>>8578906>>8578938Just because they started scripting and preproduction in 1976 doesn't mean they immediately went to Mattel. In the Power of Grayskull documentary they show a letter from 1982 that's starting the conversation of license agreements. This is a similar timetable to when other movie folk came to them to talk about producing toys. George Lucas approached Mattel around '76 and '77 to ask if they could get toys out by Christmas.
As the Battleram Blog details, He-man started because Roger Sweet and others saw Mark Taylor's "Torak Hero of Pre-history" drawing in 1979. In 1980 Sweet had Taylor help him make the "He-man" toy pitch. Those prototypes were more of a reaction to stuff like Big Jim and were going to be in multiple costumes, not just barbarian.
Now, Mark Taylor does say in that same documentary he was signed on to do Conan toy concepts. So maybe he would bounce ideas between both properties while working on both, but it doesn't make sense for them to invent completely new stuff for a movie license.
