Toy Bender

No man on Earth has ever had so much power. An incredible power that turns a normal, uninteresting man into a hideous freak! These are the Power Lords and if you never heard of them, I don’t blame you because they didn’t stick around for too long.

Back during the reign of He-Man in the ’80s, Revell, who is more known as a car model company, decided to jump on the bandwagon and create their very own He-Man inspired knock off like dozens of other toy companies at the time. The Power Lords had more of a sci-fi spin than the fantasy/sci-fi themed He-Man as evidenced by the epic sci-fi story and lack of swords and skeleton men (Attention bands: Swords and Skelton Men is a great name).

According to the one source I could find on the Power Lords that was helpful, not only were the toys ugly, but they were prone to breakage. Both the plastic was shoddy and the mechanism for their transformation could easily break, creating a one two combo punch of utter suckitude.

One interesting thing that Power Lords has in common with He-Man is that both toy lines had the name Adam as their lead hero’s name, Prince Adam for He-Man and Adam Power for Power Lords. Odd how that works out. Another commonality between the two is terrible haircuts. While Prince Adam had a pathetic pageboy haircut, Adam Power looks like he just went to the homeless man that lives behind Supercuts for his styling needs.

Power Lords had the distinction of having been designed by Wayne Barlowe, who if you don’t know is responsible for the classic book, Barlow’s Guide to Extraterrestrials. I hate to knock a fairly famous sci-fi illustrator, but most of his designs in his early work sucks major arse and Power Lords reflects this. The aliens don’t look cool at all, rather they look extras in a Roger Corman sci-fi suckfest. I’m not sure if he’s responsible for the vehicle designs for Power Lord, but God almighty are they awful. I was tempted to put up a picture of the head bad guy’s vehicle until I realized I might cause a mass vomiting. I don’t need that on my conscious.

I’d also like to point out that the major problem with this ad is that the western eye is trained to travel from left to right, but the motion implied in the figure is from right to left. The way I first saw it is that this ugly looking purple guy was squatting and then turning into a some cracker insurance salesmen, which is the exact opposite of what is happening in this image. The other problem with it is that these toys clearly suck, and the ad does nothing to hide this fact. I’m not sure what they could do, but a big shot of the power squatter clearly wasn’t it.

Still, despite Revell’s best efforts to produce a toy line that virtually no kid would want to be any part of with a dopey idea, horrible advertising, and shoddy materials, Power Lords lived long enough to see a couple of above mentioned vehicles and a volcano looking playset. Ahh the eighties… when any crappy toy line could get a huge playset. Those were the days.

Before Power Lords finally wheezed it’s dying breath in Kmarts across the U.S., it managed to make it into other media. DC Comics had a short run with a Power Lords comic and there was even a forgettable video game, but these ventures outside of the toy world weren’t enough to save Power Lords. It didn’t have a cartoon, which was critical to the success of ’80s properties like He-Man, G.I. Joe, Care Bears, and so on. Without a cartoon to keep memories alive and a small collection of ugly figures as it’s legacy, Power Lords has almost entirely slipped out of the pages of history. Maybe that’s good thing.

Now forget you ever saw this.

Source: ToyNfo.com’s Power Lords Entry

toy, toy collecting, action figure, commercial, advertisement, Power Lords