Masters of the Universe 30th Anniversary

This year marks the 30^th Anniversary of the Masters of the Universe property.  It’s hard for me to believe that the adventures of He-Man and his friends on Eternia have been in the public eye this long.  What started out as a relatively small toy line exploded into a worldwide phenomenon.

These toys were some of my favorite from my youth.  I loved that the names of the characters referenced their action feature.  Man-E-Faces had many faces.  Ram-Man rammed his head into things.  Stinkor stunk.

One of the coolest things about this toyline was the inclusion of mini-comics with each figure.  These stories made the world of MOTU more “real”.

In 1983, MOTU took the leap onto the small screen with Filmation’s iconic “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” cartoon series.  This series was a huge part of the success of MOTU, introducing fans to a world where magic and science met.  The characters were incredibly engaging and each episode ended with a moral.  My favorite moral had to do with Ram-Man telling the audience that it was simply unwise to ram your head into things.  My young mind was even disturbed that a character whose entire purpose was to ram his head into things told people that it was not a good idea.

This cartoon was such a huge success that it spawned a spin-off entitled, “She-Ra: Princess of Power.”  This show focused on He-Man’s sister She-Ra, who lived on the planet of Etheria and defended it against the Evil Horde (characters who originated in the He-Man toyline).

She-Ra, herself, had her own toyline.  These toys were more doll-like in nature.  They had soft goods and rooted hair.

The MOTU line was so successful that it had two movies in the 80s.  The first, “The Secret of the Sword,” was an animated featured that introduced She-Ra to the world.  The second was 1987’s live-action “Masters of the Universe,” starring Dolph Lundgren and Courtney Cox (the first production that I ever saw her in).  Neither of these movies necessarily caught on, but they have become cult classics in their own right.

By the time 1988 rolled around, MOTU had lost a lot of steam.  In 1989, a new toyline simply called “He-Man” entered the scene.  This took He-Man and Skeletor to the future into the Tri-Solar System.  There was a short-lived cartoon that told this story.  The figures were very different from what had been seen before.

This line was not extremely successful and faded into obscurity in the early 90s.

MOTU came back in the early 2000s, first as a 20^th Anniversary Commemorative line and then as an all-new figure line and cartoon series.

While this series was well-received by fans, unfortunate figure distribution made this an incredibly difficult line to collect.  The assortments always had a plethora of He-Man and Skeletor variants, but the other main characters were very difficult to find.  By 2004, this toyline was gone.

It seemed that MOTU would fade away completely by this point.  Fortunately, in 2008, Mattel’s Matty Collector started an online-only collection of “Masters of the Universe Classics” toys.  This line consisted of characters from all of the various iterations of MOTU.

Last November, I started to collect this line.  For the 30^th Anniversary of MOTU, Matty is pulling out all the stops.  They are doing brand-new characters created by fans and comic creators alike.  They also have access to the characters from the Filmation animated series.  Fans have finally gotten a chance to own a Shadow Weaver figure!

Matty Collector is also having several figures available all year long.  He-Man, Skeletor, She-Ra, Battle Cat and Panthor are going to be available for every fan, casual or hardcore, to obtain.

I will be doing short mini-reviews of some of the characters that I have obtained over the last couple of months.  I would like to thank the fine folks at UnderScoopFire for giving me a chance to “show off” my MOTUC collection!