In regard to the following questions, it is a good idea for me, Roger Sweet, to first explain my role relative to He-Man and the Masters Of The Universe.

I originated and named He-Man. Also, I originated the general concept of He-Man, which later was re-named the Masters Of The Universe. This concept was presented and embodied as the three prototype He-Man figures of the He-Man Trio at a Mattel Product Conference in late 1980.

Of the Trio, one figure was a past time, ancient barbarian, low tech. One figure was current military-enhanced, medium tech. And, one figure was futuristic space military-enhanced, high tech. These three figures were super-muscular, super-well defined and broad, tanned, in an action pose with a battle action facial expression. They represented combining all themes, all time periods and all degrees of technology into one dynamite male action line.

After presenting the He-Man concept Mattel upper management and Marketing decided to pursue it for further development. I then worked with Mattel Visual Design and Marketing to establish the general direction of 1982 first year’s characters. The final names and appearances of those figures, with the help of Marketing, were finalized by Mattel Visual Design. I and members of my Preliminary Design group worked with Visual Design to co-originate the prototype of Castle Grayskull. Its final layout and appearance changed little from the prototype. Visual Design originated and designed the two 1982 first year vehicles, the Battle Ram and the Wind Raider. The Battle Cat was a concept that I originated, using the Big Jim tiger re-vamped. But, its styling was done by Visual Design.

I then was put in charge at Mattel of managing the creation of the Masters product for Mattel for the 1983 through 1987 lines. This meant that I and my Preliminary Design group did the preliminary design. That is, my group originated each product’s concept at Mattel. It was given a name. Then it did a works-like model and full color illustration. And, my group had a preliminary costing done for the product by Mattel’s Costing department. After my group performed these functions, and management bought into the concept, then the Visual Design group and Engineering did a “takeover” of the product if they agreed with what Preliminary Design had done. Next, Engineering engineered the product for production. And, Visual Design worked with Engineering to arrive at the final styling appearance of the product.

Throughout all of these Preliminary and Visual Design processes Mattel Marketing oversaw the direction of the product. Once the line got going, though, Marketing received outside submissions from outside inventors. Some of these outside submissions could be given directly to Engineering and Visual Design for development, by-passing my Preliminary Design group.

Also, after Filmation began their cartoon series of Masters Of The Universe, they originated many characters and other product, such as Orko and Gwildor, completely independent of my Mattel Preliminary Design group. Regarding the Filmation Masters cartoon series, I only watched 15 minutes of one episode. The show was on at 4:00 PM in the afternoon, while I was at work at Mattel.

Also, the Masters line was being delineated in small comics which were sold with Masters product, and large comic books that were sold wherever that type of publication was marketed. I had no pre-production knowledge of or coordination with these publications. I only saw them after they reached the market. And, being extremely busy, I did not keep track of them.

The reason is that during that time I was at work at Mattel, and was working a lot of overtime developing specific products. Further, my group was busy creating the product that would be later on the market, in the Masters cartoon and in those publications. Concerning the Masters Of The Universe movie starring Dolph Lundren, the Masters characters in it had already been created at Mattel or at Filmation. Therefore, relative to the following, if I appear to not know about some concept being invented for the 1983 through 1987 lines, the above information gives the reasons why.

One other point: The He-Man name and concept that was later renamed the Masters concept was planned from its inception to be very generic and open-ended as illustrated in the prototype He-Man Trio. The concept and its products, as also stated elsewhere, could go practically anywhere and be practically anything. They represented an “Eternia” even before the name had been coined. This extremely important factor allowed, enabled and encouraged the line to expand as it did, like the wild Blackberry bushes encroaching on my back yard, into all types of scenarios, themes, environments, appearances, characters, vehicles, animals and accessories.

I managed a Preliminary Design group at Mattel for five years for the 1983 through 1987 Masters lines. At one time or another I had 18 designers and model makers working with me. There was also a Visual Design group and an Engineering group, or department, among many other departments, each with a different function. The function of the Preliminary Design group was to originate the SEED IDEA of product concept, develop it far enough to construct a works-like model if necessary, do a styled illustration which was usually 19” X 24” in full color, get a preliminary cost and give the product a preliminary name.

After those functions by Preliminary Design were performed regarding a product, then if Engineering and Visual Design agreed that there was enough of the “right stuff” to develop, Engineering did a “takeover” of the concept. After that point, those two departments worked together to finalize the styling, engineering and design of the product for production. At that stage, usually Preliminary Design was out of that loop, no longer contributing input.

Once in a great while the overall configuration of the product changed radically from the prelim version. This occurred, for example, with the Blaster Hawk. But, very often only the appearance changed radically. Also, additional features might be added from the prelim version. Add to this information the fact that very often the following would happen: I would get the Seed Idea for a product. Ideas could come from anywhere by any means.

There was a myriad of ways that I and others got them. Listing all of the ways ideas are originated gets into the entire mechanics of creativity, which can easily fill a book of its own. A Seed Idea could occur to me at any time or anywhere, day or night. As with all Seed Ideas that I got, I would normally list a descriptive name for it on a sheet of paper. Once I named that concept, I could almost always remember exactly what the concept was. However, if necessary to remember the Seed Idea, I would also do a quick, extremely rough thumbnail sketch of it to accompany the name. I originated and right now have thousands of these Seed Ideas for all the Mattel and other toy company categories as well as a huge number in other product areas outside the toy industry. I never fail to write a Seed Idea down no matter where I am.

I would then often take that idea to one of my group’s designers, like Ed Watts or Ted Mayer, and verbally describe to him the Seed Idea and roughly how I envisioned it. If necessary, I would do a very fast thumbnail sketch of it with a ballpoint pen, maybe only 2 or 3 inches in size on a sheet of paper. This might take a minute or two. But, I made sure that the designer understood what the concept was. Then, I would ask the designer to work out the details and do a rendering of that concept. I developed and rendered many of my own Seed Ideas. But, my group’s designers also ended up drawing many of my Seed Ideas and many of their own. Then, we would present all of these illustrations to Marketing. They would select the ones they liked for further development to presentation to upper management in a product conference. And later, if accepted, a concept was taken over by Engineering.

The foregoing is the way things normally worked. However, in some cases one group, such as Charles McHose’s group, would handle both the preliminary and visual design of a product concept. This happened, for instance, with the BraveStarr line. However, there is another factor to be considered, and that is where the Seed Idea for a product was originated. Usually, only one, or at the most, two people would originate the Seed Idea of a concept. Very seldom were there three of more people involved. Perhaps 90 % of the time it was one person.

By the Seed Idea I mean the following: Let’s take an extremely pertinent example – the original He-Man figure. The Seed Idea of that concept was a super-muscular, super-well-defined, super physically powerful heroic male human with about a 2-to-1 body proportion in a battle action pose named He-Man. (All heroic male action, comic figures and real human males until then had a 3-to-1 body proportion.) Even the battle-action waist is slightly secondary in importance to that Seed Idea He-Man figure. And, all other factors were secondary, even the theme, the height or scale, and the décor of the figure. From this example you may have discovered that there are actually two types of Seed Ideas for a product line. There is the Seed Idea required for each product in a line. But then, senior to this there is the KEY SEED IDEA upon which the entire product line depends and is based, and from which the entire line grows.

The He-Man figure was the Key Seed Idea from which all of the He-Man/Masters line grew. Without the He-Man figure, there would have been no He-Man/Masters Of The Universe line. And, all of the necessary key elements had to be present in that Key Seed Idea. To illustrate, if Skeletor had been presented instead of He-Man as the Key Seed Idea concept figure with an average athletic physique and a barbarian theme for an evil Skeletor line – Nein!

Let’s take another less important example – the Fright Zone. The Seed Idea concept of this playset was the large-mouthed monster hand puppet that could come out of a cave to attack any poor, unfortunate Masters figure. Juicy! All other features and details of that set, such as the jail, were secondary. Without that Seed Idea feature, the set would never have happened. Also, worth noting, hand puppets had been done a million times and had a lot of play value. But, they had never been done the way the hand puppet was done relative to the Fright Zone. A brand new twist on a tried-and-true old idea! On the Fright Zone, here is how it went. I got the Seed Idea. I then explained it to Ed Watts, a member of my prelim group, who developed it and did a sensational full color 19” X 24” rendering of it.

In the product conference presentation, to illustrate how the idea worked, and to save time, we might just show a very rough hand-sewn cloth hand puppet monster with a large opening mouth and hand-drawn teeth which could come out of a hole in a piece of cardboard. Just enough to get the idea across and sell it. Time was of the essence. Upper management bought the idea. It was taken over. Then, Visual Design and Engineering somewhat changed the styling and configuration in the production version. One point of explaining all of this is that a single product concept passed through many hands and got strong multiple inputs along the way to production from people in several Mattel departments. Therefore, if you ask me, did I do the entire design of a particular product, the answer, of course, is no. And, the same answer would apply to any other designer in my Preliminary Design group or in the Visual Design group, as well.

Originating Key Seed Ideas and Seed Ideas of product concepts was my strongest contribution to the He-Man/Masters and other lines at Mattel. But, I was very versatile and excellent at developing any concept all of the way through from seed to production. And, I did a lot of that as well. Also, coupled with that, my group and I were extremely efficient, well-organized and productive within the set of factors with which we dealt. Before I got into toy design at Mattel I had spent thirteen years doing general consumer product and graphics design in other entirely different industries. And, during that time I worked five years doing straight design and operations engineering. Therefore, I had a lot of varied experience to bring to Mattel. Then, at Mattel, before created and managed the Masters line, I had spent seven years in the old Preliminary Design department of 60 people under VP Denis Bosley. So, when you ask what my contribution was to Masters and Mattel, the above gives a partial answer.

Now on to the questions!

1. How were the 3 prototype figures you displayed (at the 1st meeting to present MOTU) constructed?
eg: What were they made out of, what parts came from Big Jim, what colors were they, what weapons did they have, etc.

The three prototype figures of He-Man I first presented and displayed at the 3rd Mattel product conference of 1980 were constructed of hard plaster