The 1980s He-Man cartoon, produced by a company called Filmation, had no shortage of monsters throughout its run–many monsters of various sizes and shapes. But as much as there could be said to have been a signature monster in Filmation’s Eternia, it would be the Shadow Beast.

First appearing in “Teela’s Quest,” an episode penned by Paul Dini and easily one of the series’ best, the Shadow Beasts would later show up in three more episodes: “A Beastly Sideshow,” “Prince Adam No More” (also a famous Dini episode) and “The Rarest Gift of All.” Their distinctiveness would even get them their own episode of the 2003 Mike Young Productions (MYP) He-Man cartoon, “Night of the Shadow Beasts” (written by Michael Reaves, who, like Dini, worked on the original He-Man cartoon as well as Batman: The Animated Series). (more…)

[Poe’s note: Welcome to the new look for our reviews! Much thanks to OB1 for helping put this together.]

Just as Teela was the token woman among the mostly sausage-fest that was the Heroic Warriors, Bow represents the token man in the Great Rebellion (unless you count Kowl, I guess…and I think Swiftwind might be a dude…). Having never watched She-Ra, I can’t say I have an attachment to the character. But I have an attachment to Masters of the Universe Classics, so, here we are.

Pic via He-Man.org

[toc title=”Table of Contents” class=”toc-left”]

The original Bow figure wasn’t that impressive. As part of the Princess of Power line, he lacked the insanely-muscled physique of the vintage MOTU figures, reminding those boys who were interested in POP that the line wasn’t really meant for them. That said, Bow is arguably a forerunner of the New Adventures of He-Man toyline, which featured more realistic anatomical proportions. That’s probably why MOTUC Bow’s legs, particularly his boots, are quite obviously based not on Bow’s vintage figure, but on NA He-Man. (And now that I’ve gotten a better look at them, his gauntlets appear to be based on NA He-Man’s as well.)

For MOTUC, Bow has been updated to match the house style, meaning he finally gets to show off his abs like all the other dudes.

(more…)

I covered the origin of Preternia Disguise He-Man pretty thoroughly in an earlier post, so I won’t rehash that here, aside from mentioning that he’s based on the characters appearance in the 1980s minicomic “The Powers of Grayskull – The Legend Begins!”

PD He-Man is the 2011 subscription exclusive figure, a decision which made most people happy, since people who bought the subscription are generally big enough fans to want the figure, while those who didn’t were happy not to get another He-Man variant; and those who did buy the subscription but didn’t want PD He-Man could easily sell him to those who didn’t buy a sub. Which is an incredibly complicated way of saying yes, he was a good choice for a subscription incentive figure.

The “Powers of Grayskull” concept came about very late in the MOTU line in the 1980s, just as the movie was flopping. As such, it makes use of some of the movie’s ideas, including the Cosmic Key, a device which can open a portal to other worlds–including Earth, which conveniently lets you film 90% of your epic fantasy movie on the streets of Los Angeles. Mattel got a bit more creative with the concept, sending He-Man back to the time when dinosaurs ruled the Earth–I mean, Eternia. (more…)

I’m fairly certain King Hssss (then known as harder-to-trademark King Hiss) was the last Masters of the Universe action figure I owned as a child. I have a distinct memory of playing with him at my family’s first house, which we moved to a year or so after I’d mostly lost interest in MOTU. Somehow, King Hiss had an appeal beyond being part of the MOTU universe; I think it was the sheer awesomeness of the three-snake inner body. I was also quite fond of the green color scheme and the generally reptilian looks.

I know this is blasphemy to some, but I was never all that fond of the 200X King Hiss. From a design standpoint, they turned him into the standard D&D mummy-lich creature, a tenth-generation photocopy of Xaltotun from Robert E. Howard’s Hour of the Dragon (200X Hiss also has quite a bit of Mumm-Ra in there, though obviously Mumm-Ra has quite a bit of Xaltotun as well). As the brief comic strip on the original card art shows, the play pattern of the original King Hiss figure was that he was an evil snake-creature masquerading as a heroic-looking character (note the similarity of his mask to another famous master of disguise). Even the first minicomic to feature King Hiss played on this idea, and his packaging referred to him as the “dreadful disguised leader of the Snake Men.” 200X King Hiss, though? You see him coming, you reach for your sword hilt.

Again, I know many of you are going to disagree with me on this, but I actually prefer this look for Hiss. Er, Hssss. (more…)

“Know, O Prince, that between the years when the oceans drank the Valley of Gnarl and the founding of Eternos, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars. Hither came Vikor, the He-Man of the North, black-haired, sullen-eyed, axe in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of Eternia beneath his booted feet…”

–Tu-Tor, Royal Scholar

“Stop filling my little boy’s head with all that nonsense, Tu-Tor. He-Man’s just a myth.”

–King Randor

There’s a persistent, but untrue, legend that Masters of the Universe (MOTU) was originally developed as a toyline for the movie Conan the Barbarian starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, which came out in May 1982. This much is true: Mattel entered a licensing agreement with Conan Properties, Inc. (CPI) in July 1981 to produce toys based on the film, and in January 1982, Mattel backed out of the deal.* A month later, Mattel debuted their company-owned Masters of the Universe toyline at Toy Fair. CPI then sued Mattel for copyright infringement and, for reasons I’ll discuss in a later post, lost the case. (more…)

As a kid, I loved the Buzz-Off action figure. The colors were bright and appealing, the articulated wings were a unique feature (and looked a lot more flight-worthy than Stratos’s arm-feathers), and the claws were cool…to a kid. But I’ll admit that the 200X Buzz-Off was possibly the best redesign of the entire line, pushing the insectile aspects to the limit. MOTUC is meant to invoke the original line, not 200X, so I’m going to review Buzz-Off compared to his MOTUC brethren and the general concept of the line.

As much as I like Buzz-Off, he’s one of the MOTU characters whose name I see as a potential stumbling block to getting a movie taken seriously. As “codenames,” this sort of thing works in G.I. Joe; it works in Transformers because the Autobots are ostensibly replacing their Cybertronian names with Earth names that fit their character in some way. But I really can’t come up with an even remotely feasible fannish explanation for names like Buzz-Off, Two-Bad or Clawful. I suppose Mattel may be trying to get around that by using the “real names” on the bios, but if so, they’re not trying all that hard, since–well, see for yourself. (more…)