I was at the used book store yesterday with the kids, looking for some new Bob the Builder books to add to their collection, when I stumbled across these…
Of course, these Masters of the Universe and GoBots books from the early 80’s were immediately added to the basket. The artwork on the covers is pretty great…
Check out this epic Eternian battle…
Did our parents really read these to us as kids? I found myself hiding them from my boys, not wanting to feed them any nightmare fodder. Seriously, as a dad, looking at these paintings of Skeletor is totally different than seeing them when I was a young kid.
Yep, that explains all the therapy sessions.
The artwork on the inside of these books is basically drawn like a comic book without the panels, and is pretty good, with the exception of “The Trap” which is awful. Here’s the best page spread from the bunch, which appears in “Time Trouble.”
I was surprised to see that the GoBots books were illustrated by Steve Ditko, of all people. It looks like Mr. Ditko may have phoned these in just a little, because they’re pretty lackluster…
Well, these were a fun trip down memory lane and I’m happy to add them to the permanent collection. Now I have yet another thing to look for in my travels: Golden Super Adventure Books. Anyone else out there collecting these?
I love them all, even the GoBots books in their flat glory! It’s settled, looks like I have to shop the kid’s book section of our used book stores extra carefully, too! I’d love to uncover these beauties.
This store actually had a shelf for “Movie and TV Tie-Ins” in the kid’s section. Needless to say, I’ll be revisiting that shelf. 😉
I’m not too big a GoBots fan, but those Masters books look too cool. He-Man was made for painting portraiture. 😀
Yeah, those He-Man covers are amazing. I wonder what happened to all that original artwork. It would make for a great art show.
There was a dealer out of New Jersey who had an original painting of Eternia. Not sure if he still has it or not but it sure was pretty :).
That sounds great! I’d love to see one of those paintings in person.
That Time Trouble cover with He-Man on the giant clock face is FANTASTIC. What a great find.
If you want to see a ton of awesome He-Man art, check out these articles from the blog Monster Brains:
http://monsterbrains.blogspot.com/2011/05/masters-of-universe.html
http://monsterbrains.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-masters-of-universe.html
There’s tons of kick ass paintings I assume were used on toy packaging and children’s books. it really is awesome.
Thanks for those links, Paxton! There were some amazing pieces of art created for MOTU merchandise.
Wow, full collections!!!
These are awesome. I want to start collecting Choose your own Adventures actually.
Funny you should mention those Choose Your Own Adventure. I saw a few of those at the same time I picked up these He-Man books, but the store was asking $4 a piece for those! I guess they know that people collect that series since most other books were 50 cents.
$4 each is about going rate actually.
Check this out…
http://tinyurl.com/m5mpte
Aww man, I remember those well. Thanks for that link, Russ!