Darkling Lords' Headquarters

Posted on September 20th 2015 by David Mapes

Darkling Lords' Headquaters

In the Visionaries cartoon and comic book series, Darkstorm's castle is the Darkling Lords' headquarters in an un-named area of Prysmos. The castle design had similarities to the Mollusk, the animal totem of Darkstorm (leader of the Darkling Lords). Whilst vehicles were produced for Season 1, with more planned for Season 2, only one playset base made it through from the design phase into production, the Holodrome Playset, yet even that was did not see a public release. This was not the only playset that was designed for the Visionaries line. The Darkling Lords' were also going to get a “home”.

One concept for the Darkling Lords' Headquarters was that of a giant Dragon Lair based upon the Dragon Totem used for the Darkling Lords' faction. This would have been a nice touch as neither the Spectral Knights' Unicorn nor Darkling Lords Dragon feature in any of the Visionaries designs.

The Dragon Lair was to feature a slide so characters could enter from the top of the dragon and exit below. Whether the entrance to the slide was through the Dragon's mouth or not, we currently do not know. The base itself was to open up like Castle Greyskull and Snake Mountain, from the Masters of the Universe line, to reveal the inside of the Darkling Lords' Headquarters.

This was ultimately dropped, possibly as the concept of a child's toy featuring a gimmick of eating the hero, combined with splitting a creature in two, may have been a little disturbing. Ultimately the Visionaries line was cancelled before the Season Two characters were put through mass production, so the only Visionaries base playset to be made was the Holodrome base.

Source

Concept Artwork owned by The Mapes Bros
Confirmed by John Gentile (one of the original concept designers from Abrahams-Gentile, the company which created Visionaries)