He-Man minicomics — Part 6: What’s a “Flying Fist”?

There’s really only two goals for all the  Masters of the Universe mini-comics —  to get kids to buy more product and show them how to use the toy they just bought.
At first glance, “The Terror Claws Strike!”  appears to be no different.
In the story, we see the blacksmith Spikor building a brand-new weapon for Skeletor — the Terror Claws. On the Terror Claw Skeletor toy, these were simply snap-on gloves with long fingernails.  With this sinister new weapon, I guess he figured he’d be able to finally take on Prince Adam’s alter ego.
But He-Man wasn’t going to have any of that. In fact, the comic goes to show how He-Man defended himself against the razor-tipped fingers — with a new fighting technique he called his “Flying Fists of Power.”
For me,  that’s where things get interesting. Why? Because in that same model year, a new He-Man figure was introduced called Flying Fists He-Man. That toy featured a He-Man with a similar snap-on weapon best described as a morning star-tipped pinwheel.
But in “The Terror Claws Strike!” no such weapon appears. Instead,  He-Man’s new “Flying Fists” are shown as a souped-up version of his patented Thunder Punch, a feature available on all the standard Masters of the Universe figures.
So what happened? My bet is that the writer (Tim Kilpin) and artist (Bruce Timm) were told they were going to be doing a comic on the new He-Man and Skeletor figures, but they only got to see the designs for the new Skeletor toy. From there, they just had to take their best guess at what a “flying fist” was.
Unfortunately, they miscalculated, and this minicomic was only packaged with Terror Claw Skeletor. Don’t worry though, the real “Flying Fists” showed up in “The Flying Fists of Power” a minicomic that was only packaged with Flying Fists He-Man.

Here’s what He-Man.org has to say about “Terror Claws”: