King Hiss

Mattel's card calls him the "Dreadful disguised leader of the Snake Men,"^[1] and the figure is built to prove it. King Hiss came out in 1986 looking like one more armored warrior in green, with a serpent shield and a snake staff, but his head, chest and arms are a four-piece plastic shell that lifts off to show a body made of coiled snakes. Ted Mayer designed him; by Mayer's account the removable disguise was Roger Sweet's idea, and Mattel filed a patent claim on it in September 1985 with both men named. The 1987 style guide puts the play pattern in one line: he "disguises himself as a Heroic warrior, then peels back skin to reveal a snake creature."^[2]

The gimmick had a cost. Because the snakes had to fit inside the shell, the creature underneath is smaller than the reveal promises, and the backs of the arm pieces are open, so the snake arms behind them were painted green to pass. The card back explains the trick as a three-panel comic, and European releases added a fold-out mask. Around him Mattel built a whole faction, credited to Tim Kilpin: Kobra Khan was retconned into it, and Rattlor and Tung Lashor, first designed for the Horde, ended up serving their Snake King.

Everything about King Hiss is built around the moment the disguise comes off, and that is the one thing Filmation would not show. Newsday reported in February 1985 that the studio was trying to bring him into its shows, but he never appears in He-Man or She-Ra, and Rattlor and Tung Lashor reached She-Ra without their king. Lou Scheimer, Filmation's co-founder, described an old fight with Mattel over a character he called too revolting for children, a snake man with snakes pouring out of his stomach. He never named the figure, and the Battle Ram Blog, which quotes the interview, only notes that it sounds like King Hiss.^[3] It does, and it is easy to see the studio's side: a children's show in 1985 had no comfortable way to animate a man splitting open.

So the classic King Hiss was written by the print that came in and around the box. In the mini-comic "King of the Snake Men," drawn by Bruce Timm, Skeletor finds him trapped in an energy pool in the depths of Snake Mountain, frees him, and learns that he once ruled an empire of Snake Men before the Council of Elders banished him; the two of them set a trap for He-Man, and Hiss can knock a man unconscious with a look. Star Comics' "Snakes Alive!" (Masters of the Universe #4, November 1986) has Skeletor revive the Snake Men and Hiss work on Rio Blast's fear of snakes. The Masters of the Universe Magazine ran "The Armies of King Hiss" in the summer of 1986, the newspaper strip gave him a true form of its own in "Vengeance of the Viper King," and a Kid Stuff story, "Battle Under Snake Mountain," has him ruling Skeletor's lair as if Skeletor had never existed.

Television finally took him on in 2002, in Mike Young Productions' He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, a new continuity that runs outside the Filmation canon. That show spells him King Hsss and gives him a page of his own, which carries the full story; what matters here is how closely it follows the toy. In Steven Melching's "Rise of the Snake Men" two-parter, first aired in November 2003, he is freed from the Void, takes Skeletor's throne and walks into Castle Grayskull, where he sneers "Snake versus bird" at the Sorceress and his face turns into a fanged snake head.^[4]

"Second Skin" goes further. Early on, a shed snake skin with openings for five heads tells the heroes he survived, and later his body splits into rearing snakes, with snakes where his arms should be. The reveal Filmation turned down is the reveal the 2002 series uses whenever it wants him at his most dangerous. Brian Dobson voices him, the same actor as that series' Skeletor.^[5]

Kevin Smith's Revelation and Revolution series leave the Snake Men's king out, and he has no part in either live-action film: the 1987 movie has no Snake Men at all, and he is not in the cast announced for the 2026 film. Mattel has kept him on the shelf, with a Masters of the Universe Classics King Hssss in 2011, an all-snake Serpentine version later in that line, and a Masters of the Universe Chronicles figure that Mattel Creations opened for order on September 2, 2026, with three snake heads and a swap back to his human guise.

The classic King Hiss never got the cartoon, and the thing that kept him off it is the thing every later version holds on to. The 2002 series animates the snakes coming out, the Chronicles figure swaps between snake heads and his human guise, and even the Turtles of Grayskull crossover is built around the snake body under the armor. The card promised a warrior who was not what he seemed, and the plastic still keeps that promise.