Now I feel the need to buy “concept” He-man and Skeletor.

Great article.

As a child, I was turned off of the Filmation cartoons because they were so tame and different from the minicomics. I especially never cared for the Prince Adam transformation.Mineternia is like Conan meets The Road Warrior, and will always be my favorite.

I don’t hate the other versions. Filmation’s cartoons have grown on my, and I very much enjoyed MYP’s 2 seasons (especially the Snake Men). I’ve been a huge Transformers geek for years and have learned to love their various incarnations. It’s not hard to do the same for MOTU.

Two, The bios are a marketing gig, but do not let them interfere with the line to the point this becomes a big soap opera, fanlore gone awry with gossip and conspiracies. Sometimes, simple is better.

My opinion! Now, do not tase realmers.

-J

After all of these years, Pre-Filmation fans now have the actual figures of the Pre-Filmation characters that they have always wanted:

• Mini-comic colored Mer-Man
• Alcala Skeletor head
• Blonde Bikini Teela (or put her head on the normal Teela’s body for another Pre-Filmation look)

If Oo-Larr turns out to be the barbarian who becomes He-Man from He-Man and the Power Sword, hopefully he will come with an Alfredo Alcala He-Man head!

-J

-J

I’m a big He-Fan, but I never really followed any continuity. As a kid (6 or 7 years old at the time) I religiously tuned into the cartoon if only, like you say, to catch the appearance of a new character. I enjoyed seeing the cartoon version of the the most recent toy I got for my birthday. And that was all. The cartoon was on in the background after school while I made Thunderpunch He-Man soften everyone’s face with that glorious plastic fist. Heh heh – you’d think Fisto would be a prime choice for punching dudes, but the spring loaded waist and shoulder just made it harder to actually connect his fist with any sort of elementary force. In my world, Fisto’s fist would disconnect and launch off his arm whistling long distances with great knuckle-to-face homing powers. But I digress.

Sadly, I never got into the mini-comics. I may have even thrown them away. I didn’t even get into comic books until highschool largely because I’ve never actually liked to read – which, at a young age, I thought was a prerequisite for enjoying the visuals for some reason.

I was at my first job when the news of the 200x cartoon and toyline reached my ears. After so many other franchises were getting reborn, I finally had something to look forward to. I recorded the Mike Young cartoons off Cartoon Network on VHS (still) as I now had a job/life that didn’t allow for after school fun-time. I thought some of those figures were amazing recreations of some of my favorite characters and I hunted them all down in the stores. Have you SEEN Beatman’s arm span?! As an artist, I loved some of the design decisions. He-Man is largely a visual thing for me. A surfacey freakshow of colorful characters. I watched the new cartoon, but I was never really vested in their storylines or how things fit together.

At some point there were some new comic books being produced that shed some light on the villains in particular. I thought the back story of Trapjaw was great. Defying Skeletor who took his jaw and arm from him – leaving Triclops to rebuild him. And when they released “Keldor” as a ComiCon exclusive, it practically soldified Skeletor’s story whether you agreed with it or not.

That was about as much story as I ever really paid attention to.

Then then new “classics” were released and I was ecstatic. Again I would have the opportunity to repurchase my favorite characters from my youth. Colors and goofiness intact. In fact, just last week, a female friend at work recently realized something about my collection: “These He-Man characters have the stupidest names…King Hsss? Buzz Off? Faker?” At which point I showed her a hand scribbled reminder and replied with controlled excitement, “Yeah, today they’re releasing Fisto!”

Yeah. While I completely embrace a lot of the goofiness in the series, and while He-Man represents such a big part of my youth, you’re right – it’s getting harder to defend the older I get – Ha ha

Thanks for letting me share. It sounds like I gotta track down Mineternia now

It’s fine to cheerfully mock the whole thing, ’cause it’s silly. But strip it down to any central core and it remains silly, just as G.I. Joe A Real American Hero, even at the start, had lasers and backpacks and chrome-faced terrorists.

I too embrace the campy aspect of all my favorite properties. There’s no point in feeling self-conscious about it. We collect children’s playthings.

One thing though: I don’t think many Transformers fans–including myself–would consider Beast Wars as part of G1 even though it fell into G1 continuity as a story. G1 only refers to the toys and related media as they were released in the 80′s up to G2.

savage he-man is a great storyline/environment, but it’s far from definitive either, and choosing one incarnation of he-man to favor loses out on what makes he-man the greatest of the big 3… versatility. you may not like ninjor, but i think snake eyes is beyond dumb and permanently ruined gi joe… ninjor didn’t ruin he-man. he-man rocks because it smashes together formerly different archetypes into one chaotic universe. it allows, ne encourages fans to write their own version of the mythos, unlike the banal “here’s the story, now buy the toy” concepts behind transformers and gi joe. gi joe is “army guys,” transformers is “cars that are bots” he-man is a much more complicated idea, as triple j points out by summing up the other big 2 in a single paragraph, while needed a page and half of dialogue to cover the motuverse.

It’s part (but not all) of the reason many fans love Draego-Man–a wonderfully designed but, let’s face it, rather traditional-looking fantasy figure–and absolutely loathe Spector.

I used to be a lot like you, actually–preferring the early minicomics and the “sword and sorcery” conception of MOTU to anything else. But I’ve changed my mind over the last few years.

While I do have a greater affinity for the “sword” part of the MOTUniverse’s “sword and planet” style, I still love the “planet” science fiction part. In my upcoming review of Fearless Photog, I ended up being very surprised by how much I liked him. Yeah, he’s incredibly goofy, but he’s also unique and original.

Let’s face it–skull-faced evil sorcerers have been around at least as early as Robert E. Howard’s 1928 short story “Delcardes’ Cat” and liches have been a D&D cliche since the seventies, while the He-Man of the minicomics is a blonde Conan in a harness. Nothing wrong with that–I’m a huge Conan fan myself.

But firemen with cyborg elephant heads? Dudes with cameras for faces? One of the greatest things about MOTU, in my opinion, is its ability to offer so many various types of characters. The fact that a fan like yourself can choose a subset of those characters for his own preferred universe is exactly what’s so great about it.

As for being embarrassed to be associated with the goofier aspects of the franchise, personally I find a certain glee in doing so. It’s camp. No matter how hard you try, you’re never going to be able to take characters named “He-Man” and “Skeletor” as seriously as Aragorn, Conan or Eddard Stark. So I embrace the goofy

I don’t care for my favorite toy line and fantasy property being called a “mess,” when the fact that it IS so fractured is highly appealing to me. I loved the pre-filmation stuff… I loved Filmation’s MOTU and POP cartoons even more. I loved the toys more than any toys out there… and no, Snout Spout was NOT a disgrace for an 7 year old boy. He’s still not a disgrace for that grown up boy who pays out the hoo-hah for MOTU Classics figures.

He-Man and She-Ra, for many people, are amazing because there is a fantastic, fun-filled, escapist attitude… anything goes. That’s a good thing in my mind.

If MOTU had been like GI JOE and TRANSFORMERS, there would have been 18 barbarians and 18 skeleton/beast people running around… BORING.

I’m also glad I’m not the only person who thinks MotU 200X was subpar by the standards of other contemporary animation at the time. The action figures were beautifully-realized, but the show… Everything was the same volume. The creators threw lots of characters at the audience without imbuing them with weight or personality. Every intense fight sequence just blended into the next, becoming a kind of white noise.

I find the bios for the MotU Classics line to be pretty tortured. And yeah, as much as I loved the figures growing up, goofy characters like Snout Spout started to persuade me that it was time to “outgrow” this stuff.

I’m glad that Mattel seems aware of the Mineternia camp, and I’m amused that an Oo-larr figure appears to be somewhat inevitable.

Why does it seem all the kooky characters that everyone hates are always my favorites– Snout Spout, Spikor and Two Bad are my top 3–

All you’ve gotta do is look at the original Snout-Spout, the 200x Snout-Spout, and the MOTUC Snout-Spout. Which one looks like he could kick the most ass?

(I forgot to add that part)

Specifically because it was such a WTF? kinda show. Where else could you see such an odd amalgam of characters and concepts “battling” in truly ridiculous and outrageous situations?

I like it BECAUSE of the kitsch, not in spite of it.
When it started to lose that in the later iterations, I lost interest in it. He-Man should NEVER be serious. It should never be “realistic”. Once it crossed over into that realm, the point was lost.

For me at least.

While I never have, and most likely never will, own any He-Man toys, I still fondly recall the original cartoon and re-watch the DVDs with my son on odd saturday mornings. Good times for us both.

Thanks for delineating it all for us. But clearly, we don’t see things the same way.

oh, yeah, as a p.s. and all … watch the “F-bombs” my good man. There are kids here now …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2faOHCNFB6o&sns=em

Also, I didn’t mean to suggest I now think of Vikor as He-Man. He-Man is still my He-Man, I just enjoy Vikor a lot more now that I consider him Concept He-Man rather than a new, separate character. Ditto Demo Man/Skeletor.

Heh, going so far as to consider Vikor the “real” He-Man and Demo Man the “real” Skeletor with be really luddite.

Beast Wars is the opposite of junk, by the way.

Thanks for the kind words, though.

-J

I appreciate the original mini comics, and I like some of the stuff that Filmation did. 200X lost me completely. The new universe where they are trying to tie it all together holds the most promise for me. While it may still contain something as ridiculous as Snout Spout, he seems more of a bit player than his original incarnation. But I get what you’re saying, after the first wave, the simple straight forward concept was turned into something else. They changed it from Conan-esque, to Conan and the Care Bears. LOL.
While He-Man was jumping the Shark, She-Ra brought it a much needed second wind. As did the Horde.
But the original concept wasn’t all good either. I much prefer current Teela to the cave lady they initially portrayed. And He-man is better than Vikor, or did I just get used to him after 30 years? Demo Man is fantastic though I give ya that.
Like anything in the 80′s, it’s a mixed bag. They all lost the concept at some point… GI Joe with Cobra La. Transformers with that Beast junk, even Headmasters was leaving me cold, but I still liked the toys.
Rio Blast and Clamp Champ killed it for me.

I liked the Devil’s Due comic of 2003 with the 2002 cartoon, had that stuck around we might have had a more mainstreamed He-Man continuity.

I love the mini-comics from the figures and agree with what has been said about them but some of the more… flamboyant characters… I guess you could call them, I love! More like that is He-Man’s charm as a figure line.

And Skunkor was awesome! I use to use his stench to weird out my cousin!

I’d really like to see that particular version get some comic book love. I know a lot of fans can’t get past Shazam! He-Man, but I wish they’d try.