- by Owen Morton
I’ve been nosing about on eBay quite a lot recently, largely looking for He-Man things, much to my eternal damnation. (Just today I secured a collection of nine figures, including He-Man, Skeletor, Man-at-Arms, Teela, Beast-Man, Trapjaw, Whiplash, Hordak and a curiously armless Tri-Klops!) I’ll admit that making such purchases is perhaps slightly on the wrong side of sanity, but all the same, there are people out there willing to buy He-Man merchandise to a much stupider extent than I am.
Take, for example, the boxed Castle Grayskull that is on offer. £50. Would anybody out there pay £50 for a castle Grayskull model, whether it’s in a box or not? I know I wouldn’t. There are also original boxed He-Man vehicles, all at £25. Who is insane enough to buy these things? Even unboxed things, like the Castle Grayskull and Snake Mountain models I bid on yesterday – for a modest £5 – had increased by 4pm today to a quite ludicrous £46. I mean, honestly. Stupid or what?
However, there are really some things out there that take the biscuit. You can find almost anything on eBay. The Masters of the Universe board game that I bet you never even knew existed can be obtained at only £20. The only fault it has, according to the description, is that the dice are missing, there is “sticker damage” to Skeletor’s face, and the name ‘Jamie Devon’ is scrawled all over the logo. Despite this, it apparently “displays well”. Why would anybody want to display the bloody thing? If I had one, I’d keep it well locked up out of sight. Anyone who displayed a He-Man board game with the obvious pride that its former owners did is probably not of this world.
But at any rate, there are still more pointless things on eBay than this. I’d go into more, but I’m really rather inclined to go for the thing that I described above as ‘a stupid piece of merchandise from the 1980s’. This is most verily that. Here is a picture of it.
It’s apparently a Masters of the Universe Rotadraw. According to the description, it’s “still in its original box, complete a must have for any collector”. Not a particularly helpful description, really. It doesn’t give us any clue as to what it is, other than a must-have for any collector, which I’m rather inclined to doubt, as “collectors” could easily include that rare breed of people who do not collect He-Man things.
The box seems to advertise that with the Rotadraw, you can “draw all these Masters of the Universe yourself”. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the Rotadraw was merely a set of glorified stencils, to tell you the truth – and indeed, on closer examination of the pictures at the bottom, I am further inclined to this conclusion. Doesn’t sound that great to me, though, on the other hand, it is only £1.50, and a further £1.60 for postage and packing.
The question I really want to ask, though, is what in hell is Skeletor doing in the picture? As far as I can tell, he’s jumping for joy, with a grin even more maniacal than his usual imbecilic expression. Has he actually won for a change? I mean, really, has anyone ever seen Skeletor adopt a pose as stupid as the one he’s got here?
And that’s enough of that. There’s not really an awful lot more I can say about the Rotadraw, except that I will most decidedly not be buying it.
PS. Wow! The first time I've written more than one article a day since August last year!