Stink-or!
The Masters of the Universe toys were very well known for reusing the same molds over and over with different colors, but some of their original molds were just so unique, it took some real ingenuity to come up with an alternate use for them.
Mer-man was just such a case. His unique head with it's fin-like ears and it's large amphibious eyes wouldn't translate to just any type of character. But someone realized that fin-like ears and giant eyes reminded him of the rare tailless Tasmanian swamp skunk (those exist right?).
By painting Mer-Man's model black and adding white stripes, the new toy was almost perfect. It was just missing one thing... an action feature.
At first they tried adding a miniature water pump so he could 'spray' his enemies from his rear-end, but that proved to be too expensive to mass produce.
The toy was almost abandoned until one fateful day, an intern was delivering the memo regarding this toy's cancellation to the lead designer.
The designer had been at the office for three days, without rest, just staring at the prototype hoping another brilliant idea would come to him.
His office was full of random notes and sketches, and so when he was asked to sign off on the toy's cancellation, he had nowhere to set the prototype, and instead held it in his armpit to sign the form.
With a sigh, he returned both the toy and the memo to the intern, who returned both the Matel's board of directors. It was then that one of the directors caught a whiff of the slate musky sweat and called the whole cancellation off.
Stink-or was officially born!
Finally, the Masters of the Universe would meet their match in Skeletor's newest henchman. His power of not smelling good would be far more useful than say a tank or something!