Enlarge image
Mark Taylor
Photo:
Rebecca Taylor / AP
The fact that He-Man, the other “Masters of the Universe” and the “Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles” were so successful was also due to Mark Taylor: The artist celebrated his greatest successes as a toy designer for action figures.
Now he died on Thursday in his home in southern California of complications from a heart condition, as his relatives announced.
He was 80 years old.
Taylor didn't come up with any of the characters himself, but as a designer he helped turn them into childhood icons.
He-Man was the emblematic of the muscle-bound superhero who fights against wizards and other villains.
Taylor said he had the first designs in mind as a child;
at that time he himself dreamed of becoming the next hero.
He based his concept for He-Man on his idea of the Cro-Magnon man and the Vikings.
Apparently Taylor had hit a nerve with it.
In the first two and a half years alone, the Mattel toy company he worked for sold more than 70 million action figures.
There were also many other products such as costumes.
Work for the US Department of Defense, then Mattel
Taylor also helped create other cult figures: Michelangelo, Donatello, Raphael and Leonardo, who together formed the pizza-loving turtle gang.
Taylor, born June 5, 1941, initially worked for the US Department of Defense.
According to his family, he has been involved in submarine, sonar technology, and ocean floor mapping projects.
In 1976 he started working for Mattel, initially as a packaging designer.
Later, his toy designs were so recognized that he appeared in several documentaries.
When asked how he would make a hero today, Taylor said at a 2015 He-Man festival that if he had to do it today, “it would be a female heroine - because the time has come, because the heroines of our time are women are".
ulz / AP