Screeech

Zoar had an opposite number from the start. Mattel shipped Screeech in the fall of 1983 as Skeletor's bird, an Evil Warrior with purple and blue feathers, built on the same Big Jim Eagle mold as Zoar and sharing its flapping wings.^[1] Zoar is the Sorceress in another shape; Screeech has no such secret, and the cartoon gave him a different one.

Filmation's He-Man made him a machine. Queen Marlena calls him Skeletor's "bionic falcon," "The Toy Maker" introduces him as "Skeletor's robot bird,"^[2] and the animators drew a falcon with brown wings and a white metal body, a hooked beak on a helmet-like head and a panel set into his chest. He never speaks, and he does what Skeletor tells him until something gets in the way.

Phil Harnage's "Fraidy Cat," first aired on October 9, 1984, is the episode that builds a plot around him.^[3] Skeletor's warriors kidnap Queen Marlena from the palace while Whiplash and Clawful lay a false trail, and the briefing makes the point of the exercise plain: they "will lead He-Man to my pet, Screeech." In Snake Mountain Skeletor shows the queen the trap he has set: "He-Man will never expect an attack from above." The plan is for the falcon to "grab him in your claws and carry him to the Lake of Oblivion and drop him in."

The plan fails because of the one character nobody counts. Cringer, who hid under the bed while the queen was taken, follows the right trail with Orko and frees Marlena, and it is Marlena who tells them that Skeletor's "bionic falcon will attack him from the air." Cringer volunteers to carry the warning, wearing a charm Orko promises will make him brave, gets past a ghost inside Snake Mountain, and reaches the falcon just as Skeletor launches him, which leaves Cringer on his back. "I'm afraid of heights!" he says, on the back of Skeletor's falcon as it heads for He-Man, and his cries for help give the game away below.

Skeletor calls him "my pet" in the briefing and "my darling Screeech" at the launch. Once Cringer has covered his eyes in mid-air ("Ha! You can't see now, Screeech!") the falcon stops answering, and the endearments go with it: "Screeech, you stupid machine, come to your master! I command you!" Cringer gets a medal from King Randor at the end and gives the credit to Orko's charm, which turns out to have been a fake.

Clipped from our own copy of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Fraidy Cat (1984), 16:54 to 18:49, 1 minute 54 seconds. Nothing is added and nothing is sped up. Copyright Mattel.

Mike Hazy's "Visitors From Earth," first aired on November 22, 1984, gives him a delivery job. Skeletor has stolen the missile that two astronauts need to save Earth from a meteor, and he means to set it off at the doors of Castle Grayskull. Asked how, he answers "Special delivery. Now! Down, Screeech!" The missile goes over the edge into a pit Skeletor takes to be bottomless, and He-Man catches it on the way down.

Karen Willson and Chris Weber's "The Toy Maker" uses him as a nuisance. Skeletor sends him to break up Man-At-Arms's trial run of the Hover-Melter, and the static from his screams jams the machine's radio controls. Orko casts a spell to "block out Screech's awful sound," and He-Man soon has to ask him to take the earmuffs off again. He-Man deals with the bird himself: he aims the machine at a cloud and brings down a rainstorm. "I thought a little rain would spoil your party, Screech," he says. "Hope you didn't get rusty."

The later continuities have mostly left Skeletor's falcon in the toy box. Nothing made after Filmation belongs to the canon this encyclopedia follows. The nearest thing to a return is in Revolution: in "More Things in Heaven and Eternia," written by Diya Mishra and released on January 25, 2024, a falcon in red armor with glowing wings crosses the sky for a few seconds.^[4] He is not in the 2002 series, Revelation, Filmation's She-Ra, the Dolph Lundgren movie, or the 2026 film.

The toy came first by a year, and it was a simple one: a bird with a perch and a set of armor, whose wings beat when a button on the leg is pressed.^[5] Rudy Obrero painted the box: Screeech in flight through a smoke-filled sky, and Screeech again on his perch on top of a castle turret, with explosions in the distance. The original is long retired, and there is no Screeech figure of his own on sale.