428, Grizzlor had developed a savage anger that shocked his family. One day in a cave he found a box which contained incredibly powerful weapons. Grizzlor saw them as toys, and played with them that way, but they terrified his family and friends! When in orbit over Jungulia, Horde Prime’s Sata-Spies detected Grizzlor and mistook him for a powerful evil warrior, and reported him to Horde Prime, who decided the warrior should be recruited into Hordak’s Horde. He contacts Hordak and orders him to go to Jungulia. He does so, and when orbiting above, he beams aboard Grizzlor and wipes away all memories of Jungulia from his mind. He was impressed by the weapons Grizzlor had, and believed that Grizzlor had a huge mental genius! Of course, he was later to find that Grizzlor was a totally useless warrior!

As you can see a lot of the elements of the bio come from this: Jungulia, Grizzlor’s age of 428, and the idea that he was kidnapped and brainwashed by the Horde.

But here’s the interesting thing: I think the UK bio is better than the MOTUC one, and here’s why.

1.) The MOTUC bio describes Grizzlor as having originally been a “peaceful creature” who’s then brainwashed and turned into a monster by the Horde. So this is yet another example of softening a villain and casting him as a victim. It also opens up the possibility that were Grizzlor’s memories simply to be restored, he would become good again. So he’s a good guy being made to do bad things against his will–kind of a depressing view of the character, really.

Now, the UK bio says that Grizzlor “developed a savage anger that shocked his family” and later “terrified his friends and family.” Now that sounds like a bad guy, and it makes a lot more sense that Hordak would kidnap him, erase his memories and immediately have a loyal new member for his brute squad.

2.) The UK bio also states that Grizzlor found a cache of weapons. Now, why would that be relevant? Because MOTUC Grizzlor comes with a cache of weapons.

It’s like the Bio Writers took the least interesting/important parts of the bio–the goofy name Jungulia, the extremely Wookie-like long lifespan, the idea that most members of Grizzlor’s species were generally peaceful, the brainwashing–and ditched the parts that actually would have been useful for the bio.

On a side note, both bios don’t really hide the fact that Grizzlor was a Wookie rip-off, do they?

As for the rest of the bio, it seems Grizzlor was around prior to Hordak’s banishment to Etheria. This makes sense and matches what we saw in the 200X cartoon. After that, the bio works in the depiction of Grizzlor from his vintage mini-comic, where he was a sort of legend (I won’t say urban legend, because that doesn’t make sense for a fantasy world) among Eternians. I like this idea, so no problems there.

Overall, the Grizzlor bio seems like a missed opportunity to me. MOTUC Grizzlor’s bevy of weapons is neat, and explaining them would have been a nice touch, especially since it was right there for them in the vintage bio they were using. It’s just odd.