Floral He-Man

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Summary:

This figure… inspires a lot of questions. I’m going to focus on:

What is it?
Is it an action figure or more of a display piece?
Is it worth the price?

What is it?

This is an “artistic re-imagining” by artist James Jean, who cites the da Vinci painting The Battle of Angiari as inspiration. I don’t see much similarity to the original painting other than the overall poses; nothing floral there.

So where the flowers come from, and what they mean, is still kind of a mystery. Is that the point, that we’re just supposed to wonder about it? Is it intended to be simply art, subject to personal interpretation?

I’m left wondering what the story is. Did He-Man get shrunk down to flower size? Or did he have an adventure in Giant Flower Land? For his counterpart, Coral Skeletor, it’s much easier to imagine that he had an undersea adventure and discovered some coral magic.

Action figure or display piece?

Some of both, but I think mostly the latter. The packaging is elaborate, and articulation is limited (though maybe that’s just me being used to Transformers where expectations may be different).

And it is interesting to just look at.

Worth it?

I compared it with my similarly-priced and also-recently-purchased Studio Series 86 Optimus Prime. Floral He-Man certainly wins on packaging; Optimus’ cardboard display stand is pretty basic. But Optimus is more poseable, and still very displayable, especially if you like the movie-like look, plus he has the full featured trailer.

So I’m not totally convinced on the price question, and that’s compared to the Optimus where I’m just barely convinced he’s worth it.

But if you’re a big He-Man fan, and you’re looking for something unusual, go for it.

Interview with artist Nate Baertsch

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Nate Baertsh has been doing package art for Masters of the Universe toys for a number of years, and currently works at Four Horsement Studios doing art for their Mythic Legions and Cosmic Legions lines of action figures.

Some memorable quotes:

“I don’t play the lottery, I don’t gamble. But if, if I did and if, you know, millions of dollars fell in my lap, I would, I’d be like, great. My kids will be taken care of. Because I would still work. I wouldn’t stop working.”
“We like surprises and … we want to reward the child or the individual or whoever it is that’s tinkering with the toy, to be able to discover stuff that they might not have otherwise seen.”
“We like to hide stuff. We like to surprise people. We like to reward those that are ready to take the action figure out of the box and actually play with it, because at the end of the day, that’s what we want.”
On toys with hidden details: “Whenever you see stuff like that on a toy, it’s, to me, that is a mark of whoever designed it and sculpted it was having fun. Like they really wanted to make it special for all of us that are purchasing them and enjoying them.”