Recommended music: Quincy Jones – Ironside
Greetings MOTU fans! Hope you had a great weekend. The new Masters of the Universe movie comes out THIS WEEK! For this #MastersMonday, let’s look at another 1985 vehicle from the vintage Mattel Masters of the Universe line: Spydor!
I never had the ‘Evil Stalker’ vehicle as a kid, and I don’t remember any of my friends having one either. I’m not sure why, but in our area, parents seemed to stick with vehicles that had regular wheels, tank treads, or at least shorter, sturdier legs. If I had seen any Mattel TV ads for Spydor, I know my younger self would have loved having a big battery-powered spider crawling around the house. Maybe parents were put off by that, or maybe it was the $15-$26 price tag.
Now that I collect MOTU as an adult, Spydor has made its way into my collection a few times. As you can see in the picture, it’s easy to lose the guns and legs. The walking mechanism also tends to jam up after all these years. Even without all its parts or the ability to walk, Spydor still looks pretty intimidating in a vintage MOTU display.
In the 1980s, Spydor was sold on its own, and the box featured great William George artwork of Battle Armor Skeletor—just like my vintage toys in the photo. The vehicle didn’t come with a figure or a minicomic, but it did appear in two 1985 releases I would have seen. First, in the ‘Spikor Strikes’ mini comic that came with Spikor and Sy-Klone, and also in ‘Hordak – The Ruthless Leader’s Revenge!’ which came with Hordak figures.
Spydor also appeared in the Golden hardcover books ‘I Have The Power’ and ‘The Horde’, both of which I had as a kid. It showed up in a lot of UK comics, too, though I didn’t see those until I was an adult. Sadly, Spydor never returned in later MOTU toy lines or animated series. Maybe one day a customizer will make an even bigger version of it for modern figures readily available, since it seems Mattel doesn’t want to revisit it because of the electronics.
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