Sy-Klone

Sy-Klone started at Mattel as a play feature. Roger Sweet designed him under the working name Tornado, and the 1985 figure does what that name promises: turn the wheel on his belt and everything above the waist spins, while ball-jointed shoulders let the arms swing up as he turns.^[1] The early concept art was blue and green, and the finished figure went blue and yellow with red trim, a round radar screen on the chest and a belt with a space theme. He was among the last of the 1985 figures to reach shops, and he came with a shield and nothing else.

Mattel's 1987 style guide wrote the feature into the character. It gives his power as the "ability to fly and plow through enemy lines with turbulent fist-whirling action", says "his built-in radar screen enables him to sense oncoming attacks", and calls him "extremely fast on his feet and quick with his fists." Filmation's version keeps the yellow helmet, the blue face and the radar disc, simplified to a black and green bullseye.

Don Heckman's "Beauty and the Beast" first aired on November 20, 1984, and it is the episode that shows what Sy-Klone does.^[2] He is at the royal palace with Prince Adam, Teela and Cringer when Skeletor's spider-legged drones attack, and before long Teela and Orko are Skeletor's prisoners in the cursed castle of Moragore. Sy-Klone takes to the air above the palace towers, his arms spun so fast they become two glowing blurs: the flight the style guide promised, drawn as a whirlwind.

After that he stands with He-Man at the edge of the city, and the story leaves him there. The rest of the episode belongs to He-Man, Battle Cat, Teela and the cursed ruler of Moragore, and Sy-Klone is not part of the rescue. Lou Scheimer voices him, credited as usual under the name Erik Gunden.

Clipped from our own copy of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Here, There, Skeletors Everywhere (1984), 12:07 to 14:02, 1 minute 55 seconds. Nothing is added and nothing is sped up. Copyright Mattel.

His first broadcast appearance came the day before, in "Here, There, Skeletors Everywhere", where Skeletor steals Man-At-Arms's duplicating machine and fills the palace with half-sized copies of himself.^[3] Sy-Klone's part is smaller still: he is seen chained by both wrists to a stone wall, smiling anyway.

Every Sy-Klone after Filmation's belongs to a different telling of the story. The 2002 series made him a central character with a new history, the guardian of an island citadel who comes to join the Masters, and that version has its own entry. He does not appear in Revelation or Revolution, and he is in neither the 1987 movie nor the announced cast of the 2026 film.