Custom Action Figure – Leo Toys Skeletor (MOTU Origins)

This is one that has been sitting around in various stages of completion since at least August of last year mostly because I kept kicking that proverbial can down the road until I got tired of looking at it on my ever-growing pile of works-in-progress. Much like my last custom, it’s a simple concept that started with a Rit synthetic dye job, followed by mostly dry brushing with some more focused paint applications on the face. But before I get into all of that, I think I should probably explain a bit of this project’s background and the history behind this particular repaint.

Basically, I had an extra Masters of the Universe Origins Skeletor figure lying around (it’s the original 2020 version of the figure with the open mouth head sculpt and not the later release) since my brother got it for me as a stocking stuffer during the Christmas of 2021 since these were being clearance out on Amazon for about $6 at the time. I felt a little bit foolish preordering it the year before (along with the He-Man, again with the initial Origins head sculpt that everyone seemingly hated) for the full price of $16-17 but I suppose that’s the risk you take as a collector. I knew I wanted to give my extra Skeletor some kind of a custom paint job but I didn’t really get any solid ideas for where I wanted to go with it until one day it hit me: I would attempt to turn him into an Origins version of the somewhat obscure (at least to non-MOTU collectors) but incredibly awesome Leo Toys variant with the distinctive dark blue body, black armor, and yellow warpaint.

If you didn't know about Leo Toys, they were a company in India who Mattel briefly partnered with during the 1980’s as a subsidiary to produce and distribute their products over there much in the same way that Mattel worked with Top Toys in Argentina. And much like the MOTU figures produced by Top Toys, Leo Toys also produced some strange and wonderful variants of the characters that are not only highly sought after by collectors today (and worth hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on the secondary market) and even payed homage to in subsequent MOTU toylines such as the Super7 ReAction line and the Super Impulse World’s Smallest figures. Pixel Dan made a really great video about the MOTU figures produced by Leo Toys, which is well worth a watch.

With that out of the way, onto the process. First, I disassembled the figure and dyed the armor, belt, accessories, head, and feet using Rit Synthetic Graphite (black) dye. I briefly put everything back together just to evaluate how everything looked and I was quite happy with it.

The next step was to completely disassemble the figure once again and dye everything save for the loincloth piece (which was already the right color) and the parts I already dyed black, this time using Rit Synthetic Midnight Blue. Like every previous action figure dye job, I was fully expecting the plastic to be much darker than what I would consider ideal. Since the joints were the right color, it still helps me avoid having to sand and prep the individual joints so the paint rubbing off during posing wouldn’t be a concern later on.

Avoiding the joints and the parts that don’t need paint, I dry brushed the figure with a few layers of Citadel Kantor Blue. I wanted a nice dark blue to bring up some more of the color from the overly dark dye and it was a toss-up between Vallejo Dark Prussian Blue and the Kantor Blue that I ultimately used. While one of my favorite hobby paints, the Dark Prussian Blue was a bit too dark and while I could have mixed it with some white or a lighter blue, I found that the Kantor Blue was what I wanted straight out of the pot.

It's still a good bit darker than the dark blue on the actual Leo Toys figure (at least as far as I can tell from the reference images that I googled), I didn't want to go too much lighter since it would probably cause the color of the dyed joints to stand out too much if I didn't at least try to match them with everything else.

Next came the most difficult part of the build: the face-up. I more or less followed Toy Polloi’s guide for repainting Origins Skeletor’s face but with more Leo Toys accurate colors, using more Kantor Blue for the recesses on either side of the jaw, Vallejo Escorpena Green for the first layer, and Reaper Candlelight Yellow for what I refer to as Skeletor’s warpaint. As anyone who has painted anything yellow can attest, it took many, many thin layers of both the yellow and the yellowish green to get a decent-enough coverage.

For the mouth and the black marks on the forehead ended up being a lot harder than I initially expected due to the freehand nature of these paint apps. While my brush control has improved considerably since I started painting miniatures, it’s still far from great and I probably should have used some of my black acrylic ink for fine details like these but I wasn’t comfortable with trying it on this project.

Here’s the head reattached to the body after a little touching up, some dry brushing of some Kantor Blue on the hood (which I neglected to mention), and an initial coat of Vallejo anti-shine matte varnish on the head and face. But before I would out the armor back on, I would need to apply an all-over coat of protective varnish.

For the final coat of protective varnish, I went with Vallejo Mecha matte airbrush varnish and sprayed it onto the figure via (what else) an airbrush. I gave the varnish the full 24 hours as recommended by the label on the bottle before putting the figure’s accessories back on.

And that’s my crack at a custom Leo Toys Skeletor all done after many, many months of procrastination.

Not much more I can really say about this project. While it wasn’t as involved as a lot of my recent projects which lean heavily on sculpting, molding, and resin casting, it still took me a considerable amount of time and effort to finally complete but I’m glad to have seen it through until the end. I leave you with a side-by-side shot of my custom and the original MOTU Origins Skeletor, who I briefly removed from his place on my He-Man shelf for his photo op.