Today, I have a pretty obscure record for you, based on a pretty obscure toy line from the 1980s’ called Sectaurs.
Origins
Sectaurs was the brainchild of Tim Clarke, a puppet maker who worked at Jim Henson Studios in the 1980s. If you’ll pardon the pun, Clarke had a hand in designing and building puppets for The Dark Crystal and Fraggle Rock, as well as sculpting some of the action figures for an unreleased Dark Crystal toy line. Working on The Dark Crystal toys inspired Clarke to want to work in industry, so he teamed up with toy designer Maureen Trotto to flesh out his ideas.
Their biggest idea, Sectaurs, tapped into Clarke’s background as a puppet maker. The concept included hand puppets that looked like giant, hairy insects that kids controlled. Not only would kids’ fingers control four of the legs on the creatures, but their fifth finger would activate a special function of the insect, like flapping the wings or snapping the jaws. These puppets would be teamed up with half-human, half-insect action figures that rode the puppets like cavalry. After pitching their idea to many different companies, it was Coleco, makers of the home video game system, the ColecoVision, as well as the wildly popular Cabbage Patch Dolls, that gave it the greenlight.
Side note: Another of Clarke and Trotto’s idea was the cult toy line Boglins
The Toys
As with many toy lines of the 1980s, there were two factions of Sectaurs – the good guys, led by Dargon, the Prince of the Shining Realm, and the bad guys, led by Empress Devora, ruler of the Dark Domain of Synax, and her wicked henchman, Spidrax. Both sides were trying to control The Hyves, the ruins of an ancient civilization that held a mysterious power that was the key to controlling the planet of Symbion.
Coleco released Wave 1 of Sectaurs toys in the Spring of 1985, featuring four deluxe figure sets, each with a 7” action figure and a hand puppet insect. Three other action figures were produced that came bundled with a smaller insect that was not a puppet, but still had some form of special action, like squirting water or a grappling hook to help the figure scale walls. To compliment the figures, a massive playset called The Hyve, was released, measuring three feet tall and nearly three feet across, making it one of the biggest playsets on the market.
Merchandising
Following the blueprint of successful franchises like G.I. Joe and Masters of the Universe, the Sectaurs were backed by a large-scale marketing push, including an animated cartoon mini-series from Ruby-Spears (click here for a YouTube playlist of the entire series), a comic book from Marvel, and plenty of tie-in merchandise, like storybooks, coloring books, puzzles, and branded school supplies. They even had their own Big Wheel knockoff called a Power Cycle that featured a giant insect head on the handlebars with wings that could flap at the push of a button.
Downfall
Unfortunately, as ambitious as it might have been, the toy line did not sell well. While the figures were bigger than the 5 1/2” Masters of the Universe toys, for most parents, that didn’t justify the higher cost of the Sectaurs line.
A deluxe Sectaurs figure set with the action figure and the hand puppet cost $23, or the equivalent of about $67 today. By comparison a new Masters of the Universe figure would run you about $5.50 at the time. Even the figures with the non-puppet bugs were priced above that at $8. The unwieldy Hyve playset was priced around $50, or about $146 today. But the much smaller and more manageable Castle Grayskull was only $30.
Aside from the higher price, many parents complained that the hairy insects were off-putting, so they simply didn’t want to have them around the house. The Sectaurs’ run ended after only one year.
Resurrection
But that wasn’t the end of the Sectaurs story. They might not have been very popular back in the day, but modern toy fans have come to realize how creative and forward-thinking the toy line was, so it has developed something of a cult following.
To that end, in 2018, Zica Toys launched a Kickstarter campaign to reboot the Sectaurs. The figures were smaller – 3.75″ like Star Wars and G.I. Joe figures – and, unfortunately, none of Zica’s plans included the hand puppet companions. The Kickstarter campaign only made it through the first wave of figures before failing to launch for a second time.
And yet, the Sectaurs still weren’t finished. In 2022, The Nacelle Company started a slow reboot of the franchise, releasing two figures – Prince Dargon and Stellara, a female warrior that was planned for the original second wave of figures in 1986. However, as of right now, these are the only two figures available and, once again, there have been no puppet insect companions announced for the line.
The Rest of the Story
Of course this is just a brief summary of the Sectaurs toy line. If you’d like to go a little bit deeper, check out the 30-minute documentary, The Story of the Sectaurs, produced by Retro Toy Review on YouTube.
The Records
Part of the marketing push for Sectaurs in 1985 were three read-along record books from Kid Stuff Records.
The record I have for you today is called Invasion of Skall Island. That’s Skall with an A, not Skull with a U. In the Sectaur lore, Skall is the raw, natural material that the Sectaurs use to make their weapons and armor.
Side Note: I also own the long-play Sectaurs album from Kid Stuff, titled simply Sectaurs: Warriors of Symbion.
And what a record book it is! The artwork was created by Pablos Marcos, a Peruvian artist who has been working as a professional since the 1960s, where he got his start drawing James Bond comic strips in Peru. In the 1970s, Marcos moved to New Jersey and began penciling for Warren Publishing’s Creepy and Eerie magazines.
He would later go on to become one of the mainstay horror artists at Marvel Comics during the Bronze Age, with regular gigs on Dracula Lives!, Monsters Unleashed, and Vampire Tales. But he is perhaps best-known for the artwork on Marvel’s Tales of the Zombie, drawing all but one issue throughout the comics’ run from 1973 – 1975. He also served as an inker for John Buscema on The Savage Sword of Conan in the early 1980s.
His artwork for Invasion of Skall Island is really top notch! Nearly the entire book is made up of two-page spreads that are highly-detailed, rich in color, and with some great compositions. It really is one of the best books in my collection.
And you can listen to the record and check out the record book by going over to my read-along record book podcast, When You Hear This Sound!
