[roshan]

I'm sure 95% of the people who see this review are looking at this figure for the first time. When I do these spotlights, I'll be trying to delve through all of the various realms of action figures and that includes the knock offs of the main lines, because in many cases (this one in particular), the quality and creativity are near the same level as the main line.



In the early 80's He-Man quickly rocketed to high sales numbers soon after release and it wasn't long before another toy company Remco, followed suit with a line of their own. Remco was a major toy company with both licensed and home grown product in the 60's and 70's, but the 80's saw a shift in the companies output to try to mimic Hasbro's and Mattel's proven hits. With He-Man, Remco opted to produce a number of self contained series to bring to the market with Lost World of the Warlord, Conan, Pirates of the Galaxseas and Warrior Beasts. The Wolf Warrior was produced in the Warrior Beasts line, and although they had different packaging, the Warrior Beasts were meant to be the foils of the heroes in the Lost World of the Warrior line.

(Package comparisons between the lines. All figures in the Lost World line each had unique artwork on the packaging)

The line relied heavily on reuse of parts even more so than the He-Man line did. Remco could be argued to be the first action figure producer to make it a practice to have the majority of it's figures reuse parts on all of its lines (the GI joe style knockoffs are done the same way, even before Lanard started doing the same with their Corps lines). With a new head sculpt, different accessories and distinct repaints, they were able to keep the figures looking diverse enough. Outside the heads, these three figures share the same body. (there were really only two body styles used in the whole line).


Of the nine unique sculpts in Warrior Beasts, the Wolf Warrior is the most difficult to find. Although there are about a dozen variants in the line of varying rarity, and the variant Skull Man has a tendency to sell for more than Wolf Warrior, the occurrences of a Wolf Warrior coming up for sale are much rarer than Skull Man. Wolf Warrior is also unique in that it's the only figure throughout the whole series of sub-lines that comes with a soft goods wolf pelt. Every other accessory in the line is plastic be it weapons or capes. If I was ever able to track down a designer of the line I would love the ask the question why out of the 40-50 figures they made was he the only one given soft goods accessories (outside of the horses), but I doubt I'll ever track that down.



Now although you might not have heard of Wolf Warrior, if you were a kid in the mid 80's and collected He-Man, you very well might have one of the figures in the above picture. They were cheaper than He-man though of the same quality and durability, and made their way into many kids rooms and fit in seemlessly with their imaginations. To me, this is what sets apart the Remco figures of the 80's with the knockoffs we see today. There was a conscious effort to replicate the look and feel of the line they were piggy backing, in a way that knockoff lines of the present just don't bother with. Maybe I'm belittling the knockoffs of the present or over emphasizing the value of the knockoffs of the 80's, but to me, these Remco knockoffs added another level of diversity to kids imaginations when they played with the rest of their He-Man universe.



That's all for this week. No spotlight on Friday, because I'll be at table #1806 at Wizard World Austin this weekend.