When Filmation Associates made a splash on Saturday mornings with The New Adventures of Superman, no one was more surprised than its founders.
Animators Lou Scheimer and Hal Sutherland formed the company in 1963 after stints at Larry Harmon Pictures working on a Popeye cartoon. After some minor projects, the two teamed with producer Norm Prescott to begin work on an animated sequel to iconic musical The Wizard of Oz. The project skidded to a halt over budgetary issues, so the fledgling Filmation crew turned back to television. Their original ideas failed to get traction, and their freelance work for commercials could only pay the bills for so long. By 1965, the future was looking bleak.
That’s when they received the call. DC Comics editor Mort Weisinger was looking to bring Superman back to television after the sudden, and suspicious, suicide of Superman actor George Reeves in 1959. While it was determined replacing Reeves on The Adventures of Superman would be in bad taste, DC felt the property had laid dormant in the realm of TV for too long. This time, they wanted to take a different approach. By returning the character to animation, the storytelling options would move beyond what they producers could manage on a TV budget. Once again, the sky could be the limit. But first things first: DC wanted a tour of the Filmation studio.
When the call came in, however, Filmation had two employees: Scheimer and Sutherland. Their studio, if it could be called that, consisted of them and over 20 empty desks. What followed was one of the strangest scams in the history of cartooning.
Scheimer called DC back and said they were far too busy and could not let their staff be distracted for a tour. He did invite them during the studio’s one weekly visiting time, between noon and one o’clock on a Wednesday. The Filmation crew then called in every favor they had to get friends and family to man the desks during their lunch hours. Their makeshift “employees,” made up of seasoned animators and complete novices, pretended to be working on the finished cels of the Journey Back to Oz project. Ted Knight, the man later known for announcing the Super Friends cartoon, was brought in to voice unseen employees outside of the office door during the meeting. The reception area was occupied by a store mannequin.
As Scheimer told the story years later, they were in the office discussing the details with DC’s Whitney Ellsworth as time was running out for their “employees’” lunch hour. One of them, George Reilly, knocked on the door. He needed to return to work at Hanna-Barbera, but he announced that he had a toothache.
“I said, ‘Okay, George, you can go to the dentist,’” Scheimer recalled. “He shut the door, and I turned around to Hal and said, ‘Make sure we dock that son of a bitch!’”1
Filmation’s ruse worked. They were signed to make The New Adventures of Superman series, and the modest price per episode paid by DC kept the company afloat. Scheimer and Sutherland were even able to hire some of their pretend-employees for real. The show was not only well received by the audience, it also helped Superman take another great leap forward for pop culture.
Before 1966, most television programs were created and controlled by the very companies that would advertise during the show. They would make everything to their own specifications and then find a network, like NBC or CBS, to broadcast it. Instead of finding a sponsor for the cartoon, the way the Kellogg cereal company had sponsored The Adventures of Superman live-action series in the 1950s, DC wasn’t letting another company get between them and their lucrative property. Making the show themselves, DC could keep their same Superman comics writers and bear down on Filmation, a young, hungry company, to make sure Superman looked exactly the same as artist Curt Swan made him look on the newsstand every month. The finished cartoon was sold to CBS directly.
The other big change in cartoons at this time was the scheduling. Most animated series were considered family entertainment and played in the evenings. The New Adventures of Superman and these other new cartoons would be the first to move to a new time slot: Saturday mornings.
Just like that, Filmation had a hit show and were on the cutting edge of the new animation paradigm. All they had to do was keep it up. The company attempted to capitalize by developing pilots for a few other concepts, mainly original ideas, but they didn’t take off. Scheimer blamed the failure of these sophomore efforts, such as The Adventures of Dirk Digit, for being too strange for audiences’ tastes. And so they turned back to what they knew would work.
DC teamed with the company again to adapt another comic book hero: Aquaman. This time, the animators had a chance to flex their creative muscles. The entirely undersea setting for Aquaman gave the series a unique look and color palate, and a wavy underwater effect was created by moving one oiled acetate in front of the characters, at a different speed than how everything else on the screen was moving. This series, paired with the last to form The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure, was another success.
By this point, Filmation had developed their signature style. Namely, in order to keep costs down, their scripts were built around the use of stock footage. Episodes would show the same clips of characters moving, like Superman flying or Aquaman swimming, connected by the original animation for the elements unique to that particular story. These familiar shots could be reversed, inverted, or anything else to keep the episode from appearing too repetitive.
The company utilized a method of limited animation, or animating one moving part of one character, such as Jimmy Olson’s arm, while the rest of his body would remain stationary. The frame rate was also lower than other animation companies, making their cartoons appear to move jerkily instead of more smoothly, like a big budget Disney movie.
Costs were cut wherever possible. Backgrounds, and nearly everything else, were up for recycling. Monsters could be recolored to appear again as different monsters. Scheimer admitted, “We would also occasionally have the characters put their hands up by their mouths as they talked—as if they were scratching their chin or thinking—which meant we didn’t have to animate their lips.”2
This style allowed for more care to be taken on the design of the characters, which tended to be human instead of a cartoony or anthropomorphized animal, and also on the scripts, which were recognized for being a cut above their competitors.
Throughout the rest of the ’60s, Filmation stuck to established properties. Aquaman was replaced to create The Batman/Superman Hour, and that show continued to dominate Saturday mornings. They adapted the Hardy Boys, the popular series of boy’s adventure and mystery novels, and started making animated series based off of successful live-action films. In 1967, they premiered Journey to the Center of the Earth. It was followed the next year with Fantastic Voyage.
By the end of the decade, many were criticizing children’s television for violence. Even Sutherland and Scheimer’s adventure programs like Batman/Superman, which were considered rather tame, had a wary eye cast upon them. The company decided to move away from comic book superheroes, but not from comic books altogether.
Filmation’s next great adaptation came in the form of America’s favorite teenager: Archie Andrews. The fan base was already in place, and the more light-hearted tone would fit the direction Saturday morning cartoons were heading. As much as the concept seemed to be a slam dunk, it still needed some alterations before it hit the airwaves.
Hot Dog, the goofy pet of Archie’s pal Jughead, was introduced. Archie’s publishers did not provide writers for the show, the way DC had for Superman and Batman, but the company found the characters well enough established that there were no problems. Due to the character’s conflicts and motivations, like Archie falling in love with both Betty and Veronica, Filmation tried to skew their audience for what came to be called “the Tween group.” Still, nothing was too racy or dark to throw off the kiddies. To help sell the show’s image as more of a “mature” children’s program, a “canned” laugh track was incorporated so it could better resemble the sorts of live shows that were marketed at older kids, like Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In.
The biggest change to the source material was the way The Archie Show incorporated music. In the comics, the Riverdale gang had formed a band, “The Archies.” The cartoon pushed that concept further, separating two independent stories with what could be considered a “music video” of the friends playing an original song.
For the music, Filmation turned to “the man with the golden ear,” Don Kirshner.3 Best known as a producer and a musical kingmaker, Kirshner had just had a falling out with another television band: The Monkees. Freed from the demands of live actors, he was eager to show he could form another hit musical act.
Utilizing a crew of seasoned session musicians and songwriters, Kirshner delivered the music, which turned out to be even more successful than the high-rated show. The infectious brand of bubblegum pop connected with audiences on both TV and radio. The first album from “The Archies” cracked the Billboard Top 100, and animated segments of the band playing the single “Bang-Shang-A-Lang” was broadcast during the Ed Sullivan Show on November 17, 1968, in lieu of a live act.
The second album released, Everything’s Archie, contained the pop mega-hit “Sugar, Sugar.” Written by pop virtuosos Jeff Barry and Andy Kim, Kirshner distributed the single to DJs without mentioning who sang it to avoid the stigma of “a cartoon band.” Once radio’s gatekeepers learned the truth, it was too late; the song rocketed to the number one spot and stayed there for four weeks.
“Sugar, Sugar” was certified as a gold record, signifying over one million copies sold,4 and became Billboard’s number one song for the year of 1969. In the list of biggest hit singles from that decade, Filmation’s fictional The Archies is sandwiched between the Beatles, with “Hey, Jude” in 1968, and Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” in 1970.
As The Archie Show itself would be a Saturday morning mainstay. It went through many iterations, such as Archie’s TV Funnies and The U.S. of Archie, for the next decade or so.
Filmation continued into the 1970s, powered by successes like their Archie spin-off, The Sabrina the Teenage Witch Show, and the beloved Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, based on characters from Bill Cosby’s standup routines. The show ran for eight seasons, and were hosted by Cosby in live-action introduction and conclusion segments. The company also continued their tradition of creating spin-offs or animated sequels to well-known series like My Favorite Martian and their The Brady Bunch cartoon, The Brady Kids.
With continued pressure on the companies producing children’s programming from organizations like Action for Children’s Television, Filmation continued to steer clear of perceived violent content. The focus remained on incorporating music, along with introducing more educational content. Shows like Fat Albert began including morals, where characters wrap up each episode by stressing the importance of friends, family, and other wholesome values. Already a household name, Scheimer and company made sure nobody could accuse Filmation of trying to corrupt the minds of children.
Their next big success came in the form of 1973’s Star Trek: The Animated Series. Filmation managed to reunite nearly the entire live-action cast, along with original showrunner Gene Roddenberry and script editor Dorothy “D.C.” Fontana. Though the animation was limited and relied heavily on stock footage, Fontana and the returning writers from the original live-action Star Trek episodes were able to depict more strange new worlds and alien life forms. The character’s limited mobility fit well with the series’ talky, intellectual approach. Although it would be played on Saturday mornings, alongside children’s cartoons, Roddenberry and Filmation worked to make the show as sophisticated as possible.
Before the debut, producer Norm Prescott announced, “This is the first attempt to do an adult show in animation.”5 Nobody involved seemed certain such a “bold experiment,” wagering children would want more intelligent programs and that adults would tune in on Saturday mornings, would pan out.
It was not an entirely successful venture. Nielson ratings showed that young children, the bread and butter of Saturday mornings, were not tuning in in the big numbers network had hoped for.
The next year, the episode “How Sharper than a Serpent’s Tooth” won the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Children’s Series. It was the first Emmy award won by Filmation, and by the Star Trek franchise as a whole. It is still considered the only “major” Emmy won by any Trek TV series.
The 1970s were rounded out by more tried-and-true properties, like more Archie shows and The New Adventures of Batman, featuring the voices of Adam West and Burt Ward, and other adaptations of once-popular live-action shows, such as The New Adventures of Gilligan. Filmation also began to branch out and make their own live-action shows, like the superhero series Shazam! and the sci-fi Jason of Star Command.
The company was remaining solid, despite the fact there were more misses than hits. In addition, the landscape of children’s television was constantly evolving. Filmation was able to keep ahead of the curve by introducing their live-action series, but they did not have enough success to move away from animation altogether. The world of animation was becoming more expensive. Many other companies had begun outsourcing animation tasks to cheaper countries, but Filmation remained loyal to the local Los Angeles animator unions. “Made in the USA” was proudly stamped on their products, but that didn’t make them any cheaper to produce. Jobs were beginning to dry up.
That’s when they were approached by Mattel.
The Mattel company had learned the power of good television marketing decades earlier. When Walt Disney’s The Mickey Mouse Club debuted in 1955, the toy company paid $500,000, a staggering amount for the time, to sponsor the show’s first year. The show was a hit, Disney used the money to build the Disneyland park, and the advertising paid off for Mattel far better than expected.
By the early 1980s, recognizing the storytelling potential of the Masters of the Universe characters and looking to capitalize on the Reagan administration’s deregulation of children’s programming, Mattel wanted to push the boundaries. Thomas Kalinske, Senior Vice President of Marketing, brought the property to Filmation’s founder Lou Scheimer, showing him the recently published DC Comics adaptations of the figures.
“Mattel came to me with this wild barbarian with blonde hair waving in the wind, hatchets, axes, and all kinds of weapons and mayhem going on,” Scheimer later wrote. “I said, ‘You can’t do that for kids!’ With Action for Children’s Television running around, and parents all concerned about content, there was no way anyone would let this on the air.”6
Recognizing some potential in the characters, and what could be a much needed hit, Filmation asked for some time and liberties to find their own approach to the material. Immediately, nearly everything from the minicomics were thrown out. The basics from Mattel’s vision of Eternia remained in place, but nearly everything else was open to reinterpretation.
Anything deemed “too scary” was dropped, and wary of the prevalent watchdog groups, the inherent violence was toned way down. To balance out Skeletor’s ghoulish appearance, he was given a less than frightening voice, and was portrayed as barely more competent than his goofy henchmen. The kids watching at home would know that Eternia’s heroes were never in any real danger.
Filmation was known for producing educational, moral programming for young people through shows like Fat Albert, and this was a trend they wanted to continue. So not only would the fighting be minimized, the episodes were also based around a lesson for the audience. While Prescott and Scheimer maintained this was their standard approach for all of their shows, it would also be useful when groups like the ACT began to protest He-Man.
In order for children to better connect with The Most Powerful Man in the Universe, the company returned to what they’d learned producing Shazam! In that live-action series, and later a cartoon as well, a young boy named Billy Batson could say the magic word, “Shazam,” and be transformed into the adult superhero Captain Marvel. An unstoppable, hyper-masculine idol was great, they figured, but a vulnerable, realistic protagonist was even better. And so they added Prince Adam, He-Man’s alter ego.
The character had been formulated in Mattel in the early days, and in a very different form, and had already been used in one of the DC Comics stories as He-Man’s secret identity. Filmation altered the character’s look, namely adding the infamous pink and white color scheme, and revised his personality as well.
Adam was designed to be a normal human boy, someone with flaws and self-doubt. He would be uncertain but good-hearted, wanting to do the right thing until things became too dangerous. At the last moment, he could draw the Power Sword, which was now no longer in two halves, and say the magic words, “By the power of Grayskull, I have the power!” In a handy sequence of stock footage, the Prince would transform into the superhuman He-Man. Whether due to Filmation’s limitations, or Mattel’s interest in using the same body parts for every character, Prince Adam appeared the same age as his counterpart, and even had the same muscular build. Neither character wore a mask. Still, his secret identity stayed remarkably secret.
Adam was further fleshed out with a supporting cast. In addition to the characters who began as action figures, Man-At-Arms and Teela, he was given parents, Randor and Marlena, the King and Queen of the kingdom of Eternos. He-Man’s ferocious green pet, Battle Cat, was given a secret identity in the cowardly Cringer. Cringer could talk, but Battle Cat just growled in most episodes.
The animators also created Orko, the floating comic relief character. He was written as equal parts powerful and bumbling, and was also much less mature than He-Man and the other characters. That way, as there were seldom any younger characters, Orko could play the part of the child who needed to learn how to behave, or how to be brave, over the course of an episode. In true Filmation fashion, Orko’s name was changed from “Gorpo,” so his stock footage could be flipped as needed without the “G” on his chest appearing backward. Turning that into an “O” meant the same clips could be used as much as needed.
The company was also working with Mattel’s Michael Halperin to draft the story bible, a comprehensive list of backstories and motivations. They began to solicit scripts as the character designs were finalized. Though many Eternians were based on existing action figures, some needed to be tweaked to better show the newly revised continuity. Man-At-Arms, for example, was given a moustache in the cartoon to better identify him as older than Adam and Teela, and make him more of a father figure. The Sorceress, formerly called The Goddess, was revamped completely.
In the meantime, the company began to shop the show, now titled He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, around to the networks for a Saturday morning timeslot. Although the foreign markets were an easy sell for a company with Filmation’s reputation for quantity, if not quality, American networks like ABC and NBC resisted.
He-Man already had a stigma. The toys looked inherently violent, and their appearances in comic books didn’t prove differently, even when they met cartoon-friendly Superman in DC Comics Presents issue 47 in 1982. It would not be a good fit the more educational direction Saturday morning cartoons were heading in.
In addition, a cartoon series designed to show off action figures was untested waters. Even Mattel designers like Sweet saw the show as “blurring the line between children’s programming and flat-out advertising.”7 Though such programs were now technically legal under President Reagan’s administration, there was no guarantee how audiences would react. They could just as easily be turned off by a so-called “30-minute toy advertisement.”
Networks decided to play it safe, so Mattel and Filmation opted to sell the show to local channels through the country, a process called syndication. TV shows typically went to syndication this way only after they had been broadcast on a major network; the same network who selected the show from an animation company’s proposal and made demands about its content. By skipping the network’s middle man, Filmation was given more creative control than any project they’d had before. They were now free to stray from the government’s restrictions on content.
They were given the full support of Mattel, and the name recognition of the toy line was enough to sell the regional TV stations. The toy company also bartered with commercial time with these stations. A local station could get a great deal on the new He-Man cartoon by giving up some of the advertising time during the program. If they allowed Mattel to air commercials for their products during the show, which was also a commercial for their products, they could get a soon-to-be hit show for next to nothing. This was too good for most stations to pass up. By Mattel’s accounts, about 90 percent of local TV stations in the United States picked up He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.
He-Man would not, however, be going to Saturday mornings. Regional TV channels would typically have an afternoon block of syndicated shows played every weekday, between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. This made for so-called “appointment viewings,” where children would either hurry home from school or hurry through their homework in order to watch their favorite programs. This also meant additional exposure for the show, at least five times as much as a normal Saturday morning series. Most TV series only went to syndication once they’d been on the air for enough years to have a catalogue of finished episodes. He-Man and the Masters of the Universe was pre-selling 65 episodes, enough new episodes for one quarter of a year’s weekdays. For the remainder of the year, they could be played as repeats and still have enough variety to keep from appearing too repetitive.
It would be a monumental task for Filmation. The company hired on more animators and accepted scripts from outside writers just to keep up.
One such writer was Paul Dini, who went on to become a well-known writer for DC Comics. Working with former MOTU minicomics artist Bruce Timm, he was a writer for and co-creator of the DC Animated Universe, consisting of the multiple Emmy Award winner Batman: The Animated Series and many others. Though the He-Man cartoon was some of Dini’s earliest work, his episodes are still considered fan favorites. He has given interviews about his experiences working on the series for the DVD box set releases, and in 2015’s The Art of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.
In the latter, Dini expressed appreciation for Filmation’s route through syndication, as it opened up more possibilities for the writers. “We all wanted to raise the bar as much as we could,” he said, “and try to tell stories that hadn’t been done before in traditional Saturday-morning action-adventure. We didn’t have network executives giving us creative notes and we had a lot of episodes with which to experiment.”
The long seasons allowed for more narrative flexibility, he continued: “Anyway, when you’ve maxed out the epic Skeletor-attacks stories, the Orko-feels-unappreciated stories, and the giant-beasts-run-wild stories you start looking around for something new to write.”8 This led to more characters and monsters created out of whole cloth instead of the Mattel figures, including Sh’Gora, Dini’s take on a Lovecraftian “Elder God” in his episode “To Save Skeletor.”
Though the writers sent the characters off in different directions as often as they could, the resulting episodes were largely held to formula by the stock footage sequences, guaranteeing villains like Skeletor and Evil-Lyn were never far away. The structure was ensured by the adherence to the moral of each episode, which characters like He-Man, Teela, or Orko would re-emphasize to the audience after the story’s climax.
As He-Man and the Masters of the Universe was debuting on television, Filmation brought it to the big screen. Three episodes were edited together and played at locations across the country, including a red carpet event at Mann’s Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles. That event hosted a He-Man themed hot air balloon and actors dressed as the heroes and villains of Eternia. Invitations were sent out to children’s groups, specifically, to spread the brand name to the target market and do a little last minute focus testing. But watching the excitement of the audience, both during the episodes and the “battle” between the costumed actors outside, both companies could tell they had a hit.
The show debuted in syndication on September 5, 1983 in the UK and September 26 in the United States, and it immediately changed the game. Because He-Man was so successful, other animation studios began taking their wares to syndication directly, eschewing the standard route of a major network’s Saturday morning programming block.
According to Scheimer, “Advertisers loved it, because with no significant children’s programming off-network, they had been relegated to the Saturday morning ghetto. It became apparent that this was a much better market for us, both financially and creatively.”9
But animators weren’t the only ones paying attention. Within the next two years, Mattel’s cross-media formula would be repeated by its competitors, such as Hasbro, and He-Man’s popularity would be under siege by the likes of Snake Eyes and Optimus Prime. Until then, however, the success of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe was unparalleled.
Predictably, the series raised the ire of Action for Children’s Television. The group’s founder, Peggy Charren, filed a complaint with the FCC on October 11 of that year. The complaint concerned the several children’s cartoons which had been broadcast in 1983, notably He-Man, that were based off of pre-existing commercial properties. The others that were named were a one-off Care Bears TV special, which had been played that spring, and the first GI Joe miniseries, which debuted weeks after He-Man.
These TV series and specials were not spin-offs of films or other TV shows, Charren argued. Instead, the desire to sell more toys “precipitated the development of the program-length commercials…. What makes matters worse is that most of the products are being advertised on children’s television as well, making it hard to distinguish between product and programming.”10
That night, both Charren and Filmation president Scheimer were guests on Nightline with Ted Koppel, along with Schoolhouse Rock producer Squire Rushnell, and a lawyer from the FCC. During the program, Scheimer defended his company’s work on the He-Man cartoon and took offense to the allegations made in Charren’s complaint. After Fat Albert was mentioned as one of the best children’s programs, Scheimer said, “The care and sensitivity that we bring to Fat Albert is brought to this show. It is not a commercial. It is a show. The fact is that we took these toys, and we worked delicately and laboriously to make sure that we injected love, family, humor, and a whole cast of characters that weren’t even existent in the toys.”11
Scheimer stuck to his guns throughout the program and emerged unscathed. Even the FCC representative on the program noted that Charren’s complaint didn’t stand a chance under the Present Reagan’s FCC chairperson, Mark Fowler.
Unfortunately, the ACT were not the only ones speaking out against “program-length commercials” like He-Man. The American Academy of Pediatrics formed a task force to focus on children and television, and its chairman, Dr. William H. Dietz, began speaking out shortly thereafter. “They sell a product while claiming to be entertainment, and I think that’s unconscionable,” Dietz said. “It is unfair and deceptive advertising. It is unethical to do that, in my opinion.”12 Timothy E. Wirth, chairman of the telecommunication subcommittee of the House of Representatives, voiced his agreement. He was echoed in the Senate by Frank Lautenberg.
The director of Yale’s Family Television Research and Consultation Center, Dr. Jerome Singer, added his voice to the group of concerned specialists. He cautioned, “Children do not have the elaborate knowledge that adults have about the nature of the commercial world, the nature of advertising, the nature of product appeals.”13
The existential crisis of children’s entertainment aside, the series was also continually under fire for its perceived violence. It was also, strangely, accused of being not violent enough on at least one occasion.
In 1985, Jane Welch wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post crying out that “‘He-Man’ is really a plot to turn young hildren [sic] into bleeding hearts” for focusing on non-lethal conflict resolution. “He’s forever tossing a bad guy into a convenient puddle, or bringing some bad-tempered monster to the way of Truth and Goodness,” she complained. The character of Teela was also leading children astray for refusing to be helpless damsel in distress, according to Welch: “Young Americans might begin to think that men and women are equals.”14
This apparently serious article was titled “‘He-Man’ is a Wimp Master.” It was not dignified with a response by Filmation.
Despite any controversy, or perhaps because of it, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe was a hit. The show’s success translated to toy stores, as Mattel had hoped, and the sales more than doubled between the figures’ debut and when the cartoon aired.
The show not only benefited Mattel and Filmation, it also changed the paradigms of advertising and children’s entertainment. However, an even bigger change came in the characters. He-Man and Skeletor had entered the cultural lexicon, making an impact they never could have from the toy line alone. Concepts original to the cartoon series, such as the catchphrase, “By the power of Grayskull,” quickly became recognizable around the world.
As the 65 episodes of the first season were winding to a close, Filmation was already hard at work on the second. The standard for most shows at the time was a shorter second season, so the new episodes could be interspersed with reruns of the previous episodes. It was a time before cheap and commonplace home video releases, so broadcasters expected audiences to not catch every episode during the first run, or they may be waiting for a favorite episode to come back up in the rotation.
Animators had also considered another movie-length exploit for He-Man, maybe one focusing on his origin. But this was dropped when the orders came in: based on the show’s strength, initial orders of 39 second season episodes were expanded to a full 65. Depending on each local TV station, however, the new episodes may have been spread out over two years instead of just one.
A full second season gave the writers many more opportunities to branch out. Filmation’s Larry DiTillio updated the story bible and the writers began to focus on deepening character relationships and broadening the mythos. Episodes were centered on He-Man and Skeletor less, letting secondary characters like Cringer and Prince Adam’s mother, Queen Marlena, take center stage. New characters based off of the most recent action figures, like Fisto and Whiplash, began to appear regularly. Even with the completed footage from season one the animators could reuse, a whole second season was just as daunting as the first.
Filmation hired on new writers, such as a young J. Michael Straczynski, who would later gain fame as the lead writer and showrunner for the sci-fi series Babylon 5, and win a BAFTA Award for his screenplay Changeling.
Straczynski was known for answering questions from He-Man fans back in the early days of the internet, and many of such interactions are catalogued on the He-Man.org website.15 As he explained it, he got into writing for He-Man by being a fan. “I’d seen the first season,” he wrote, “and just for the heck of it, wrote a spec script. Sent it to the producer. Cold. No agent, no contacts, no nuthin’.” Filmation bought his script, and then another from him just a week later. He was added on as a regular staff writer.
“Overall, I enjoyed the experience,” Straczynski said of his He-Man days. “I tried in general to write stories that were more adult in nature … alternating those with comic episodes just for fun.”
When the second season came to a close, the decision was made to put a cap on He-Man. Filmation decided that the series had reached the point of diminishing returns: they could not make any more money by producing new episodes than they could by selling the old ones. At 130 episodes, or one episode for every other weekday in a year, there were still plenty of He-Man to be syndicated and remain fairly fresh. With no definitive first story or concluding episode, these same stories could continue on forever. Skeletor would always be out there, looking to cause trouble. He-Man would always be there to stop him.
After touting the show’s demographic breakdown on more than one occasion, with young girls reportedly making up 30 percent of the viewing audience, Scheimer and the Filmation crew saw the opportunity to tailor a new adventure program for girls.
They began work on the She-Ra: Princess of Power series during the second season of He-Man, looking for a program they could have more control creative over. The characters would be created jointly between the company and Mattel, who then produced the action figures based on the agreed-upon designs. In order to capitalize on the ongoing success of He-Man, the new heroine was tied as closely as possible to the old hero: She-Ra would be his long-lost twin sister.
In March of 1985, The Secret of the Sword was released to theaters. The feature-length introduction to She-Ra was actually the first five episodes of her cartoon series, with some additional editing to smooth out the transitions. As an actual five-part story, the plot hung together better than what had been released to theaters before He-Man and the Masters of the Universe debuted on the small screen. That looser collection of episodes had since been released on home video under the title He-Man: The Greatest Adventure of All.
Secret of the Sword was also a crossover with the previous series, as Castle Grayskull’s Sorceress sent He-Man from Eternia to another planet called Etheria. This new locale is more lush and magical than Eternia, but one that has been conquered by an evil alien race called the Horde. Prince Adam’s sister, Adora, is revealed to have been abducted as a child. She was brainwashed by the Horde’s leader, Hordak, so she is now the tough and true-believer Force Captain of the ruling aliens. He-Man is able to snap her out of it and give her the Sword of Protection, a counterpart to his Sword of Power, which allows her to transform into She-Ra. After a brief visit to her birth parents, the King and Queen of Eternia, she decides to return to Etheria to use her super-powered identity to aid the rebellion against the Horde.
Throughout She-Ra’s full 65 episode season, and a second of 28 spread across 1986 and 1987, He-Man would pop in for the occasional team-up. The two had a Christmas special in 1985, as well. But for the most part, she was left to stand on her own.
She-Ra: Princess of Power, a female-centric adventure series, surprised some by its success. Though there were other “girl’s shows” on the air, none really featured fight scenes. And by this point in the ’80s, she had competition from other popular cross-media franchise shows targeted at boys, such as Transformers and even He-Man himself, but her ratings stayed high.
Filmation tweaked their approach from the He-Man cartoon, keeping the moral of each episode, but lightening some violence and including more love stories in the plots. There was a softness to the character; She-Ra resolved threats in a more non-violent fashion than her twin brother, and her superpowers were portrayed as gentler as well. Unlike He-Man, for example, she could talk to animals.
Making a capable female protagonist as a role model for young girls was something Scheimer felt strongly about. “I was motivated to have strong women and girls on our shows,” he said. “[She-Ra] wasn’t meant to have a political message of feminism to it directly, but it was meant to show that women and girls could do the same types of things boys and men did if they wanted to.”16 The creators’ intentions aside, the character is fondly remembered by women and men of all backgrounds. Decades later, she is still just as recognizable as He-Man.
Between the two massive seasons, not to mention the specials and crossovers, there are almost too many episodes of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe to pick favorites from. Even the two “Best of” DVDs available can’t settle fan’s debates of which episode is truly better than any other. Any viewer’s mileage may vary.
Below is a breakdown of several key episodes of He-Man, included for popularity or notoriety, or for something more noteworthy from behind the scenes. It is certainly not meant to be a comprehensive list.
The second episode produced, yet shown a little later in the season, “The Shaping Staff” is the first episode of He-Man written by scribe Paul Dini. It begins abruptly, opening on He-Man smashing robots and hurtling a subterranean octopus-like monster over the nearest mountain. It’s all for training. He is merely breaking in Man-At-Arms’ newest inventions.
Transforming back into Prince Adam, he hurries back to the palace for dinner. He arrives late, as usual, and clumsily knocks over a coatrack, which distracts Orko in the middle of one of his tricks. Queen Marlena says, “I think Adam inherited from me what we Earthlings call a sense of humor.” This is the first mention in the series of the Queen coming from Earth as an astronaut. It’s an idea that comes and goes throughout the mythos, after first appearing in a DC Comics story.
Orko’s magic act is soon interrupted again, this time by a woman named Majestra. She is also a magician, and her white bob of hair resembles that of Sabrina the Teenage Witch from her Filmation series. Majestra performs a trick for the royal family, making King Randor disappear in a “Cabinet of Wonders.” When the king reappears and suddenly invites this new magician to stay at the palace, Orko is suspicious.
He floats after the king and Majestra down to the dungeon, where they find the real King Randor. The two figures in the doorway reveal themselves as Skeletor’s henchmen, Evil-Lyn and Beast Man, who had taken other appearances through the power of the Shaping Staff. The cabinet trick was used to swap out the real king for the fake one. Evil-Lyn displays the staff’s power again by transforming King Randor into a goat. When they discover Orko eavesdropping, he is turned into a cricket. Their plan is to have Beast Man, as the king, command the royal guards to march on Castle Grayskull and annex it into Skeletor’s new puppet kingdom.
Even as a cricket, Orko is able to warn Prince Adam. He turns into He-Man, and confronts the two imposters alongside Teela. Evil-Lyn turns her into a frog, and He-Man becomes a golden statue of himself. He is brought along to Grayskull as a present for Skeletor.
The skull-faced villain is already at the castle, using his magic powers to create an evil doppelgänger of He-Man, whom he dubs “Faker.” Unlike the Faker action figures, he looks exactly like He-Man in every way, save his white, glowing eyes. It would be his only appearance on the show in any form. Faker calls up to the Sorceress inside the Castle, drawing her outside so Evil-Lyn can use the shaping staff to transform her into a tree.
Although one is made of wood and the other is encased in gold, the Sorceress and He-Man still share a telepathic bond and are able to hatch a plan. She disrupts the shaping staff’s spell over He-Man, allowing him to break free and attack the villains. In a tussle with his evil magic-clone, He-Man sidesteps a headlong tackle and Faker is sent plummeting off of a cliff.
According to Lou Scheimer, Faker’s demise wasn’t caught by Filmation executives until it was almost too late. Reviewing the footage, he said, “it almost looked like He-Man had caused him to fall, and, when I saw that, we brought in the writer and the director and reworked the scene with some new dialogue, so it was clear that He-Man wasn’t the cause of Faker’s death.”17
He-Man is able to break the shaping staff, reversing all the spells Evil-Lyn had cast with it. Teela, Orko, and the rest are all back to normal. Still, the evil witch tries one last spell on He-Man, using one splintered end of the staff. It backfires, transforming her into a small, snake-like monster, with slithers away with the rest of the retreating villains.
It should first be noted that this episode has absolutely nothing to do with the novel by Charles Dickens. Instead, the script by Richard Pardee has He-Man caught between two warring Eternian cities when he saves a princess. To make it, Filmation borrowed heavily from “Tarzan and the City of Gold,” an episode of their Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle series from 1976.
Adam and Cringer spot a princess, Rhea, being pursued through the forest by gray flying Gargon creatures. She is easily rescued once they transform into He-Man and Battle Cat, and the heroes pledge to return her safely to her city of Operon. The Gargons, Rhea explains, are the soldiers of Balina, the queen of the rival city of Targa, which isn’t far away. A storm has been brewing, and as Battle Cat leads Rhea across a makeshift bridge, lightning downs a tree, which strikes He-Man’s head. Unconscious, the hero falls into the river and is swept toward Targa. When fished out by the Gargons, it is revealed that He-Man has lost his memory.
A main character developing amnesia is a tale as old as time in both superhero comic books, which He-Man was inspired by, and in daily TV soap operas, whose release pattern the syndicated cartoon mimicked. Memory loss had already been touched upon in the Paul Dini episode “Quest for He-Man” earlier in the season.
In Targa, He-Man is believed to be a spy from Operon and imprisoned. In the dungeons he meets Garn, a fellow prisoner who has been forced to fight for the queen’s amusement in the arena. Garn calls himself the strongest man on Eternia, and says he has won nearly enough battles to win his freedom from Queen Balina. He-Man, unaware that he is the most powerful man in the universe, doesn’t know better than to be impressed.
Garn, Balina and her wicked magician sidekick Draka, and the other residents of Targa, are all of African descent. This is noteworthy for the era, when there was not much integration of races on animated TV shows. Filmation produced the Fat Albert series, starring African American characters, and the company frequently worked to include more diversity in their shows. The Eternia of the toy line, however, was awfully Caucasian for the most part. One recurring black character who was created for the cartoon, the royal archaeologist Melaktha, appeared in several episodes in a non-fighting capacity. Mattel finally included the first black Masters of the Universe figure, the heroic Clamp Champ, in 1986. Because of such a late inclusion, he would not appear on the He-Man cartoon. For this reason, Garn is a notable character in the Filmation mythos.
The Gargons have captured Princess Rhea and trapped Battle Cat outside the city. Queen Balina pits Garn against the amnesiac hero in the gladiator arena, and another blow to the head restores He-Man’s memories. After winning freedom for both him and Garn, they find Battle Cat and hurry back to Targa to free the princess. As Garn seeks vengeance against his captors, He-Man stays his hand and tells him Balina and Draka will face justice in the courts of Eternia.
The representation of black characters in “A Tale of Two Cities” is not without its problems. By having He-Man, a noble foreigner, be responsible for solving the issues of a black culture, the story does play into the uncomfortable “white savior” trope. He-Man also tells Garn, an abused slave, to trust the courts to find him justice; in the more idyllic world of Eternia, however, viewers could believe the justice system would work fairly for a recently freed slave. On the whole, though, race is a non-starter in this episode. Queen Balina and Draka are just as villainous as Skeletor and Evil-Lyn, and Garn is just as mighty and heroic as He-Man’s Caucasian allies. The costumes and design of Targa are more African tribal inspired, just as He-Man’s is influenced by an understanding of Nordic barbarian looks. With what we see of the culture and characters, it’s a shame they never appear again.
At the story’s close, Garn is crowned the new king of Targa by Rhea’s father. He thanks He-Man for showing him that “with great strength goes great responsibility.” Like the episode’s title, this turn of phrase was likely recognizable to audiences.
One of Lou Scheimer and the Filmation crew’s favorite episodes was the first season’s “Double Edged Sword.” The episode’s story allowed the company to nudge the fourth wall and address the concerns of parents and organizations like Action for Children’s Television.
The kingdom of Eternos is facing an energy crisis. Teela, Adam, and Man-At-Arms travel to the Sands of Time desert in order to retrieve a new piece of Eternium, a very rare and powerful mineral that can fuel their generators. A piece has recently been unearthed by Chad, a young boy who dreams of joining the Royal Guard, his hover-wheelchair bound grandfather, and the boy’s pet bee/elephant/silkworm creature called Burbie. Mer-Man and Trap Jaw also hear about the discovery, and rush to steal the Eternium to impress Skeletor.
In a skirmish with the villains, Chad is amazed by the skill with which his pacifist grandfather handles a shield and laser pistol. Angered, Mer-Man commands a giant sea monster from a small desert lake to attack them. Teela and He-Man intervene, and Chad is even more thrilled to see his heroes in violent, glorious battle.
Trap Jaw proceeds to take a bite of the mineral, giving him incredible power that makes him a match even for He-Man. The power is temporary, though, and in an effort to keep the villain from taking another bite, Chad’s pet Burbie steals it away in its mouth. It accidentally ingests some, and then falls to the ground. Eternium is incredibly poisonous to someone who isn’t a magical creature like Trap Jaw, it turns out. Beginning to cry, Chad tells He-Man his pet is dying. He-Man agrees to take them to Castle Grayskull to see if the Sorceress’s powers can cure it.
This was not the first time Filmation had based a story around the death of a pet. In 1973, the company produced an episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series called “Yesteryear,” in which the character Mr. Spock goes back to time to protect his younger self during a difficult experience in a desert. His childhood pet I Chaya, a large bear-like creature, is wounded and the young Spock makes the difficult decision to let the animal die instead of being treated with medicine to live on, in pain for the rest of its life. Dealing with serious issues in a mature fashion earned the episode, and Filmation, an Emmy nomination.
Though the stories are similar, the punch is pulled in “Double Edged Sword.” The magic of Grayskull is able to cure Burbie, so Chad learns a valuable lesson without needing to sacrifice anything.
Instead of an on-screen death, the episode is best known for the story Chad’s grandfather tells while they wait outside of Castle Grayskull. While the boy weeps, he says he never thought his pet could be hurt. War, he thought, was all fun and games. His grandfather says, “I know how you feel, Chad. I used to be a soldier.” He tells the story of his experiences in wartime, how he used to be thrilled by combat and eagerly fired at a group of enemy orcs he’d spotted on the top of a cliff. His lasers knocked loose a rock fall. As the mountain fell onto him, he was crushed and became paralyzed. Many of his fellow soldiers, he said, did not survive.
The boy is so moved by his grandfather’s story that, even though his pet survives the experience, he’s changed his mind about the glory of war. Enough Eternium survived to power the palace, and Chad now doesn’t want to grow up to become a soldier.
This episode is notable for the amount of violence and warfare it contains. By far the most action-packed episode in the series, Filmation allowed itself to make such a violent episode as long as the story was all about how wrong violence is.
The story itself concerns Om, an immensely powerful alien being who has evolved beyond a physical form. As a glowing ball of light in space, Om comes across a space probe launched by Man-At-Arms and arranges a visit to Eternia to learn of their ways. This meeting happens during another elaborate attack by Skeletor. This time, the skull-faced villain has hired a mercenary army of goblins to counter Eternia’s royal guards.
Skeletor attacks as Man-At-Arms, King Randor, and Orko are explaining the ways of their world to the alien visitor. He-Man and the heroes counter immediately, as Teela leads their soldiers on Sky Sleds, and Ram Man and Stratos appear to help out as well. Although the sequence makes liberal use of stock footage, it’s much more prolonged and intense than the usual fare.
Ever curious, Om has merely been observing the pitched battle quietly before it intervenes. Every participant is suddenly frozen in place as the alien visitor declares the warfare “wasteful.” Instead of allowing the mass violence to continue, Om says he will pick the mightiest warriors from each side, and let their one-on-one combat decide the victorious side.
At this point in the episode, the story may be sounding familiar to genre fans. “The Arena” is very informed by the Frederic Brown story “Arena,” though it is not listed as an adaptation. “Arena” is considered one of the greatest early sci-fi stories and has been adapted many times. Most will remember it from the first season episode of Star Trek also called “Arena,” when Captain Kirk is forced into single combat with the hulking reptilian Gorn.
The champions Om selects are He-Man and Skeletor. He-Man, being the valiant hero, offers peace to his nemesis, but Skeletor will have none of it. The two battle it out, the Power Sword countering every spell the villain summons. Such a duel is exciting for viewers, as the two so rarely came into direct conflict with each other. Instead of sending minions like Beast Man after the hero, or simply running away when a plan failed, now Skeletor could finally make good on his boasts of defeating He-Man.
The two are evenly matched for a while, but Skeletor grows more and more frustrated. He magically grows an insect to an enormous size, but it does not obey him and attack He-Man. He blasts it with magic bolts to force its obedience.
“Skeletor, stop!” He-Man calls out. “You’re enraging him!” But the villain carries on until his magical powers fizzle out. As Skeletor runs away from the creature, He-Man picks it up and tosses it away. His mortal enemy is saved.
With that, Om signals the end of the combat. When it asks, He-Man explains he did not allow his enemy to be destroyed because he values all life. Om agrees to teleport Skeletor and his goblin army back where they came from. The strange visitor then departs Eternia, certain the planet is not doomed as long as there are some who value compassion over cruelty and greed.
Though one of the lesser He-Man episodes, this second season episode is a perfect representation of the wish fulfillment the title character offers.
It begins with Teela taking a Wind Raider high above Eternia, testing a new rocket booster Man-At-Arms has developed. It is powered by Corodite, a mineral mined by the tiny, child-like Widgets. After the booster performs better than expected, Adam and Teela take the Widgets to the beach.
In the ocean, Mer-Man is testing out some new robot sea monsters by attacking a small fishing boat. Seeing this from the shore, Adam transforms into He-Man and swims out to the rescue. The two mechanical monsters are easily destroyed. The boat’s sole occupant was Jacob, a curmudgeonly hermit who doesn’t seem too grateful for He-Man saving his life. He has no friends or family, he explains, and he lived on his fishing boat, which was destroyed. The Widgets, astonished to hear Jacob could live alone, insist on taking him back to their fort and caring for him as he recovers from his near-death experience.
Meanwhile, a frustrated Mer-Man realized he will need Corodite to build stronger robot sea monsters. Abducting a Widget, he learns they keep their mineral hidden in their fort’s mines. The villain begins to hatch a plan.
In the Widget fort, Jacob is making for a terrible houseguest. Unaccustomed to being cared for, he grumbles as they feed him. “It’s taken years of practice to become a successful hermit,” he says, “and now you Widgets are ruining everything!”
As Teela stops by the fort for a visit, Mer-Man bombs a cave wall separating the mine and ocean, and it begins to flood. Teela tries to stop him, and she’s joined by Jacob, who has learned the value of friendship. The villain proves to be too much for either of them, especially underwater, and the Widgets fire a signal flare to call for He-Man’s help.
When he arrives, He-Man gives Mer-Man the boot, but the water is still rising in the mine and threatening to flood the entire fort. “The tide is rising,” He-Man muses, “but the moon controls the tide.” Looking into the sky, he says, “I guess I’ll have to control the moon.”
And that’s exactly what he does. Taking his nigh-invincibility and super-strength to the next level, he flies the super-charged Wind Raider into space and pushes the moon away. As the tide lowers and the water retreats, he flies back to Eternia to fire lasers and start a rockslide to block the hole in the cave wall. Then, back to space to put the moon back where it belongs. The day is saved, and Mer-Man is kicked so far across the ocean, he doesn’t return to the show for the better half of season two.
He-Man’s role as the Most Powerful Man in the Universe has never been portrayed more literally. Such an astounding act is exactly the sort of thing that endeared the character, and the entire He-Man show, to a generation of imaginative children.
No list of notable episodes or “Best of” collections are complete without “The Problem with Power.” It is one of the series’ highlights, and it was a story clearly taken seriously by all involved.
The episode opens in Snake Mountain, as Skeletor summons General Tataran, the goblin leader he’d partnered with previously in “The Arena.” Skeletor has a new plan to defeat He-Man, and he says the key to it is the heartless nature of the General. Goblins have no heart, speaking metaphorically as well biologically, and so they have no heartbeat.
Later, Man-At-Arms is telling the Eternos royal family about the villain’s latest scheme: he has enslaved the population of the village of Zak on the Crystal Sea, forcing them to build a massive structure for him. King Randor sends Man-At-Arms, Prince Adam, and Orko to investigate.
When the three arrive, Adam recognizes the structure as a Dimensional Gate. He transforms into He-Man to stop the construction. Meanwhile, Skeletor is shown ensuring the tower is made improperly, booby-trapping it to fall at the slightest touch. General Tataran is given a force field belt, similar to one seen in Filmation’s Star Trek: The Animated Series, and then Skeletor casts a spell to make him appear human.
He-Man and his friends approach and demand the villagers be set free. Skeletor taunts the heroes, and then begins firing magic bolts at them. He-Man chases Skeletor around the leaning tower, and he is finally frustrated enough to try punching his way through it. Man-At-Arms spots an innocent bystander and tries to warn the hero, but it’s too late. The tower collapses right onto the man. Nobody watching is aware the “innocent man” is secretly the General in his impenetrable force field belt.
The concept of collateral damage in such a colorful, good-versus-evil universe is appropriately jarring to the audience. He-Man frantically digs the body out, hears no heartbeat, and is devastated. The surprising emotional depth of this episode is sold by John Erwin’s voice acting. Skeletor casts a spell on himself to appear human as well, and tells He-Man that he killed his brother. He incites the townspeople against the hero as he walks off, dejected.
Orko follows after him, trying to explain that it was just an accident, but He-Man will near nothing of it. Floating back to Man-At-Arms, Orko sees the General and Skeletor turning back into their normal forms, but he is captured before he can tell anyone.
Atop Castle Grayskull, He-Man raises the Power Sword and says, “Let the power return.” He is transformed back into Prince Adam, and he drops the sword into the bottomless pit surrounding the castle.
In the meantime, Skeletor has begun rebuilding his Dimensional Gate. When she’s told He-Man can’t come to their aid this time, Teela volunteers for a very dangerous mission to blow up the gateway before the goblin army can come through. After she leaves, Orko escapes from the magic-proof cell beneath Snake Mountain and tells Adam what happened. The prince tries to fly a Sky Sled down after the sword, but the winds in the bottomless pit are too much. He falls into the web of a massive spider, where he finds the Power Sword.
Teela allows herself to be taken captive by the goblins to get close enough to destroy the structure with her bomb. In front of his gate, Skeletor overwhelms her with a magic bolt just as He-Man arrives. Teela’s bomb, primed for explosion, falls to the ground along with her. After the hero lands to check on his fallen friend, Skeletor steals the Sky Sled and escapes. He-Man picks up Teela and runs away at superhuman speed as the bomb detonates. The Dimensional Gate collapses once more. Without it, the goblins who had come through already begin to fade away, returning to their own dimension.
The episode ends with He-Man carrying Teela as they walk slowly into the sunset, trading flirtatious quips about how Teela is perfectly capable of walking. It hits a romantic note, giving the audience the most definitive look at the relationship between the two characters. It is such a conclusive ending that though “The Problem with Power” aired midway through the second season, it is considered a series finale by many fans.
As the episodes of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe remained strong in syndication, the toy sales continued their stratospheric climb. By 1984, the release of the third wave of MOTU figures had brought in an estimated $111 million. The next wave of figures was set to have more toys and vehicles, and more flats of product were being sent out to stores to keep up with the outrageous demand. It would go on to bring in $250 million.
He-Man was a constant fixture in households, between TV and home video, toys, video games, magazines, and all manner of other merchandise. Every place Mattel brought their golden property, it managed to exceed beyond expectations. The characters had even been moved into the live-action domain with traveling stage shows.
There was only one place left to go: the larger world of big-budget blockbuster action films.