Recommended music: Metallica – Enter Sandman
Greetings MOTU fans! Hope you all had an awesome weekend. The new Masters of the Universe movie comes out NEXT WEEK! For this #MastersMonday, let’s ‘exit light, enter night’, and take a look at another 1985 vehicle from the vintage Mattel Masters of the Universe line: Night Stalker!
The ‘Evil Armored Battle Steed’ came out a year after Stridor and is the largest example of a nearly complete repaint for the Evil Warriors in the vintage Masters of the Universe toyline. Mattel had already successfully done this with Screeech, a repaint of Zoar, and Panthor, a repaint of Battle Cat (though Panthor doesn’t have the helmet). This gold-and-black version of Stridor was a real hit, even though it was also missing a helmet. Decades later, I was lucky enough to find a custom purple helm for my vintage Stridor at Power-Con.
With two “laser” guns and a rotating tail gun, this robotic horse was a real threat to your Heroic Warrior figures. It was first called “Knight Mare” and was supposed to appear in an episode of either Filmation’s He-Man and the Masters of the Universe or She-Ra: Princess of Power, just like Stridor. But the evil horse never made it into the cartoons, and its original name was changed before it showed up on any packaging, appearing only in German audio plays and magazines.
Back in the 1980s, you could buy Night Stalker on its own, with this great William Garland artwork featuring Battle Armor Skeletor, where my vintage toys are standing in. There was also a gift set with Night Stalker and Jitsu, with box art by William George that shows Jitsu about to trample Fisto with his new ride.
Night Stalker received new versions in both the MOTU Classics and Origins toy lines, and the character/vehicle also finally appeared in animation during the first episode of the Netflix series Masters of the Universe: Revelation.
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Dale's Toys 