kartooner

Any child of the 80s could tell you that Fil­ma­tions’ He-man and the Mas­ters of the Uni­verse was one of the coolest car­toons to grace the tele­vi­sion screen. Next to Bat­man, He-man was my favorite char­ac­ter and this pas­sion led to col­lect­ing sev­eral of the fig­ures includ­ing the “rad” Cas­tle Greyskull.

The basic sto­ry­line of He-man involved the char­ac­ter of Prince Adam (of Eter­nia). His task was to stop any evil plans con­structed by the over­lord Skele­tor. The only way to over­throw the pow­ers of evil was to trans­form into the mus­cle bound hero by wav­ing his sword in the air and shout­ing, “By the power of Greyskull!”.

Char­ac­ters of the series included:

• Man-at-Arms — friend of He-man and mas­ter tactician.
• King Ran­dor and Queen Mar­lena — Prince Adam’s parents.
• Cringer — the timid feline friend of Prince Adam who “By the power of Greyskull” would
  trans­form into the daunt­less Bat­tle Cat.
• Teela — a reli­able female allie of He-man.
• Orko — the float­ing but­terfin­gered char­ac­ter who served as the moral of the cartoon.
• Skele­tor — the evil mas­ter­mind intent on dom­i­nat­ing Cas­tle Greyskull.

From He-Man.org:

“Mattel’s action fig­ure line Mas­ters of the Uni­verse was sell­ing extremely well, and Fil­ma­tion had ani­mated a few early adverts to pro­mote the fig­ures. Look­ing for a way to fur­ther increase the suc­cess of Mas­ters of the Uni­verse they asked Fil­ma­tion to go beyond ani­mat­ing mere toy adverts, and cre­ate sixty-five episodes of what was to become known as He-Man and the Mas­ters of the Universe.

Mat­tel wanted a sim­ple car­toon that adver­tised its action fig­ures and noth­ing more. What they had not counted on was that these episodes would have writ­ers try­ing to prove them­selves, try­ing to break­through into the ani­ma­tion indus­try. Fil­ma­tion was known as being a great place for oppor­tu­ni­ties, thus a lot of great ani­ma­tion writ­ers started out here, Paul Dini, Larry DiT­il­lio, Bob For­ward and J. Michael Straczyn­ski to name a few.

The series had lim­ited ani­ma­tion, thus it relied on its sto­ry­telling and ani­ma­tion direc­tion more than any­thing. The tal­ent at Fil­ma­tion turned He-Man and the Mas­ters of the Uni­verse from a sim­ple action fig­ure advert into one of the most mem­o­rable ani­mated shows ever pro­duced! He-Man and the Mas­ters of the Uni­verse had a total of one hun­dred and thirty ani­mated episodes, two made-for-TV spe­cials and a spin-off series. But that’s another story…”