Children of the Eighties, Unite!

I have a cousin named "Teela."

Now, I can't prove it, but I suspect she was named after the female warrior action figure. After all, she was born at around the right time, and I can certainly confirm her parents are nuts enough to do something like that.

When I was five years old I remember I had a crush on He-Man, which is proof enough for me that a fascination with muscles and strength emerges extremely early in sexual development.

The animation for the actual series "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe" was made with help of actual very limber and agile bodybuilders, both male and female, who were used to create a library of movements they could draw specific figures on later. This is why it seemed like every single person from that series, on that entire planet, was extremely built, from the major characters to the weird bird-beaked guards.

One of the interesting discoveries, according to a He-Man Fansite, are the mini-comics that came with the figures: they actually had He-Man as a massive, jungle-bred hero from a caveman tribe on their vaguely mesozoic planet. Have a look for yourself:


(You'd think that a sorceress would be more effective than having a jungle-man hero, but of course you'd be dead wrong. Interesting to know that the precedent of the Sorceress being totally useless and never doing anything interesting was already set from day one!)

Now, anyone that's ever read this blog knows about my thing for Tarzan, so this is actually an idea I can really get behind. It's much more original and far more "fantasy/science fiction" a concept than the cliche superhero idea that they ultimately used.

Still, I find it intriguing that the Masters of the Universe figures were so massively muscled, almost universally. It wasn't a statement on body image, because for one thing, you could always tell good from evil on the planet Eternia because if you were evil, you were hideous beyond reason, whereas if you were good, you were merely grotesque. Rather, I suspect the reason is because it's a body type that suggests heroic-style adventure. Anyway, everyone had to be hugely built, from a design point of view, because if you make this next figure slimmer, they'd look like a pansy next to his buddies. And how well would the toy sell then, eh?

Of course, it had to be looked at in the context of the times. This was the eighties, the Age of Arnold, when everything was pumped up.

For the record, I never owned any Masters figures (I had a few of the She-Ra dolls, including the peacock woman). I did collect the Jem dolls, mostly because they came with a cassette tape, and I remember occasionally using my brother's Man-E-Faces figure, which apparently every single kid in the United States owned (along with the two quick-changing Transformers).

One last thought: if you slip a Bon Jovi tape into a Teddy Ruxpin, the result is hilarious.