Rattlor

Filmation's She-Ra: Princess of Power used Rattlor from its first season in the fall of 1985, and Mattel's figure did not arrive until the following spring.^[1] The cartoon had no Snake Men to put him with, so it put him in the Horde: a red, crocodile-snouted brute with a pale yellow chest, a long tail and purple trunks, usually a step behind Catra, Shadow Weaver or Hordak, and almost never talking.

The figure is one of King Hiss's Snake Men. Roger Sweet drew the first concept and John Hollis redesigned it into the final toy, in rust, cream and blue, with a big torso that hides a long neck. Press the button on the back of his belt and the head shoots forward to bite; shake him and loose pieces inside rattle. He came with a staff borrowed from King Hiss, cast in brick-red plastic.^[2]

Mattel's 1987 style guide squared the two versions with a note: Filmation had placed Rattlor in the Evil Horde, so for story purposes he and Tung Lashor had joined the Horde when King Hiss was banished, and rejoined him on his return. Through the classic run, then, Rattlor is a Snake Man doing his time in somebody else's army, and the same guide accounts for the silence too: "Rattlor never says much: he'd rather just hiss."

"Jungle Fever", written by Don Heckman and first aired on November 25, 1985, is the episode that uses the rattle.^[3] Hordak has Adora captured and sent to a prison base; she escapes, loses her memory in a fall and wakes up near the jungle village of J'Milla and the boy Tondy, where a creature called the Great Beast comes whenever the village conch sounds like a wounded animal.

Tondy's uncle Korg goes to the Horde, and Rattlor and Grizzlor are sent into the jungle with him. Rattlor's rattling and a fire set by Imp turn the Great Beast on the village, the style guide's "ominous battle rattle" put to work. Adora's memory comes back as the jungle burns. She-Ra disposes of Rattlor and Grizzlor in a short scuffle around a tree, and the ending goes to She-Ra, Tondy and the Great Beast pushing a mountain lake down onto the fire.

Clipped from our own copy of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Jungle Fever (She-Ra: Princess of Power, 1985), 13:18 to 14:00, 42 seconds. Nothing is added and nothing is sped up. Copyright Mattel.

His first episode, "The Prisoners of Beast Island", puts him in Catra's crew with Leech and Grizzlor, carrying the timid dragon Sorrowful off to Beast Island, and by the end he has gone head first into a bush and Catra is shouting at the lot of them. In "Enchanted Castle" he and Tung Lashor crouch behind a wall with their tongues out until She-Ra and Swift Wind carry them off and leave them sitting on a cliff ledge. "Book Burning" makes him Hordak's lieutenant for collecting a village's books while Tung takes over the classroom.

In "The Locket" he leads the troopers who capture Deena, the girl who rode off alone to join the Rebellion, and stands with Shadow Weaver over her prisoners. "Shades of Orko" sends him to Horror Hall as one of Shadow Weaver's henchmen, where She-Ra grabs him in a dark tunnel and his gang ends up in a heap. He has little to say in any of them.^[4]

His later life is in other continuities. The 2002 He-Man and the Masters of the Universe series returned him to the Snake Men as General Rattlor, a brown, long-fanged officer of King Hiss voiced by Richard Newman, and that version has its own entry.^[5] He does not appear in Revelation or Revolution. The 1987 movie has no Snake Men in it, and the 2026 film has announced no Rattlor.