TRIBES ! hasbro answer to MOTU

Hello everyone

I posted this thread in regards of a toy concept, that hasbro canceled in the earlie 80`s to take on he-man. I`ve heard this on a gijoe forum, but there where no photos about the prototypes, but people in the forum said that on ebay people had bought prototypes figures of this line.

Does anyone here in the forum have at least a picture of this so called Tribes ?

Any info please share and if you have pictures that would be cool.

Regards to everybody

anyone there ?

I have an issue of Tomart's Action Figure Digest with the Hasbro catalog page with these guys on it. If I can find it, I'll post a pic.

Originally Posted by adol

I have an issue of Tomart's Action Figure Digest with the Hasbro catalog page with these guys on it. If I can find it, I'll post a pic.

Dude you are awesome !

No luck yet, but I'm still digging around!

I have a load of photos of prototypes at my home (I'm in office now) when I got back I'll post them!

edit:
here they are

Wow!
And these were 5.5" scale?

Cool, thanks for sharing! It's really interesting to see how closely these align to MOTU in some ways. I wonder why it got shelved? They obviously had gotten pretty far with it.

Originally Posted by JonWes

Cool, thanks for sharing! It's really interesting to see how closely these align to MOTU in some ways. I wonder why it got shelved? They obviously had gotten pretty far with it.

A little too close if you ask me. I'm not sure but is that something of a battle mask behind the silver tiger? Really close to MOTU. I'm almost upset that a toy company would even try to get my attention by trying to mimic MOTU.

Originally Posted by coolapex

A little too close if you ask me. I'm not sure but is that something of a battle mask behind the silver tiger? Really close to MOTU. I'm almost upset that a toy company would even try to get my attention by trying to mimic MOTU.

Yeah, it's a battle mask, he's wearing it in one of the pics of the painted ones.

This would have DEFINITELY given vintage MOTU a run for its money and I probably would have gotten some of them, especially the cat(s)!

Shame these never happened. But the cat is far too close to Battle Cat that they'd probably have had a lawsuit. It would have been great to have had some more compatible toylines, especially if there had also been playsets.

Originally Posted by JonWes

Cool, thanks for sharing! It's really interesting to see how closely these align to MOTU in some ways. I wonder why it got shelved? They obviously had gotten pretty far with it.

How can you compete with MOTU and Thundercats?

MotU was losing steam when these were proposed at Toy Fair.

Soooooo Rad!
Thanks for posting those! Any chance we can get larger scans?

Thanks for the pics. Hope you don't mind me posting them as images as I find it annoying to keep clicking them back and forth.







The visual look is pretty interesting. I like the idea of the masks. Though on the whole I think they just seem quite a bit weaker than MOTU. i'd love if we could read some of the text on the pages to see if we could learn some of the backstory behind the characters. I am a bit disappointed with the size of the cat relative to the figure. it seems a bit undersized. The dinosaur-creature is very cool though!

You said MOTU was losing steam... so were these in the 1987 assortment? Or earlier?

If they had gone into production I'm 100% sure that the Lions and that Eagle would have been completely different. Hasbro had no problem grabbing other toys to make mock up's.
Take a look at the 1994 G.I. Joe Star Brigade Thrasher figure

http://www.yojoe.com/archive/unproduced/shockwave.shtml

pretty cool, though the sculpts still don't come close to the quality of MOTU. I would have seen it as a bootleg line and not have been interested as a kid. (I loathed copycat/bootleg lines)

Originally Posted by adol

MotU was losing steam when these were proposed at Toy Fair.

Then that might be the reason why this was canceled. Public losing interest in barbarians/sword and sorcery.

Or maybe due to Visionaries toyline flop?

Originally Posted by Grimbot

Or maybe due to Visionaries toyline flop?

Such painful memories..

Okay, so these were actually from the 1990 Hasbro catalog. Perhaps Hasbro wanted to "fill a void" in the toy departments.

I would buy these now. Those are just great looking toys. What was the back-story behind the line?

Originally Posted by adol

Okay, so these were actually from the 1990 Hasbro catalog. Perhaps Hasbro wanted to "fill a void" in the toy departments.

What a shame! I probably wouldnt have been able to get them here anyway.
Though we did get the conan toys a couple of years later.

Are those images the ones you mentioned were in Tomarts? Do you remember which issue number?

These images are scans from the 1990 Hasbro Catalog that a Joe collector friend of mine has. I haven't found the Tomart's magazine yet, which leads me to believe it is far away in an of site storage unit. I THINK it was issue number 30, and it was only one page with a group shot of figures and the logo.

The story was basically that there were four factions of Tribes at war over control of the Tribal Tower. That's about it, really. The figures had a push button activated arm swinging action, and a button of their belts made the figure's Tribal Mask pop off.
The four animal also had Masks.

Originally Posted by adol

The story was basically that there were four factions of Tribes at war over control of the Tribal Tower.

Hmmm. Sounds familiar.

These figures are kind of neat, though.

Originally Posted by adol

MotU was losing steam when these were proposed at Toy Fair.

If there is no trouble, do you have a bigger image that you can please put here on the thread, this are a little bit small, but only if there is no trouble or at least an URL.


Best Regards

Originally Posted by nanoFatato

I have a load of photos of prototypes at my home (I'm in office now) when I got back I'll post them!

edit:
here they are
http://www.he-man.org/forums/boards/...1&d=1318937693
http://www.he-man.org/forums/boards/...1&d=1318937703
http://www.he-man.org/forums/boards/...1&d=1318937744
http://www.he-man.org/forums/boards/...1&d=1318937752
http://www.he-man.org/forums/boards/...1&d=1318937765

http://www.he-man.org/forums/boards/...1&d=1318937886
http://www.he-man.org/forums/boards/...1&d=1318937894
http://www.he-man.org/forums/boards/...1&d=1318937905

Dude if you have more artwork or pics keep sending them !

Best Regards

These are the best I can do at the moment. Sorry!