The 1984 He-Man Talking Toothbrush Holder is the canonical piece of vintage MOTU bathroom merchandise. It is a wall-mount unit, not a toothbrush itself. The toothbrush sits in a cradle in front of the holder; the unit it sits on is the actual product.
The sculpt is a Castle Grayskull-themed plastic base. A green-tinted skull face dominates the front, sculpted with a recessed mouth and two red eye-sockets. A painted He-Man figure stands atop the castle wall, posed hands-on-hips with the cross-chest crest, fur loincloth, and boots all picked out in cartoon-accurate paint. To the left, a moulded clock-face dial labelled SUN MON TUE WED THU FRI SAT with an arrow pointing at the current day. The user rotates the dial to mark BRUSHED TODAY after each session. To the right, a moulded cradle holds the included red-and-white battery toothbrush. A button at the base of the skull triggers the voice unit.
The voice unit plays a single recorded rhyme. Per the He-Man.org collectibles archive (collection of Oyvind Meisfjord), the full phrase is: “I am He-Man, I’m strong as can be, and I brush my teeth with regularity. Once in the morning, and once at bedtime, and after each meal, so my teeth will shine. You’ll remember this saying if you rehearse, and you’ll be like the Masters of the Universe.”
Manufactured by Janex Corporation under licence from Mattel. The back of every unit carries the legend “HE-MAN IS A TRADEMARK OWNED BY AND USED UNDER LICENSE FROM MATTEL, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. MADE IN HONG KONG” along with a single AA battery compartment, a push-to-open door, and a small speaker grille. Janex was a niche oral-care and clock-radio licensee out of New York; they produced an entire MOTU bathroom-and-bedroom line under the same licence including three Talking MOTU Clocks (each with a voice alarm in character) and the She-Ra Talking Toothbrush Holder companion piece released in 1985 on the same chassis with a Crystal-Castle-styled base and a She-Ra figure on top.
Secondary-market pricing: loose working units in NM condition with the original toothbrush, battery cover, and intact voice unit run $80 to $180. Sealed-new boxed examples are exceptionally rare and have sold north of $250 at auction. Units with broken voice modules or missing toothbrushes run $30 to $60.
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