Clawful (200x)

Dean Stefan's "The Island," first shown on April 5, 2003, is the one episode built around Clawful's side of the family. On a remote island Dekker, the Teacher-At-Arms who trained Man-At-Arms, tells a fellow fisherman that his old pupil is coming to visit, and the two crab people listening in send the news on to Snake Mountain: "My cousin Clawful's boss would be mighty interested in that information."^[2]

The message arrives as a run of clicks in his own people's code, but Clawful cannot read it: "Never was too good at spellin' stuff." Someone else in the cavern translates, Skeletor sees a chance to capture Man-At-Arms and pick his brain for inventions, and when Clawful is told to send the reply, he needs help with that as well.

The plan itself works for a while. Dekker is the bait, Teela walks into the crab people's cave and the visitors end up tied on the beach, until Dekker and Duncan stage a quarrel to slip their ropes and He-Man arrives. Clawful sees none of it. When the story cuts back to him, he is with Skeletor in the desert, waiting for a delivery that never comes, and the last word to him is a threat: "I do hope your information is correct, Clawful, for your sake!" His answer is a stammer: "Sure, it is! I-I-It's just like my cousin's message said."

Clipped from our own copy of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Dree Elle's Return (1983), 10:57 to 12:56, 1 minute 59 seconds. Nothing is added and nothing is sped up. Copyright Mattel.

Clawful is there from the opening story. In Dean Stefan's "The Beginning," shown in three parts on August 16, 2002, he fights for Skeletor in the battle in the Evergreen Forest and stands with the villains against the Masters on the plain. In Stefan's "The Courage of Adam," a month later, his roar is heard in the ambush at the Eye of Zarkane where Prince Adam is taken to Snake Mountain as bait. The same episode opens with He-Man fighting Man-At-Arms's training robots, and one of them is built in Clawful's shape. Scott McNeil voices him.^[3]

In Larry DiTillio's "Lessons" he watches a replay of Orko's spell bringing down a palace wall and starts to say the jester could do it "faster than Skele--" before Skeletor cuts in that he might recruit the jester, since he "at least is doing something." In "Siren's Song" Skeletor rages at his warriors for losing at Castle Grayskull, someone points out "you were there too, Ske--" and a blast leaves Clawful groaning. He takes the blast, but he is back in the field by the end of that episode, leaping into the jungle fight when Skeletor's ambush with the stolen Immobilizer turns back on him.