SUMMARY:
The Taiwan Skeletor is the first Skeletor released. It's characterized by bright blue skin tones, soft head, bright yellow and light green face paint, and mid-purple accessories.
Taiwan Skeletor had many different releases, and you even see differences within the same Generation card. That makes setting clear boundaries between variants difficult with this figure. I've kept it simple by dividing the Taiwan variants into 4 general categories.
MAIN VARIANTS:
1. 8-BACK (1ST RELEASE)
(Half-boot, peach cheeks, purple trunks with short harness straps)
MARKED: © Mattel Inc. 1981 TAIWAN
ACCESSORIES: © Mattel Inc. 1981 TAIWAN
SWORD: TAIWAN (No batch or SKU numbers)
STAFF: TAIWAN (Behind the staff head)
2. 8-BACK (2ND RELEASE)
(Half-boot, peach cheeks, black trunks with short or medium harness straps)
MARKED: © Mattel Inc. 1981 TAIWAN
ACCESSORIES: © Mattel Inc. 1981 TAIWAN
SWORD: TAIWAN (No batch or SKU numbers)
STAFF: TAIWAN (Behind the staff head)
3. 8-BACK (3RD RELEASE)
(Half-boot, black trunks with medium harness straps)
MARKED: © Mattel Inc. 1981 TAIWAN
ACCESSORIES: © Mattel Inc. 1981 TAIWAN (Armor No. 8, Skirt No. 6)
SWORD: TAIWAN (No. -7)
STAFF: TAIWAN (No. 5)
4. 12-BACK (1981 Marked)
(Full-boot, long harness straps)
MARKED: © Mattel Inc. 1981 TAIWAN
ACCESSORIES: © Mattel Inc. 1982 or 1983 TAIWAN (Armor 12 or 16, Skirt 10 or 14)
SWORD: TAIWAN (Either 11 or -15)
STAFF: TAIWAN (Either 9 or 13)
5. 12-BACK (1982 Marked)
(Full-boot, long harness straps, blue in eyes)
MARKED: © Mattel Inc. 1982 TAIWAN
ACCESSORIES: © Mattel Inc. 1982 or 1983 TAIWAN (Skirt 18, Armor 20)
SWORD: TAIWAN (19)
STAFF: TAIWAN (17)
6. BLUE ACCESSORIES (Euro Release)
(Full-boot, long harness straps)
MARKED: © Mattel Inc. 1982 TAIWAN
ACCESSORIES: © Mattel Inc. 1982 or 1983 TAIWAN (Skirt 10, Armor 12)
SWORD: TAIWAN (11)
STAFF: Blank (Erased 9)
DISCLAIMER: The batch number associations are guidelines, but not hard and fast rules. It makes sense to think of the batch numbers are increasing as production increases, but it's important to note that molds were not necessarily discarded, and earlier weapons can be found on later figures. Not only that, there's some evidence to suggest that later batch number weapons molds might have even been made right from the beginning, even if not used initially.
