Toys
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The Blackstar toy line was produced by Galoob and ran from 1983 to 1985. According to Tomart's Action Figure Digest, Galoob was trying to capitalize on Mattel's enormously successful Masters of the Universe line, which is ironic when you consider that Filmation was responsible for producing both animated series. In fact, Galoob designed its Blackstar figures to be used "interchangeably in the He-Man play pattern."

While faithful in most respects to the cartoon, anyone who has seen the series will notice some of the glaring discrepancies in the toyline.  For example, do you remember Blackstar
ever being that buff? The figure is so pumped up that, like most He-Man figures, if you ever encountered him in real life, you'd have to step off the curb into the street just to pass him. And where did the fur cape come from?  Even more startling is the spelling of "Sagar" as "Zagar."  It seems as though the people  in the Galoob advertising department never saw the show, because the Mara figure is also labelled as "Princess of the Secret Power."  What's that, again? In the cartoon, she was always referred to as "the Enchantress."  Do not get us started on the version of Warlock that features yellow wings and Blackstar's Space Ship (with Rocket Launchers, no less, for those days when Warlock goes on vacation and the Starsword runs out of AA batteries).  One of the premises of the show is that Blackstar is stranded; his ship (never seen anywhere but the Introduction) is ostensibly a pile of wreckage somewhere and he isn't going anywhere.  Again, we have to assume the people at Galoob either never saw the show or never saw enough of it to make the toys accurate. 

To be fair, this is not uncommon.  In a reverse situation, Mattel and Filmation do not agree where the
He-Man canon is concerned.  For example, in Mattel's version Teela is the Warrior Goddess, serving the same function the Sorceress later serves in the cartoon; the Cosmic Enforcer Zodac is packaged as an Evil Warrior, while in the cartoon he is clearly neutral.  Even as late as She-Ra, the figures do not correspond exactly with their animated counterparts.  Bow is sculpted without his mustache (as is Man-at-Arms in the He-Man line), Castaspella wears a yellow costume instead of a blue one and Glimmer's costume is lavender and silver rather than the lavender/blue combination seen in the show.

Even today, you will hear debates over whether the He-Man figures with mini-comics or the cartoon is the true canon. 
Blackstar did not last long enough to develop a true canon, though with the series airing at least two years before the toys appeared it is obvious that the Galoob line falls short on accuracy.
The demons packaged with each of the bad guys only appeared in one episode, "Crown of the Sorceress," and some of the other figures, such as Tongo the Leopard Man and Meuton the Wasp Man, never appeared in the show at all.  The White Knight, marketed as the Overlord's protector, is seen only in the background during "Search for the Starsword."

Figures that should have been made but were not: Thorg from "Crown of the Sorceress," Brillirant from "The Overlord's Big Spell," Grogan from "The Air Whales of Anchar" and Shaldemar and Dal from "The Zombie Master."  As is so often the case in toylines geared toward boys, there is only the token female, in this case Mara. All the same, we would have liked to see Galoob versions of Taleena, Storm, the Emerald Knight, Amber and Katana. 

And we would have liked a version of Blackstar dressed in his spacesuit.

As for playsets, an Ice Castle playset exists, complete with a working Gun Tower, but there is no Sagar Tree playset.  All the ladders, trapdoors and balconies of the cartoon Tree might have translated wonderfully into a playset, and a compartment in the base of the tree could have served as both a storage case for the Trobbits and the underground stream that features in "Search for the Starsword" and "The Zombie Master." 
Kadray, the Invincible Wizard (aka "The Lord of Time") The action figure comes with a Laser-Light bazooka instead of the Time Sceptre  and one of those omnipresent, annoying little demons   instead of Triton. 
The artwork on the boxes of the extant playsets, especially the one for the Trobbit Wind Machine, which features Balkar, Rif and one of the other Trobbits in full flight over the valley of the Sagar Tree, is beautiful.  The box art for Blackstar's ship, featuring a back view of Blackstar at the helm against a space backdrop, is also worth framing.  You can view these boxes and others on Page Four.

The Laser Light features represent part of a gimmick prevalent in action figures of this time; they are simply cool-looking internal sparks of light that serve no other purpose than to sell the action figures.  If anything, the figures should have dropped this feature and left it for the Starsword/Powersword accessories; swords that could spark and glow in the dark would have captured the essence of their cartoon counterparts.

On the other hand, several of the figures, including Mara and Klone (pictured, right), are faithful to their animated counterparts.
Klone actually looks like his animated counterpart, right down to the tacky orange outfit and silly grin. Still, why can't he turn into something useful, like a chair?
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Box Art is on Page Four
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