The Toys That Made Us (2017) s01e03 Episode Script
He-Man
1 [MARK TAYLOR.]
Way back when I was nine, my dad decided to take us to the Pike Fun House, and here's this real seedy house of fear, and I didn't feel good about it.
Then the smell hit me.
Smells like somebody's dead.
[ALARM BLARING.]
And this skeleton drops down.
All of a sudden, I knew this was a real person, no question.
It absolutely was a real person.
This was one of the scariest things I've ever seen.
That's where Skeletor came from.
- [MANIACAL LAUGHTER.]
- [NARRATOR.]
Skeletor.
Come in, you royal boob.
[NARRATOR.]
Otherwise known as the archnemesis of He-Man, the sword-wielding, eight-pack-flexing muscle man, defender of Eternia and the secrets of Castle Grayskull.
When He-Man and the Masters of the Universe burst into our lives in 1982 At that time, no other toy looked like that.
this semi-naked, muscle-bound hunk made mincemeat of all the other toys on the market.
He was bigger than Star Wars, bigger than Transformers.
[NARRATOR.]
And he was joined by a throng of colorful characters.
There's Ram Man.
Snout Spout.
Stinkor.
He had the power to stink and destroy.
Ew! [NARRATOR.]
And these colorful characters can only be outdone Ta-da! by their colorful creators.
Excuse me, but it's a pecker contest.
[NARRATOR.]
This incredibly successful toy line stood on its own two perfectly-formed legs.
For the first time, it was the toy line that started it all, not the other way around.
It became bigger than anybody could have ever dreamt.
[NARRATOR.]
Both through luck and cunning master plans We burned it into their little pea brains - The power.
- Power.
- Power.
- Power.
I have the power.
I have the power! This is the story of the most successful Those guys nailed it.
slash unsuccessful toy line in history.
From top of the world to bottom of the barrel.
- [NARRATOR.]
Saddle up your Battle Cats.
- Here we go.
Whoa! These are The Toys that Made Us.
It's an eight-part documentary series About the toys that we all know Plastic creations That last for generations And we still cannot let go Little molded figures That gave us big dreams We'll go back in time And behind the scenes - It's The Toys that Made Us - Toys that Made Us The Toys that Made Us is here [NARRATOR.]
Hawthorne, California, 1979.
Home of the biggest toy company in the world, Mattel.
You might know them as the home of Barbie and Hot Wheels.
They dominated the doll and toy car market, but there was one area where they weren't getting much action.
Mattel wasn't very big in the male action figure line.
They did have, in the early '70s, a Big Jim line.
But when Star Wars came out in '78, they crushed Big Jim.
[NARRATOR.]
This was especially crushing for Mattel, because years before, they had first dibs to make Star Wars action figures, but president of Mattel Ray Wagner turned it down.
Move along.
[NARRATOR.]
To add insult to injury, Star Wars was scooped up by Kenner president Bernie Loomis, a former Mattel employee.
[LAUGHS.]
Bernie was gutsy enough to take a big chance here and do something that, at that time, we weren't prepared to do.
It was, "Hey, guys, look what we did and you didn't.
" It must have upset Ray quite a bit.
[BOY.]
We're in trouble.
[TOM KALINSKE.]
Kenner has Star Wars.
They're eating our lunch.
We don't have anything to compete with them.
What are you gonna do about it? We tried the Clash of the Titans.
And then they come up with Flash Gordon.
Battlestar Galactica, I think we did.
The problem with that is that sometimes the movies weren't as big as Star Wars.
In fact, none were.
We're paying $4 million to these movie companies and we never earn out the royalties.
Clash of the Titans and Flash Gordon were horrible losers.
We should just do it ourselves.
So now I'm on the hot seat, right? I've got to come up with something to compete with Star Wars.
I mean, give me a break.
We came in with giants.
Midgets, you name it.
Every time we'd have a product conference, we'd show different things and it never got any reaction.
[NARRATOR.]
Failing to impress, the task was handed to Mattel's code breakers, otherwise known as marketing.
We assigned it to Joe Morrison.
I think Mark Ellis and Paul Cleveland were in his group.
So Mark and I decided, "Well, let's do some research.
" [NARRATOR.]
And by "research," he means deciphering the mind of the elusive creature known as the five-year-old boy.
Where am I? When we got a bunch of five-year-olds and watched them play, it was clear that little boys are tired of their moms, and/or in some cases teachers, telling them what to do all the time.
And if you watch a little boy play with a male action figure line, at that age he's saying things like, "You do this 'cause I tell you to do it.
" Because he wants to be in charge.
He wants to have the power.
[NARRATOR.]
Hang on a minute.
Mark said, "The little kids, they keep saying they want power.
They want the power, they use the word 'power' and so we gotta use that.
" Thanks, Han.
[BOY AS HAN SOLO.]
I didn't get this medal for nothing.
Mark and I decided we needed to come up with themes, and we sat down, and there really aren't How many themes can you come up with? - Policemen.
- Yeah, that's a theme.
- Space people.
- Yeah, well, Star Wars was pretty big.
Army people.
- Okay.
- Whatever theme you can think of.
Fantasy action, action fantasy or whatever it is.
And you'd flash them in front of a group of boys, "Which one do you relate to? Which one do you want to be? Which one do you like the best?" And we basically determined that the Frank Frazetta barbarian style would be the best potential for sales.
Zap! [NARRATOR.]
Meanwhile, a Mattel designer, despite appearances, was far from lying down on the job and was secretly developing an idea of his own, or as he calls it Flying by the seat of the pants, you know? I was just busting my tail trying to come up with a new line.
[NARRATOR.]
Catching wind of marketing's interest in the barbarian trade, Roger thought he might just have the big idea they were after.
Roger Sweet said, "Let's do something that's massive and that makes every other male action figure look wimpy," and he was always into weightlifting.
I particularly feel it's really important to keep my body in good condition.
Musculature and physical massiveness have always very important to me because I've always been slender.
I was strongly influenced in becoming more physically powerful myself partly because of Charles Atlas ads.
And so, I'm thinking the way to show it is by three-dimensional models that are big.
[GABLE.]
So Roger took a Big Jim figure and put clay on it and he bulked it up until it looked massive.
I did a volumetric study, so this figure at 6'1" would weigh 750 pounds.
Schwarzenegger at the time was Mr.
Olympia.
I mean, he was an incredibly puny 6'1" at 230 pounds.
[LAUGHING.]
And I took this Big Jim figure and put him in a battle action pose because I'd looked at these earlier figures, and they're all standing at attention, no expression on their faces like this [CLOCK TICKING.]
And so I added an expression like this Yeah.
[NARRATOR.]
Draining himself of testosterone, Roger's other two prototypes weren't quite as expressive.
One of them had a head shaped like a bullet, and he called him Bullet Head and that made sense.
There was a Boba Fett helmet over the space military figure 'cause I was running very short on time.
[CLEVELAND.]
And then another guy had a head that was shaped like a tank turret, and he called him Tank Head.
The third character had a bearskin cape and a battle ax, and he called him He-Man.
And I went like this And Mark Ellis went like this And we go, "Damn.
He-Man.
" Bong! It's dynamite.
He-Man instantly tells you that this is an incredibly strong guy.
I can tell you that everybody there was stunned by this thing.
Ray Wagner pointed at the He-Man trio of figures and he said, "Those have the power.
" And in fact he said it just like this, "Those have the power.
" Very quietly.
[NARRATOR.]
The Mattel team had finally found their Star Wars killer, and all thanks to Roger Sweet.
Or was it? The actual design of the actual figures would be turned over to a particular product artist.
And I said, "There's a guy down in the art department that draws just like Frazetta.
He's like an angry old man all the time, but I get along with him.
" And his name was Mark Taylor.
He will tell you right to your face, "I created He-Man and Masters of the Universe.
" My name's Mark Taylor and I created He-Man.
And he did, aesthetically.
[SCOFFS.]
He was, in terms of the look and feel of He-Man, probably the most responsible for doing those characters.
The origins of He-Man started way back when I was very young, when I was first starting to draw.
I was a big fan of Prince Valiant.
EC Comics came up later on.
I would draw my own versions of those.
I already had a He-Man.
He was based on kind of a paleological figure, more of a caveman, and his solution to everything was beating the shit out of it.
But when I was asked who was most responsible for the success of the product line, I said it was Roger Sweet because he did the preliminary design and came up with the word He-Man.
[INTERVIEWER.]
That name was coined by Roger Sweet, correct? I don't know.
[NARRATOR.]
Why is it so hard to get everyone to agree on this? It's not like the movie business, where you have a whole line of credits for different contributions to that movie.
In the toy industry, it's from the company.
So when you have a hit toy, a lot of people in the company say they created that hit toy.
Excuse me, but it's often what's known as a pecker contest.
I put ingredients in it.
Roger put ingredients in it.
Mark put ingredient Both Marks and Paul, everybody.
Everybody had to be there at that time doing what they did for it to happen.
[NARRATOR.]
Okay, so if everyone who was there can agree that they were there when they were there and they did what they did to make whatever happened happen, then it seems like we don't need to belabor the point any further.
- No, we don't.
- [NARRATOR.]
Lovely.
Now, let's move on.
Designing an action figure line is kind of like making a stew.
You need the proper ingredients.
So, if He-Man was Mattel's broth, it would need allies for texture and villains to spice up the flavor.
You needed eight figures, primarily because the first purchases would be the first four principal characters, but you needed additional characters to play with.
[NARRATOR.]
And so Mark Taylor was tasked with designing one of the most iconic roll calls in toy history, He-Man, Mer-Man, Stratos, Teela, Zodac, Man-At-Arms, Beast Man.
[TAYLOR.]
This is the very early form that Beast Man took.
The bear was great, but it was just very much like the Wookiee and we didn't want to be accused of knocking off Star Wars.
So I went back, I did this thing.
I went in and everybody went batshit over it.
They loved it.
[NARRATOR.]
And for the eighth and final character, the very embodiment of bone-chilling evil Skeletor was an incredibly terrific villain.
[MANIACAL LAUGHTER.]
And one of the strongest things ever done for the Masters line, and Mark Taylor was totally responsible for it.
[NARRATOR.]
But the Pike Amusement Park probably deserved some of the credit for, well, introducing him to a real skeleton.
I knew that was a real person.
[NARRATOR.]
It actually was.
Over 60 years later, I'm watching the Discovery Channel, it turns out that he was a real guy and he was really at the Long Beach Pike.
It confirmed all my suspicions.
[NARRATOR.]
So, Mark turned that terrifying experience into a character for a children's toy line.
Skeletor became the very essence of evil.
He actually represents fear.
[THUNDER RUMBLING.]
And Skeletor kept fighting He-Man.
In my imagination, they're still fighting to this day.
[NARRATOR.]
But hang on, where was this epic battle of good versus evil meant to go down? Castle Grayskull.
It was designed so that, number one, you could store all the figures in it.
It also gave a whole setting so you knew you were elsewhere, something like, "That isn't Earth.
That is isn't your living room.
" They didn't have anybody to sculpt it.
When the engineers did it, they made it, like, architectural, real straight, so I finally took it away from them.
I did an armature myself and took the clay, and I sculpted it.
When they finally finished the final clay and it went down for the approval for that, I went and took one of the figures and it wouldn't fit inside the mouth.
Okay, so he forgot how tall He-Man was.
No, you gotta be kidding.
And he made that door, the size, proportionate to the height of the thing, so it was just right proportionately, and never mind that no one could get in and out of the door without ducking, and the He-Man doll couldn't duck.
And so I said, "Hey, you do this, turn him sideways, and stick him through the door.
" And I'm going, "That doesn't help kids play with it.
" You gotta play with them correctly, so they had to re-sculpt it.
So I was met with silence for a week or two, maybe down in engineering, by a few people.
[LAUGHING.]
Dad, you saved the castle.
[NARRATOR.]
Saving the castle was one thing, but getting out and about on those obscenely muscular legs of his was another.
That's why he had the Battle Ram to cut through traffic and the Wind Raider for weekend getaways with Teela, but when those were in the shop, his third option was Well, there was no third option.
What happened was that we ran out of tooling money.
We needed a vehicle, but we didn't have any money for it.
So Paul Cleveland put on his thinking hat.
I had managed the Big Jim line, which was an international-only product by then.
I knew there were tools that already existed that we didn't have to pay for, and this tiger from the Big Jim line Big Jim was a 9.
5-inch doll, so the tiger was scaled to a nine-to ten-inch character.
Tony Guerrero was the guy that sculpted He-Man, and Tony looks at me and says, "Paul, you can't do it.
It's not to scale.
It doesn't look real.
" I said, "Tony, just do it," and I walked out.
I come back the next day and he says, "I need to show you this," and here's this green tiger with orange stripes, and he said, "See, look.
" I said, "Wow, that looks great," and he goes, "Oh, shit.
" He said, "Paul, it still doesn't matter.
It's as big as a horse.
" And I said, "I don't give a fuck.
If it's as big as a horse, put a fucking saddle on it.
" And I walked out again.
So, two days later I come back, and there's a saddle on it and He-Man sitting on it, and I go, "Damn.
" And that became Battle Cat.
If you were in a bar somewhere and a guy came riding in on a 12-foot tiger with armor, nobody would mess with that guy.
[NARRATOR.]
That guy being He-Man, a name that Mattel marketing didn't think could carry the line on its own.
After all, their main competition was called Star Wars, not Luke.
So Mattel would need an equally powerful name for their He-Men.
Lords of Power maybe? Because that picked up into the power theme.
Um At the 11th hour, 59th minute, the president of the company for domestic, Glenn Hastings, said, "No, it's too religious.
" [BELL TOLLS.]
And we had to change, at the last minute, everything to Masters of the Universe.
- Which I hated.
- [NARRATOR.]
And he wasn't the only one.
Masters of the Universe? That was absurd to me.
That was like bragging.
It's an incredibly long name.
Masters of the Universe.
I thought it was a poor name, particularly if you compare it with the name He-Man.
Bong! [NARRATOR.]
Would this mouthful of the universe be enough to convince the toy stores that they should stock this exciting new brand? We brought the largest buyers into Mattel and showed them the line.
And Mark Ellis is sitting there, and I'm presenting the brand overview to all the executives and the top sales guys.
So, the first customer we had was Child World Child World, Child World which was the number-two retailer to Toys R Us at the time.
We get through the whole thing and it's going well, and one of the guys says, "Star Wars has a movie, and the kids know the story and they go buy the characters.
What have you guys got?" Um Yeah.
It was my job on the line, so Mark says, "Oh, didn't we tell you?" Well, we're gonna have a comic book series.
"It'll be free inside with each package.
" Kids will know all about He-Man and Masters of the Universe from this comic book.
And they said, "Wow! That's a great idea.
" And we leave and I said, "Mark, when did you think of that?" And he said, "Just now.
" He was a top-tier bullshitter.
Ta-da! [NARRATOR.]
So marketing set about pulling off their next magic trick, concocting a backstory for He-Man.
Where He-Man lives is a place called Eternia, and that was born out of the comic books.
And what these mini comics did was they established He-Man as a Conan the Barbarian-type character.
There was no Prince Adam, just this wandering barbarian.
[MARK BELLOMO.]
Some strong guy from a tribe of warriors who came to save Eternia, and the original plot revolved more about the two sides of the Power Sword.
Here's He-Man's half of the Power Sword.
Here's Skeletor's half of the Power Sword.
When you had both halves of the Power Sword, what you could do would be insert this into the lock on your Castle Grayskull playset and unlock the Jaw-Bridge, and you could then access all the mysteries and secrets of Castle Grayskull and that's what Skeletor wanted.
But it was a lot of make it up and throw it and see if it sticks, and if it sticks, we ran with it.
[NARRATOR.]
But what about the sticky ones themselves? Kids? Would they run with it? In early 1982, Masters of the Universe hit store shelves.
Now you can imagine all the power in the universe.
I remember I went to a Toys R Us [ANNOUNCER.]
It's He-Man and these heroic action figures.
A kid wanted one of each.
[ANNOUNCER.]
Skeletor and the Warriors of Evil.
The mother said no.
The kid threw himself on the floor and she's dragging him along, which I thought was wonderful.
Then she wound up buying him one of each.
Now I have the power.
I think I got good and drunk.
I was immediately blown away the first time I saw it.
Every figure that was out at the time was the little four-inch skinny figure, and this thing is a 5.
5-inch super-ripped, larger-than-life character, just his muscles busting out.
Looked like he could break a Jedi in half with his bare hands.
At that time, no other toy looked like that.
It blew our minds.
Whoa! Honestly, there weren't a lot of African American action figures around, but he looked tan even though he has blond hair.
He still looked like one of my cousins in this weird way.
And to top it all off, that classic package, this Masters of the Universe logo, I turned it over and then there's Skeletor, and that was the figure I had been waiting for my whole life.
Skeletor was a cool bad guy.
A skull in a hood, you can't go wrong with that.
There's no question.
I was completely hooked and the next thing that we did was started scouring the store, trying to find out where the rest of these figures were.
We promised the company $13 million the first year.
We did 38.
[LAUGHING.]
[NARRATOR.]
That's $25 million more than they had promised, but the line will go on to far surpass even that, all because Actually, let's rewind a little bit.
Keep going.
Mmm, keep going.
Okay, right there.
So, the first customer we had was Child World.
Child World, Child World Two weeks later, on comes the presentation for Toys R Us, which was our biggest customer, and the pièce de résistance, comic book.
And the guy looks at me and says, "Didn't you say the kids play with this when they're five years old?" I said, "Yeah.
" He said, "Well, they don't read at five, so what's a comic book gonna do?" Oh, shit, here we go.
"I didn't mention the two one-hour specials?" You know, I pull something else out of my ear.
So I made a appointment with Lou Scheimer and Filmation.
[NARRATOR.]
Throughout the '70s and '80s, Filmation was a name synonymous with Saturday mornings.
Hey, hey, hey! Filmation was run by a great guy, Lou Scheimer, and his family was all involved in it.
Just a terrific, fun guy.
[NARRATOR.]
It was their 1981 series Blackstar, coincidentally featuring a sword-wielding, bare-chested muscle man on an exotic world, that caught Mattel's eye.
At that initial conversation, Lou Scheimer suggested, rather than two one-hour specials, for almost the same money, we could get a whole syndicated show.
We never thought we were gonna make a profit off of it.
We thought we would be lucky if we broke even.
[NARRATOR.]
And so Filmation animators toiled away for the next year on Mattel's lucky-if-it-breaks-even TV venture, and then one day Paul Cleveland's phone rang.
Lou Scheimer called and said, "We got 10 minutes of He-Man.
You wanna come see it?" And I said, "Sure," and I go, and I sit with Lou, and big screen, and he says, "Roll it.
" I can't believe it.
To me, it was all of this bullshit that we had come up with, and then, all of a sudden, it's part of a story, and now he's live on the screen.
I said, "Lou, this is gonna be a hit," and he says, "I know, I know.
" [ANNOUNCER.]
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe! [NARRATOR.]
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe invaded TVs in September 1983, and kids across the country continue to freak out every day after school.
[ANNOUNCER.]
He-Man! - [NARRATOR.]
And before school.
- He-Man! - And on the weekends.
- He-Man.
As good as the action figures were, it was the cartoon that really brought He-Man and the Masters of the Universe to life for me.
The one striking scene that grabbed me, as any kid would tell you, was the shot of He-Man lowering the sword and saying I have the power! My child's brain was just amazed.
We were psychological terrorists, I think, with He-Man, because "I have the power" came right out of the research.
Mark Ellis said we burned it into their little pea brains.
- I have the power.
- Power.
- Power.
- Power.
- I have the power.
- And we did.
[LAUGHING.]
[NARRATOR.]
But the animated incarnation of He-Man harnessed a slightly kinder and gentler power.
Oh, yeah? [NARRATOR.]
Power light, if you will.
[ELLIS.]
For a television cartoon series, it's all different 'cause you've got to have humor.
You have to lighten it up.
[NARRATOR.]
And so He-Man traded in his savage battle ax for a nebbish alter ego named Prince Adam.
Who, me? Imagine him as Superman's Clark Kent, which would make He-Man Miley Cyrus's Hannah Montana.
This is where I'm from.
This is family.
We had this very dark, serious interpretation of these characters, and then the cartoon comes out, and Prince Adam's wearing a pink vest and goofing off all the time.
I think I'll get a little more watercoloring in before lunch.
[TREADAWAY.]
You know, Orko's messing up magic tricks.
[GROANS.]
You know, Beast Man talked like an idiot.
[GRUNTING.]
But that doesn't mean I have to like it.
[ALL LAUGHING.]
[TREADAWAY.]
But that was what eventually took it from the point of successful toy line to phenomenon.
[EATOCK.]
I would say, to this day, the cartoon, without that, He-Man would have died in the '80s.
No one would remember it.
When you look at how He-Man is remembered to this day, Skeletor is [EXCLAIMS.]
[EXCLAIMS.]
Why do I surround myself with fools? [EATOCK.]
And that was the Filmation one.
Everybody goes, "He should have been like, [DEEP VOICE.]
'I am Skeletor.
'" Nobody would remember that dude.
I could write a book about what you don't know.
At that age, you know, Jason Voorhees was way too scary, or Freddy Krueger was way too scary, but Skeletor was just scary enough.
He was so over the top with that maniacal laugh.
[EVIL LAUGHTER.]
And then he's wry and he's witty.
Skeletor to King Randor.
Come in, you royal boob.
Dare I say, I think Skeletor is more popular than the series.
Listen, I am not nice, I am not kind and I am not wonderful.
[NARRATOR.]
Oh, he's just being modest, which is a personality trait that kids learned about while watching He-Man, along with kindness If you're kind and gentle, then you're using the power.
[NARRATOR.]
responsibility Today, we learned about the value of trying.
[NARRATOR.]
and clean living.
Drugs don't make your problems go away.
They just create more.
Every episode had a moral.
It was explained at the end of the episode why things went wrong or why Orko got in trouble and how it was resolved.
The history behind that was how do we convince parents, I'm sure, that this is not just a commercial for a toy, that this has some value to it.
And some of my friends, the only view of any type of moral code came from Masters of the Universe.
Boy, did that hurt.
Ramming things may look like fun, but it really isn't.
I don't have a problem with them.
I think they're kind of charming.
[NARRATOR.]
But the biggest moral example for kids to follow was mixed right into Prince Adam, who occasionally baked.
The idea that you could transform and you could become something that's successful or powerful stuck with me into adulthood.
- He's a wimpy guy.
- [GASPS.]
But he's a wimpy guy with the He-Man physique.
Ridiculous.
[NARRATOR.]
Thanks to the animated series, Mattel's profits were about as far from wimpy as you could get.
It boosted the sales dramatically of the product line, and it gave us all kinds of licensing income for comic books and wallpaper and sheets and shoes and T-shirts.
You name it.
By the power of Grayskull, He-Man is here! This became the model from then on for the toy industry.
- Heroes, how about some Quik? - [CHILDREN.]
Yeah! After that, you saw all these toy and animated properties coming out.
[OVERLAPPING THEME SONGS PLAYING.]
[EXHALES.]
[NARRATOR.]
And, soon enough, Mattel's golden boy had done the unthinkable, outshining their golden girl.
After Masters' first year, the combined boys toys were, for the first time, larger in sales than all of the girls toys, which caused all of the girls in the girls toys area to go berserk.
- [WOMEN SCREAMING.]
- [HORSE WHINNIES.]
And I think they were pretty much determined to make sure that wasn't gonna happen again.
20% of the Masters of the Universe audience were female.
Girls were buying He-Man, so why not take advantage of that target audience? Action, adventure, those were things that Barbie couldn't do.
So we said, "Well, let's see if we can come up with a product line that can deliver on those things, and the line can carry on the coattails of the success of He-Man.
" [NARRATOR.]
So how do you make a toy line that's half He-Man and half Barbie? Uh [NARRATOR.]
She-Man? Why can't He-Man have a sister? [NARRATOR.]
Oh, right, good idea.
If he had a sister, what would her name be? [VARNEY-HAMLIN.]
We had all these she-names, things that represented womanhood, and we were, like, joking about "How about Sheila?" And Jill said, "How about" She-Ra the Princess of Power? And I said, "That's it.
We'll go with that.
" She-Ra, Princess of Power She had action moves, but she actually had the costume changes, the hair play.
She's lovely as a flower But she has a secret power [VARNEY-HAMLIN.]
She was a 5.
5-inch scale like He-Man.
We wanted to make the character bigger, and of course, all of the men didn't want her to be bigger than He-Man because it'd make him look like a wimp.
- Ridiculous.
- I hated it.
- They really believed that.
Okay.
- [HE-MAN SCREAMS.]
Far be it from me to make He-Man look like a wimp.
[NARRATOR.]
Too late.
Well A little, yeah.
The big brother didn't get special treatment.
I am She-Ra! She-Ra got her own animated series, too, of course.
And you mustn't tell them you're She-Ra either.
Okay, Adam, if you say so.
It followed her adventures on Eternia's sister planet, Etheria, as She-Ra fought the evil forces of jolly Hordak.
[LAUGHING MANIACALLY.]
And if kids were hungry for more of He-Man's special kind of, well, high drama You have no right to hunt down the last unicorn for your own selfish pleasure.
She-Ra did not disappoint.
I found a valve marked "Danger, do not turn.
" - You didn't turn it, did you? - Of course I did.
[EXPLOSION.]
[NARRATOR.]
Meanwhile, on Eternia Is Snake Mountain ready to take on He-Man? Anytime.
[ANNOUNCER.]
Snake Mountain, Battle Armor He-Man and Skeletor each sold separately.
You put the mountain together.
[NARRATOR.]
With profits in the hundreds of millions of dollars and multiple foreign licensees under his studded belt [ANNOUNCER SPEAKING SPANISH.]
[GRUNTS.]
[NARRATOR.]
He-Man had become an international phenomenon.
[ANNOUNCER.]
Introducing the first Masters of the Universe home video game.
[NARRATOR.]
And Mattel met the demand head on the only way they knew how.
[KIDS.]
Wow! [NARRATOR.]
By making Masters of the Universe bigger [GROWLS.]
- Slimier.
- I've been slimed! [NARRATOR.]
And definitely weirder.
We could put anything into He-Man.
Barbarian look, dinosaurs, robots, space.
They call it the kitchen sink property.
It was just a little of this, a little of that.
Everything you could think of was in there.
And if it resonated with us and we thought kids'd love it, it went in.
We had He-Man.
We had Skeletor's gang.
We had the Evil Horde and the slithering swarm of seething serpents and the skilled scaled scum of Skeletor, the Snake Men.
Don't ask me to do that again.
Figures that were every wild color combination imaginable, tails, wings, gun arms.
Psychedelic, there was a group of psychedelic characters.
They don't really fit together, but somehow it worked.
I remember somebody at Filmation saying, "What have these guys been smoking?" Bong! I thought that was one of the biggest compliments I could have gotten, you know? [LAUGHING.]
We all had a bad sense of humor, frankly, and so a lot of times the characters that we came up with were just bad puns, like Evil-Lyn Give me a break.
Or Man-E-Faces.
I mean, hello? [KID.]
Meet Fisto.
[ELLIS.]
Some of those were developed over some Beverages, yeah, beverages.
It was like a comedy show.
Paul Cleveland would have some ideas.
We'd go, "We can't do that.
" We had to change Sea-Man 'cause you can't say it real fast.
So one of the guys that was writing the mini comic books came up with the name Mer-Man.
We would have been sued like crazy.
You can imagine the jokes when we were presenting Tongue Lasher.
Yeah.
[NARRATOR.]
But forget smutty wordplay.
If you really wanted to have fun, you could play with the action figures' action features.
There's Ram Man, who, press a button And Snout Spout was the other one I had.
[ANNOUNCER.]
Snout Spout, his knockout blast knocks the enemy out.
[EATOCK.]
In the cartoon, he was Hose Nose.
I don't know which is worse, Snout Spout or Hose Nose.
I was always really into Modulok.
[ANNOUNCER.]
Modulok.
[FLYNN.]
He was modular and you snapped on pieces together, and you could make different configurations of him.
There was a figure called Two Bad, and if you pulled one arm back, he would punch his other head.
I figured, let's have one that stinks.
I smell trouble! Man-At-Arms cannot escape the evil smell of Stinkor.
He had the power to stink and destroy.
You could get these little micro-encapsulated beads, and you could do smells, and you could mix it in with the raw plastic.
And apparently the factory stunk so bad that workers were getting sick.
They didn't want to work there.
It smelled like a dead person.
Ew! I wonder what Extendar does.
What boy doesn't want to extend? [NARRATOR.]
This might be true for boys, but when Mattel overextended themselves, it spelled trouble.
The 1982 Masters line did 38.
2 million, then 80 million in '83, then 111 million in '84, 250 million in '85, 400 million in '86.
Then it collapsed to seven million.
[NARRATOR.]
It looked like He-Man no longer had the power, and many at Mattel were left asking the question What happened? One theory was from Dave Capper.
He says, "The reason He-Man sales aren't doing well is because of you.
" I go, "Me?" He said, "Yes, you came up with She-Ra.
That basically demasculized He-Man, and now boys don't want him anymore.
" We started to get feedback that if an eight-year-old boy had been playing with He-Man for two or three years and now his sister was saying, "I have the power," that there was something that just didn't feel as cool.
That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard of.
[NARRATOR.]
Maybe.
So then how about this? We ended up by the third year having a disproportionate mix of tertiary characters on the shelf and none of the He-Man and Skeletors.
We'd say to manufacturing, "Hey, we need some more inventory," and they'd go, "Well, we got them for you.
It's Buzz-Off, so we'll fill the assortment full of Buzz-Offs.
" [IMITATES BUZZER.]
So the new kids coming in couldn't start the collection appropriately, and that's in fact what led to large inventories and then the overall product going down.
[SWEET.]
When that line dropped from 400 million to seven million, it put Mattel in very precarious financial position.
[NARRATOR.]
Mattel couldn't afford to let their big-bucks barbarian tank.
[ANNOUNCER.]
How can He-Man survive? [NARRATOR.]
But don't worry.
There was already something in the works that was very likely to put He-Man back on top.
He-Man, the motion picture.
I have the power! Masters of the Universe, the motion picture, was unleashed in August of 1987.
For the first time ever, kids could see their favorite Eternian characters up on the big screen in living, breathing live action.
Fan favorites such as He-Man, Skeletor, Guy with the Hair, Courtney Cox and her boyfriend I brought us dinner.
[NARRATOR.]
Music Store Guy.
And this dude? Uh could have been better.
[BIRDS CHIRPING.]
The live action movie, to me, was very, very disappointing.
There were people at Mattel that thought it was Conan the Barbarian.
Other people thought it was some other different kind of motion picture, and you wound up with Dolph Lundgren, who had just come off of Rocky.
I must break you.
Dolph Lundgren is far slenderer than the actual He-Man figure.
I may have to do more weights.
You know, they actually painted on definition for his muscles.
They didn't paint them on.
You had to have them.
I wasn't super impressed by him.
And nowhere in that story does Prince Adam raise the sword and have that iconic moment of, "I am He-Man.
I have the power," and transform into He-Man.
I think we could have put in some of the story points that kids connected to and loved in the product line and the TV show.
I grew up on these characters.
I wanted to see these characters on the big screen.
I've waited a long time for this.
The ones that were looked nothing like the toys or the cartoon.
Someone betrayed us.
And then there were all these new characters.
I am Gwildor of Thenor.
[TREADAWAY.]
Where was Mer-Man? Where was Stratos? It was a plane crash.
Those things just happen.
And even worse, they go to Earth.
Choice, really choice.
What is this, a circus act? I mean, come on.
Look, look, native clothing.
[NARRATOR.]
As Masters of the Universe quickly disappeared from theaters, the already-stagnating toy sales continued to stink.
There's only one solution for the retailers.
They dropped the price and that price drops Not only do profits drop, but consumers start to think that that magic is gone.
The line starts to lose its cool.
You can't get that back.
Skeletor, it's over.
[SKELETOR.]
Yes.
The 1987 line collapsed.
[SCREAMING.]
And I was still in charge of the creation of product, so I was taken off the line because they didn't think I was doing a good job.
[NARRATOR.]
Shortly after removing sweet Roger from the line he'd helped create, Mattel officially closed the Jaw-Bridge on Castle Grayskull for good.
Did they really, though? It was a billion-dollar industry.
You know, it was a big engine.
It had a lot of popularity and made a lot of money, and I'm sure Mattel wanted to keep that going.
[NARRATOR.]
And so, in 1989, Mattel attempted their first Eternian comeback with a makeover of galactic proportions.
He-Man goes into space.
The power is back Who's got it? He-Man is back, Skeletor's back The battle is back It just fell flat.
It had a bunch of new characters fans didn't know.
[NARRATOR.]
Hmm.
Sounds familiar.
They did a cartoon, and everybody was like, "What is that?" He-Man in spandex and a ponytail.
[EXHALES.]
[NARRATOR.]
Well, maybe ponytailed space He-Man wasn't the best idea.
[HE-MAN.]
By the power of Ow! Son of a [NARRATOR.]
So with a short back and sides, Mattel went back to basics and tried again in 2002.
All of the armor has more detail.
There's stitches.
There's bullet holes, but it had to immediately be recognizable as the original.
[ANNOUNCER.]
Now it's a fight with bite.
[NARRATOR.]
Now, this is more like it.
Oh, what about the cartoon? The cartoon that they did for it was great.
- [NARRATOR.]
Fantastic.
- It was an excellent cartoon.
[NARRATOR.]
Sweet relief.
It seemed like He-Man had finally found But [NARRATOR.]
Oh, no.
Please, no buts.
[SNIFFLES.]
[SCREAMS.]
The line ultimately did not last anywhere near as long as anybody had hoped, and that was ultimately a disappointment.
By the power of Oh [GROANS.]
That's not what kids wanted at the time.
[NARRATOR.]
And maybe that's not what kids will want ever again.
But what about adults? I have the power! Today, He-Man has found his niche among a rabid community of collectors, who gather at events such as the annual Power-Con to celebrate a fandom now in its fourth decade.
[FLYNN.]
When you show up here and you see all these people, you realize, "Oh, wait, Masters of the Universe is still really, really big.
" [GROWLS.]
[FLYNN.]
And really important around the world.
Masters of the Universe in Mexico was very popular.
[ALL IN SPANISH.]
We have the power.
[NARRATOR.]
These grown-up five-year-olds finally do have the power in their wallets, which is why Mattel and San Francisco-based Super7 have teamed up to create the premium Masters of the Universe classics line, featuring high-end reinterpretations of the original line with a high-end reinterpreted price tag, too.
We've done hundreds of figures, vehicles, giants, a giant dragon, eventually Castle Grayskull.
[NARRATOR.]
Which would only put you back $300.
A lot of it is centered around nostalgia and really selling people the idea and the emotions they had when they were children.
As you've gotten older and more mature, so to speak, the figures have progressed with you.
[NARRATOR.]
For ages 35 and up.
To keep the torch alive for Masters of the Universe, it's absolutely amazing.
It's an honor.
What I would love to be able to do is go back and visit my nine-year-old self and tell myself, "Oh, yeah, this is what you're gonna be doing for a living when you grow up and you're gonna be having a blast doing it.
" [NARRATOR.]
The future of He-Man now lies in the dainty hands of these fully-grown fanboys.
The sky is still the limit for Masters of the Universe.
[NARRATOR.]
But the glorious days of He-Man's reign can be squarely attributed to these colorful, crazy, diabolical bunch of weirdos.
[BOY.]
I can't breathe! [NARRATOR.]
But not them.
I mean, this bunch.
Those guys just nailed it.
They captured something really, really special.
[GABLE.]
It was magical.
So many things had to happen right.
So many things did happen right, and it became bigger than anybody could have ever dreamt about.
It's about as thrilling as it comes when you can get a successful toy and have it take off and you can see kids enjoy it and have it be a big success.
The most surprising people have said, "I want to thank you for doing He-Man because it was all I had.
" Dad, you saved the castle.
[TAYLOR.]
He was a template for little boys.
He was their best friend who was fair and a good man but at the same time could kick anybody's ass.
[NARRATOR.]
And he did.
For that brief, five-year run, He-Man was at least the master of the toy universe, and thanks to these incredible toys, we all had the power to learn valuable lessons.
There was a really wonderful moment in today's adventure story.
[ORKO.]
It was when He-Man lifted the whole top of the mountain.
[MAN-AT-ARMS.]
That was incredible, but that wasn't it.
The most wonderful moment was Bong! [THEME SONG PLAYING.]
[CHILD AS SKELETOR.]
I'll be back.
Way back when I was nine, my dad decided to take us to the Pike Fun House, and here's this real seedy house of fear, and I didn't feel good about it.
Then the smell hit me.
Smells like somebody's dead.
[ALARM BLARING.]
And this skeleton drops down.
All of a sudden, I knew this was a real person, no question.
It absolutely was a real person.
This was one of the scariest things I've ever seen.
That's where Skeletor came from.
- [MANIACAL LAUGHTER.]
- [NARRATOR.]
Skeletor.
Come in, you royal boob.
[NARRATOR.]
Otherwise known as the archnemesis of He-Man, the sword-wielding, eight-pack-flexing muscle man, defender of Eternia and the secrets of Castle Grayskull.
When He-Man and the Masters of the Universe burst into our lives in 1982 At that time, no other toy looked like that.
this semi-naked, muscle-bound hunk made mincemeat of all the other toys on the market.
He was bigger than Star Wars, bigger than Transformers.
[NARRATOR.]
And he was joined by a throng of colorful characters.
There's Ram Man.
Snout Spout.
Stinkor.
He had the power to stink and destroy.
Ew! [NARRATOR.]
And these colorful characters can only be outdone Ta-da! by their colorful creators.
Excuse me, but it's a pecker contest.
[NARRATOR.]
This incredibly successful toy line stood on its own two perfectly-formed legs.
For the first time, it was the toy line that started it all, not the other way around.
It became bigger than anybody could have ever dreamt.
[NARRATOR.]
Both through luck and cunning master plans We burned it into their little pea brains - The power.
- Power.
- Power.
- Power.
I have the power.
I have the power! This is the story of the most successful Those guys nailed it.
slash unsuccessful toy line in history.
From top of the world to bottom of the barrel.
- [NARRATOR.]
Saddle up your Battle Cats.
- Here we go.
Whoa! These are The Toys that Made Us.
It's an eight-part documentary series About the toys that we all know Plastic creations That last for generations And we still cannot let go Little molded figures That gave us big dreams We'll go back in time And behind the scenes - It's The Toys that Made Us - Toys that Made Us The Toys that Made Us is here [NARRATOR.]
Hawthorne, California, 1979.
Home of the biggest toy company in the world, Mattel.
You might know them as the home of Barbie and Hot Wheels.
They dominated the doll and toy car market, but there was one area where they weren't getting much action.
Mattel wasn't very big in the male action figure line.
They did have, in the early '70s, a Big Jim line.
But when Star Wars came out in '78, they crushed Big Jim.
[NARRATOR.]
This was especially crushing for Mattel, because years before, they had first dibs to make Star Wars action figures, but president of Mattel Ray Wagner turned it down.
Move along.
[NARRATOR.]
To add insult to injury, Star Wars was scooped up by Kenner president Bernie Loomis, a former Mattel employee.
[LAUGHS.]
Bernie was gutsy enough to take a big chance here and do something that, at that time, we weren't prepared to do.
It was, "Hey, guys, look what we did and you didn't.
" It must have upset Ray quite a bit.
[BOY.]
We're in trouble.
[TOM KALINSKE.]
Kenner has Star Wars.
They're eating our lunch.
We don't have anything to compete with them.
What are you gonna do about it? We tried the Clash of the Titans.
And then they come up with Flash Gordon.
Battlestar Galactica, I think we did.
The problem with that is that sometimes the movies weren't as big as Star Wars.
In fact, none were.
We're paying $4 million to these movie companies and we never earn out the royalties.
Clash of the Titans and Flash Gordon were horrible losers.
We should just do it ourselves.
So now I'm on the hot seat, right? I've got to come up with something to compete with Star Wars.
I mean, give me a break.
We came in with giants.
Midgets, you name it.
Every time we'd have a product conference, we'd show different things and it never got any reaction.
[NARRATOR.]
Failing to impress, the task was handed to Mattel's code breakers, otherwise known as marketing.
We assigned it to Joe Morrison.
I think Mark Ellis and Paul Cleveland were in his group.
So Mark and I decided, "Well, let's do some research.
" [NARRATOR.]
And by "research," he means deciphering the mind of the elusive creature known as the five-year-old boy.
Where am I? When we got a bunch of five-year-olds and watched them play, it was clear that little boys are tired of their moms, and/or in some cases teachers, telling them what to do all the time.
And if you watch a little boy play with a male action figure line, at that age he's saying things like, "You do this 'cause I tell you to do it.
" Because he wants to be in charge.
He wants to have the power.
[NARRATOR.]
Hang on a minute.
Mark said, "The little kids, they keep saying they want power.
They want the power, they use the word 'power' and so we gotta use that.
" Thanks, Han.
[BOY AS HAN SOLO.]
I didn't get this medal for nothing.
Mark and I decided we needed to come up with themes, and we sat down, and there really aren't How many themes can you come up with? - Policemen.
- Yeah, that's a theme.
- Space people.
- Yeah, well, Star Wars was pretty big.
Army people.
- Okay.
- Whatever theme you can think of.
Fantasy action, action fantasy or whatever it is.
And you'd flash them in front of a group of boys, "Which one do you relate to? Which one do you want to be? Which one do you like the best?" And we basically determined that the Frank Frazetta barbarian style would be the best potential for sales.
Zap! [NARRATOR.]
Meanwhile, a Mattel designer, despite appearances, was far from lying down on the job and was secretly developing an idea of his own, or as he calls it Flying by the seat of the pants, you know? I was just busting my tail trying to come up with a new line.
[NARRATOR.]
Catching wind of marketing's interest in the barbarian trade, Roger thought he might just have the big idea they were after.
Roger Sweet said, "Let's do something that's massive and that makes every other male action figure look wimpy," and he was always into weightlifting.
I particularly feel it's really important to keep my body in good condition.
Musculature and physical massiveness have always very important to me because I've always been slender.
I was strongly influenced in becoming more physically powerful myself partly because of Charles Atlas ads.
And so, I'm thinking the way to show it is by three-dimensional models that are big.
[GABLE.]
So Roger took a Big Jim figure and put clay on it and he bulked it up until it looked massive.
I did a volumetric study, so this figure at 6'1" would weigh 750 pounds.
Schwarzenegger at the time was Mr.
Olympia.
I mean, he was an incredibly puny 6'1" at 230 pounds.
[LAUGHING.]
And I took this Big Jim figure and put him in a battle action pose because I'd looked at these earlier figures, and they're all standing at attention, no expression on their faces like this [CLOCK TICKING.]
And so I added an expression like this Yeah.
[NARRATOR.]
Draining himself of testosterone, Roger's other two prototypes weren't quite as expressive.
One of them had a head shaped like a bullet, and he called him Bullet Head and that made sense.
There was a Boba Fett helmet over the space military figure 'cause I was running very short on time.
[CLEVELAND.]
And then another guy had a head that was shaped like a tank turret, and he called him Tank Head.
The third character had a bearskin cape and a battle ax, and he called him He-Man.
And I went like this And Mark Ellis went like this And we go, "Damn.
He-Man.
" Bong! It's dynamite.
He-Man instantly tells you that this is an incredibly strong guy.
I can tell you that everybody there was stunned by this thing.
Ray Wagner pointed at the He-Man trio of figures and he said, "Those have the power.
" And in fact he said it just like this, "Those have the power.
" Very quietly.
[NARRATOR.]
The Mattel team had finally found their Star Wars killer, and all thanks to Roger Sweet.
Or was it? The actual design of the actual figures would be turned over to a particular product artist.
And I said, "There's a guy down in the art department that draws just like Frazetta.
He's like an angry old man all the time, but I get along with him.
" And his name was Mark Taylor.
He will tell you right to your face, "I created He-Man and Masters of the Universe.
" My name's Mark Taylor and I created He-Man.
And he did, aesthetically.
[SCOFFS.]
He was, in terms of the look and feel of He-Man, probably the most responsible for doing those characters.
The origins of He-Man started way back when I was very young, when I was first starting to draw.
I was a big fan of Prince Valiant.
EC Comics came up later on.
I would draw my own versions of those.
I already had a He-Man.
He was based on kind of a paleological figure, more of a caveman, and his solution to everything was beating the shit out of it.
But when I was asked who was most responsible for the success of the product line, I said it was Roger Sweet because he did the preliminary design and came up with the word He-Man.
[INTERVIEWER.]
That name was coined by Roger Sweet, correct? I don't know.
[NARRATOR.]
Why is it so hard to get everyone to agree on this? It's not like the movie business, where you have a whole line of credits for different contributions to that movie.
In the toy industry, it's from the company.
So when you have a hit toy, a lot of people in the company say they created that hit toy.
Excuse me, but it's often what's known as a pecker contest.
I put ingredients in it.
Roger put ingredients in it.
Mark put ingredient Both Marks and Paul, everybody.
Everybody had to be there at that time doing what they did for it to happen.
[NARRATOR.]
Okay, so if everyone who was there can agree that they were there when they were there and they did what they did to make whatever happened happen, then it seems like we don't need to belabor the point any further.
- No, we don't.
- [NARRATOR.]
Lovely.
Now, let's move on.
Designing an action figure line is kind of like making a stew.
You need the proper ingredients.
So, if He-Man was Mattel's broth, it would need allies for texture and villains to spice up the flavor.
You needed eight figures, primarily because the first purchases would be the first four principal characters, but you needed additional characters to play with.
[NARRATOR.]
And so Mark Taylor was tasked with designing one of the most iconic roll calls in toy history, He-Man, Mer-Man, Stratos, Teela, Zodac, Man-At-Arms, Beast Man.
[TAYLOR.]
This is the very early form that Beast Man took.
The bear was great, but it was just very much like the Wookiee and we didn't want to be accused of knocking off Star Wars.
So I went back, I did this thing.
I went in and everybody went batshit over it.
They loved it.
[NARRATOR.]
And for the eighth and final character, the very embodiment of bone-chilling evil Skeletor was an incredibly terrific villain.
[MANIACAL LAUGHTER.]
And one of the strongest things ever done for the Masters line, and Mark Taylor was totally responsible for it.
[NARRATOR.]
But the Pike Amusement Park probably deserved some of the credit for, well, introducing him to a real skeleton.
I knew that was a real person.
[NARRATOR.]
It actually was.
Over 60 years later, I'm watching the Discovery Channel, it turns out that he was a real guy and he was really at the Long Beach Pike.
It confirmed all my suspicions.
[NARRATOR.]
So, Mark turned that terrifying experience into a character for a children's toy line.
Skeletor became the very essence of evil.
He actually represents fear.
[THUNDER RUMBLING.]
And Skeletor kept fighting He-Man.
In my imagination, they're still fighting to this day.
[NARRATOR.]
But hang on, where was this epic battle of good versus evil meant to go down? Castle Grayskull.
It was designed so that, number one, you could store all the figures in it.
It also gave a whole setting so you knew you were elsewhere, something like, "That isn't Earth.
That is isn't your living room.
" They didn't have anybody to sculpt it.
When the engineers did it, they made it, like, architectural, real straight, so I finally took it away from them.
I did an armature myself and took the clay, and I sculpted it.
When they finally finished the final clay and it went down for the approval for that, I went and took one of the figures and it wouldn't fit inside the mouth.
Okay, so he forgot how tall He-Man was.
No, you gotta be kidding.
And he made that door, the size, proportionate to the height of the thing, so it was just right proportionately, and never mind that no one could get in and out of the door without ducking, and the He-Man doll couldn't duck.
And so I said, "Hey, you do this, turn him sideways, and stick him through the door.
" And I'm going, "That doesn't help kids play with it.
" You gotta play with them correctly, so they had to re-sculpt it.
So I was met with silence for a week or two, maybe down in engineering, by a few people.
[LAUGHING.]
Dad, you saved the castle.
[NARRATOR.]
Saving the castle was one thing, but getting out and about on those obscenely muscular legs of his was another.
That's why he had the Battle Ram to cut through traffic and the Wind Raider for weekend getaways with Teela, but when those were in the shop, his third option was Well, there was no third option.
What happened was that we ran out of tooling money.
We needed a vehicle, but we didn't have any money for it.
So Paul Cleveland put on his thinking hat.
I had managed the Big Jim line, which was an international-only product by then.
I knew there were tools that already existed that we didn't have to pay for, and this tiger from the Big Jim line Big Jim was a 9.
5-inch doll, so the tiger was scaled to a nine-to ten-inch character.
Tony Guerrero was the guy that sculpted He-Man, and Tony looks at me and says, "Paul, you can't do it.
It's not to scale.
It doesn't look real.
" I said, "Tony, just do it," and I walked out.
I come back the next day and he says, "I need to show you this," and here's this green tiger with orange stripes, and he said, "See, look.
" I said, "Wow, that looks great," and he goes, "Oh, shit.
" He said, "Paul, it still doesn't matter.
It's as big as a horse.
" And I said, "I don't give a fuck.
If it's as big as a horse, put a fucking saddle on it.
" And I walked out again.
So, two days later I come back, and there's a saddle on it and He-Man sitting on it, and I go, "Damn.
" And that became Battle Cat.
If you were in a bar somewhere and a guy came riding in on a 12-foot tiger with armor, nobody would mess with that guy.
[NARRATOR.]
That guy being He-Man, a name that Mattel marketing didn't think could carry the line on its own.
After all, their main competition was called Star Wars, not Luke.
So Mattel would need an equally powerful name for their He-Men.
Lords of Power maybe? Because that picked up into the power theme.
Um At the 11th hour, 59th minute, the president of the company for domestic, Glenn Hastings, said, "No, it's too religious.
" [BELL TOLLS.]
And we had to change, at the last minute, everything to Masters of the Universe.
- Which I hated.
- [NARRATOR.]
And he wasn't the only one.
Masters of the Universe? That was absurd to me.
That was like bragging.
It's an incredibly long name.
Masters of the Universe.
I thought it was a poor name, particularly if you compare it with the name He-Man.
Bong! [NARRATOR.]
Would this mouthful of the universe be enough to convince the toy stores that they should stock this exciting new brand? We brought the largest buyers into Mattel and showed them the line.
And Mark Ellis is sitting there, and I'm presenting the brand overview to all the executives and the top sales guys.
So, the first customer we had was Child World Child World, Child World which was the number-two retailer to Toys R Us at the time.
We get through the whole thing and it's going well, and one of the guys says, "Star Wars has a movie, and the kids know the story and they go buy the characters.
What have you guys got?" Um Yeah.
It was my job on the line, so Mark says, "Oh, didn't we tell you?" Well, we're gonna have a comic book series.
"It'll be free inside with each package.
" Kids will know all about He-Man and Masters of the Universe from this comic book.
And they said, "Wow! That's a great idea.
" And we leave and I said, "Mark, when did you think of that?" And he said, "Just now.
" He was a top-tier bullshitter.
Ta-da! [NARRATOR.]
So marketing set about pulling off their next magic trick, concocting a backstory for He-Man.
Where He-Man lives is a place called Eternia, and that was born out of the comic books.
And what these mini comics did was they established He-Man as a Conan the Barbarian-type character.
There was no Prince Adam, just this wandering barbarian.
[MARK BELLOMO.]
Some strong guy from a tribe of warriors who came to save Eternia, and the original plot revolved more about the two sides of the Power Sword.
Here's He-Man's half of the Power Sword.
Here's Skeletor's half of the Power Sword.
When you had both halves of the Power Sword, what you could do would be insert this into the lock on your Castle Grayskull playset and unlock the Jaw-Bridge, and you could then access all the mysteries and secrets of Castle Grayskull and that's what Skeletor wanted.
But it was a lot of make it up and throw it and see if it sticks, and if it sticks, we ran with it.
[NARRATOR.]
But what about the sticky ones themselves? Kids? Would they run with it? In early 1982, Masters of the Universe hit store shelves.
Now you can imagine all the power in the universe.
I remember I went to a Toys R Us [ANNOUNCER.]
It's He-Man and these heroic action figures.
A kid wanted one of each.
[ANNOUNCER.]
Skeletor and the Warriors of Evil.
The mother said no.
The kid threw himself on the floor and she's dragging him along, which I thought was wonderful.
Then she wound up buying him one of each.
Now I have the power.
I think I got good and drunk.
I was immediately blown away the first time I saw it.
Every figure that was out at the time was the little four-inch skinny figure, and this thing is a 5.
5-inch super-ripped, larger-than-life character, just his muscles busting out.
Looked like he could break a Jedi in half with his bare hands.
At that time, no other toy looked like that.
It blew our minds.
Whoa! Honestly, there weren't a lot of African American action figures around, but he looked tan even though he has blond hair.
He still looked like one of my cousins in this weird way.
And to top it all off, that classic package, this Masters of the Universe logo, I turned it over and then there's Skeletor, and that was the figure I had been waiting for my whole life.
Skeletor was a cool bad guy.
A skull in a hood, you can't go wrong with that.
There's no question.
I was completely hooked and the next thing that we did was started scouring the store, trying to find out where the rest of these figures were.
We promised the company $13 million the first year.
We did 38.
[LAUGHING.]
[NARRATOR.]
That's $25 million more than they had promised, but the line will go on to far surpass even that, all because Actually, let's rewind a little bit.
Keep going.
Mmm, keep going.
Okay, right there.
So, the first customer we had was Child World.
Child World, Child World Two weeks later, on comes the presentation for Toys R Us, which was our biggest customer, and the pièce de résistance, comic book.
And the guy looks at me and says, "Didn't you say the kids play with this when they're five years old?" I said, "Yeah.
" He said, "Well, they don't read at five, so what's a comic book gonna do?" Oh, shit, here we go.
"I didn't mention the two one-hour specials?" You know, I pull something else out of my ear.
So I made a appointment with Lou Scheimer and Filmation.
[NARRATOR.]
Throughout the '70s and '80s, Filmation was a name synonymous with Saturday mornings.
Hey, hey, hey! Filmation was run by a great guy, Lou Scheimer, and his family was all involved in it.
Just a terrific, fun guy.
[NARRATOR.]
It was their 1981 series Blackstar, coincidentally featuring a sword-wielding, bare-chested muscle man on an exotic world, that caught Mattel's eye.
At that initial conversation, Lou Scheimer suggested, rather than two one-hour specials, for almost the same money, we could get a whole syndicated show.
We never thought we were gonna make a profit off of it.
We thought we would be lucky if we broke even.
[NARRATOR.]
And so Filmation animators toiled away for the next year on Mattel's lucky-if-it-breaks-even TV venture, and then one day Paul Cleveland's phone rang.
Lou Scheimer called and said, "We got 10 minutes of He-Man.
You wanna come see it?" And I said, "Sure," and I go, and I sit with Lou, and big screen, and he says, "Roll it.
" I can't believe it.
To me, it was all of this bullshit that we had come up with, and then, all of a sudden, it's part of a story, and now he's live on the screen.
I said, "Lou, this is gonna be a hit," and he says, "I know, I know.
" [ANNOUNCER.]
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe! [NARRATOR.]
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe invaded TVs in September 1983, and kids across the country continue to freak out every day after school.
[ANNOUNCER.]
He-Man! - [NARRATOR.]
And before school.
- He-Man! - And on the weekends.
- He-Man.
As good as the action figures were, it was the cartoon that really brought He-Man and the Masters of the Universe to life for me.
The one striking scene that grabbed me, as any kid would tell you, was the shot of He-Man lowering the sword and saying I have the power! My child's brain was just amazed.
We were psychological terrorists, I think, with He-Man, because "I have the power" came right out of the research.
Mark Ellis said we burned it into their little pea brains.
- I have the power.
- Power.
- Power.
- Power.
- I have the power.
- And we did.
[LAUGHING.]
[NARRATOR.]
But the animated incarnation of He-Man harnessed a slightly kinder and gentler power.
Oh, yeah? [NARRATOR.]
Power light, if you will.
[ELLIS.]
For a television cartoon series, it's all different 'cause you've got to have humor.
You have to lighten it up.
[NARRATOR.]
And so He-Man traded in his savage battle ax for a nebbish alter ego named Prince Adam.
Who, me? Imagine him as Superman's Clark Kent, which would make He-Man Miley Cyrus's Hannah Montana.
This is where I'm from.
This is family.
We had this very dark, serious interpretation of these characters, and then the cartoon comes out, and Prince Adam's wearing a pink vest and goofing off all the time.
I think I'll get a little more watercoloring in before lunch.
[TREADAWAY.]
You know, Orko's messing up magic tricks.
[GROANS.]
You know, Beast Man talked like an idiot.
[GRUNTING.]
But that doesn't mean I have to like it.
[ALL LAUGHING.]
[TREADAWAY.]
But that was what eventually took it from the point of successful toy line to phenomenon.
[EATOCK.]
I would say, to this day, the cartoon, without that, He-Man would have died in the '80s.
No one would remember it.
When you look at how He-Man is remembered to this day, Skeletor is [EXCLAIMS.]
[EXCLAIMS.]
Why do I surround myself with fools? [EATOCK.]
And that was the Filmation one.
Everybody goes, "He should have been like, [DEEP VOICE.]
'I am Skeletor.
'" Nobody would remember that dude.
I could write a book about what you don't know.
At that age, you know, Jason Voorhees was way too scary, or Freddy Krueger was way too scary, but Skeletor was just scary enough.
He was so over the top with that maniacal laugh.
[EVIL LAUGHTER.]
And then he's wry and he's witty.
Skeletor to King Randor.
Come in, you royal boob.
Dare I say, I think Skeletor is more popular than the series.
Listen, I am not nice, I am not kind and I am not wonderful.
[NARRATOR.]
Oh, he's just being modest, which is a personality trait that kids learned about while watching He-Man, along with kindness If you're kind and gentle, then you're using the power.
[NARRATOR.]
responsibility Today, we learned about the value of trying.
[NARRATOR.]
and clean living.
Drugs don't make your problems go away.
They just create more.
Every episode had a moral.
It was explained at the end of the episode why things went wrong or why Orko got in trouble and how it was resolved.
The history behind that was how do we convince parents, I'm sure, that this is not just a commercial for a toy, that this has some value to it.
And some of my friends, the only view of any type of moral code came from Masters of the Universe.
Boy, did that hurt.
Ramming things may look like fun, but it really isn't.
I don't have a problem with them.
I think they're kind of charming.
[NARRATOR.]
But the biggest moral example for kids to follow was mixed right into Prince Adam, who occasionally baked.
The idea that you could transform and you could become something that's successful or powerful stuck with me into adulthood.
- He's a wimpy guy.
- [GASPS.]
But he's a wimpy guy with the He-Man physique.
Ridiculous.
[NARRATOR.]
Thanks to the animated series, Mattel's profits were about as far from wimpy as you could get.
It boosted the sales dramatically of the product line, and it gave us all kinds of licensing income for comic books and wallpaper and sheets and shoes and T-shirts.
You name it.
By the power of Grayskull, He-Man is here! This became the model from then on for the toy industry.
- Heroes, how about some Quik? - [CHILDREN.]
Yeah! After that, you saw all these toy and animated properties coming out.
[OVERLAPPING THEME SONGS PLAYING.]
[EXHALES.]
[NARRATOR.]
And, soon enough, Mattel's golden boy had done the unthinkable, outshining their golden girl.
After Masters' first year, the combined boys toys were, for the first time, larger in sales than all of the girls toys, which caused all of the girls in the girls toys area to go berserk.
- [WOMEN SCREAMING.]
- [HORSE WHINNIES.]
And I think they were pretty much determined to make sure that wasn't gonna happen again.
20% of the Masters of the Universe audience were female.
Girls were buying He-Man, so why not take advantage of that target audience? Action, adventure, those were things that Barbie couldn't do.
So we said, "Well, let's see if we can come up with a product line that can deliver on those things, and the line can carry on the coattails of the success of He-Man.
" [NARRATOR.]
So how do you make a toy line that's half He-Man and half Barbie? Uh [NARRATOR.]
She-Man? Why can't He-Man have a sister? [NARRATOR.]
Oh, right, good idea.
If he had a sister, what would her name be? [VARNEY-HAMLIN.]
We had all these she-names, things that represented womanhood, and we were, like, joking about "How about Sheila?" And Jill said, "How about" She-Ra the Princess of Power? And I said, "That's it.
We'll go with that.
" She-Ra, Princess of Power She had action moves, but she actually had the costume changes, the hair play.
She's lovely as a flower But she has a secret power [VARNEY-HAMLIN.]
She was a 5.
5-inch scale like He-Man.
We wanted to make the character bigger, and of course, all of the men didn't want her to be bigger than He-Man because it'd make him look like a wimp.
- Ridiculous.
- I hated it.
- They really believed that.
Okay.
- [HE-MAN SCREAMS.]
Far be it from me to make He-Man look like a wimp.
[NARRATOR.]
Too late.
Well A little, yeah.
The big brother didn't get special treatment.
I am She-Ra! She-Ra got her own animated series, too, of course.
And you mustn't tell them you're She-Ra either.
Okay, Adam, if you say so.
It followed her adventures on Eternia's sister planet, Etheria, as She-Ra fought the evil forces of jolly Hordak.
[LAUGHING MANIACALLY.]
And if kids were hungry for more of He-Man's special kind of, well, high drama You have no right to hunt down the last unicorn for your own selfish pleasure.
She-Ra did not disappoint.
I found a valve marked "Danger, do not turn.
" - You didn't turn it, did you? - Of course I did.
[EXPLOSION.]
[NARRATOR.]
Meanwhile, on Eternia Is Snake Mountain ready to take on He-Man? Anytime.
[ANNOUNCER.]
Snake Mountain, Battle Armor He-Man and Skeletor each sold separately.
You put the mountain together.
[NARRATOR.]
With profits in the hundreds of millions of dollars and multiple foreign licensees under his studded belt [ANNOUNCER SPEAKING SPANISH.]
[GRUNTS.]
[NARRATOR.]
He-Man had become an international phenomenon.
[ANNOUNCER.]
Introducing the first Masters of the Universe home video game.
[NARRATOR.]
And Mattel met the demand head on the only way they knew how.
[KIDS.]
Wow! [NARRATOR.]
By making Masters of the Universe bigger [GROWLS.]
- Slimier.
- I've been slimed! [NARRATOR.]
And definitely weirder.
We could put anything into He-Man.
Barbarian look, dinosaurs, robots, space.
They call it the kitchen sink property.
It was just a little of this, a little of that.
Everything you could think of was in there.
And if it resonated with us and we thought kids'd love it, it went in.
We had He-Man.
We had Skeletor's gang.
We had the Evil Horde and the slithering swarm of seething serpents and the skilled scaled scum of Skeletor, the Snake Men.
Don't ask me to do that again.
Figures that were every wild color combination imaginable, tails, wings, gun arms.
Psychedelic, there was a group of psychedelic characters.
They don't really fit together, but somehow it worked.
I remember somebody at Filmation saying, "What have these guys been smoking?" Bong! I thought that was one of the biggest compliments I could have gotten, you know? [LAUGHING.]
We all had a bad sense of humor, frankly, and so a lot of times the characters that we came up with were just bad puns, like Evil-Lyn Give me a break.
Or Man-E-Faces.
I mean, hello? [KID.]
Meet Fisto.
[ELLIS.]
Some of those were developed over some Beverages, yeah, beverages.
It was like a comedy show.
Paul Cleveland would have some ideas.
We'd go, "We can't do that.
" We had to change Sea-Man 'cause you can't say it real fast.
So one of the guys that was writing the mini comic books came up with the name Mer-Man.
We would have been sued like crazy.
You can imagine the jokes when we were presenting Tongue Lasher.
Yeah.
[NARRATOR.]
But forget smutty wordplay.
If you really wanted to have fun, you could play with the action figures' action features.
There's Ram Man, who, press a button And Snout Spout was the other one I had.
[ANNOUNCER.]
Snout Spout, his knockout blast knocks the enemy out.
[EATOCK.]
In the cartoon, he was Hose Nose.
I don't know which is worse, Snout Spout or Hose Nose.
I was always really into Modulok.
[ANNOUNCER.]
Modulok.
[FLYNN.]
He was modular and you snapped on pieces together, and you could make different configurations of him.
There was a figure called Two Bad, and if you pulled one arm back, he would punch his other head.
I figured, let's have one that stinks.
I smell trouble! Man-At-Arms cannot escape the evil smell of Stinkor.
He had the power to stink and destroy.
You could get these little micro-encapsulated beads, and you could do smells, and you could mix it in with the raw plastic.
And apparently the factory stunk so bad that workers were getting sick.
They didn't want to work there.
It smelled like a dead person.
Ew! I wonder what Extendar does.
What boy doesn't want to extend? [NARRATOR.]
This might be true for boys, but when Mattel overextended themselves, it spelled trouble.
The 1982 Masters line did 38.
2 million, then 80 million in '83, then 111 million in '84, 250 million in '85, 400 million in '86.
Then it collapsed to seven million.
[NARRATOR.]
It looked like He-Man no longer had the power, and many at Mattel were left asking the question What happened? One theory was from Dave Capper.
He says, "The reason He-Man sales aren't doing well is because of you.
" I go, "Me?" He said, "Yes, you came up with She-Ra.
That basically demasculized He-Man, and now boys don't want him anymore.
" We started to get feedback that if an eight-year-old boy had been playing with He-Man for two or three years and now his sister was saying, "I have the power," that there was something that just didn't feel as cool.
That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard of.
[NARRATOR.]
Maybe.
So then how about this? We ended up by the third year having a disproportionate mix of tertiary characters on the shelf and none of the He-Man and Skeletors.
We'd say to manufacturing, "Hey, we need some more inventory," and they'd go, "Well, we got them for you.
It's Buzz-Off, so we'll fill the assortment full of Buzz-Offs.
" [IMITATES BUZZER.]
So the new kids coming in couldn't start the collection appropriately, and that's in fact what led to large inventories and then the overall product going down.
[SWEET.]
When that line dropped from 400 million to seven million, it put Mattel in very precarious financial position.
[NARRATOR.]
Mattel couldn't afford to let their big-bucks barbarian tank.
[ANNOUNCER.]
How can He-Man survive? [NARRATOR.]
But don't worry.
There was already something in the works that was very likely to put He-Man back on top.
He-Man, the motion picture.
I have the power! Masters of the Universe, the motion picture, was unleashed in August of 1987.
For the first time ever, kids could see their favorite Eternian characters up on the big screen in living, breathing live action.
Fan favorites such as He-Man, Skeletor, Guy with the Hair, Courtney Cox and her boyfriend I brought us dinner.
[NARRATOR.]
Music Store Guy.
And this dude? Uh could have been better.
[BIRDS CHIRPING.]
The live action movie, to me, was very, very disappointing.
There were people at Mattel that thought it was Conan the Barbarian.
Other people thought it was some other different kind of motion picture, and you wound up with Dolph Lundgren, who had just come off of Rocky.
I must break you.
Dolph Lundgren is far slenderer than the actual He-Man figure.
I may have to do more weights.
You know, they actually painted on definition for his muscles.
They didn't paint them on.
You had to have them.
I wasn't super impressed by him.
And nowhere in that story does Prince Adam raise the sword and have that iconic moment of, "I am He-Man.
I have the power," and transform into He-Man.
I think we could have put in some of the story points that kids connected to and loved in the product line and the TV show.
I grew up on these characters.
I wanted to see these characters on the big screen.
I've waited a long time for this.
The ones that were looked nothing like the toys or the cartoon.
Someone betrayed us.
And then there were all these new characters.
I am Gwildor of Thenor.
[TREADAWAY.]
Where was Mer-Man? Where was Stratos? It was a plane crash.
Those things just happen.
And even worse, they go to Earth.
Choice, really choice.
What is this, a circus act? I mean, come on.
Look, look, native clothing.
[NARRATOR.]
As Masters of the Universe quickly disappeared from theaters, the already-stagnating toy sales continued to stink.
There's only one solution for the retailers.
They dropped the price and that price drops Not only do profits drop, but consumers start to think that that magic is gone.
The line starts to lose its cool.
You can't get that back.
Skeletor, it's over.
[SKELETOR.]
Yes.
The 1987 line collapsed.
[SCREAMING.]
And I was still in charge of the creation of product, so I was taken off the line because they didn't think I was doing a good job.
[NARRATOR.]
Shortly after removing sweet Roger from the line he'd helped create, Mattel officially closed the Jaw-Bridge on Castle Grayskull for good.
Did they really, though? It was a billion-dollar industry.
You know, it was a big engine.
It had a lot of popularity and made a lot of money, and I'm sure Mattel wanted to keep that going.
[NARRATOR.]
And so, in 1989, Mattel attempted their first Eternian comeback with a makeover of galactic proportions.
He-Man goes into space.
The power is back Who's got it? He-Man is back, Skeletor's back The battle is back It just fell flat.
It had a bunch of new characters fans didn't know.
[NARRATOR.]
Hmm.
Sounds familiar.
They did a cartoon, and everybody was like, "What is that?" He-Man in spandex and a ponytail.
[EXHALES.]
[NARRATOR.]
Well, maybe ponytailed space He-Man wasn't the best idea.
[HE-MAN.]
By the power of Ow! Son of a [NARRATOR.]
So with a short back and sides, Mattel went back to basics and tried again in 2002.
All of the armor has more detail.
There's stitches.
There's bullet holes, but it had to immediately be recognizable as the original.
[ANNOUNCER.]
Now it's a fight with bite.
[NARRATOR.]
Now, this is more like it.
Oh, what about the cartoon? The cartoon that they did for it was great.
- [NARRATOR.]
Fantastic.
- It was an excellent cartoon.
[NARRATOR.]
Sweet relief.
It seemed like He-Man had finally found But [NARRATOR.]
Oh, no.
Please, no buts.
[SNIFFLES.]
[SCREAMS.]
The line ultimately did not last anywhere near as long as anybody had hoped, and that was ultimately a disappointment.
By the power of Oh [GROANS.]
That's not what kids wanted at the time.
[NARRATOR.]
And maybe that's not what kids will want ever again.
But what about adults? I have the power! Today, He-Man has found his niche among a rabid community of collectors, who gather at events such as the annual Power-Con to celebrate a fandom now in its fourth decade.
[FLYNN.]
When you show up here and you see all these people, you realize, "Oh, wait, Masters of the Universe is still really, really big.
" [GROWLS.]
[FLYNN.]
And really important around the world.
Masters of the Universe in Mexico was very popular.
[ALL IN SPANISH.]
We have the power.
[NARRATOR.]
These grown-up five-year-olds finally do have the power in their wallets, which is why Mattel and San Francisco-based Super7 have teamed up to create the premium Masters of the Universe classics line, featuring high-end reinterpretations of the original line with a high-end reinterpreted price tag, too.
We've done hundreds of figures, vehicles, giants, a giant dragon, eventually Castle Grayskull.
[NARRATOR.]
Which would only put you back $300.
A lot of it is centered around nostalgia and really selling people the idea and the emotions they had when they were children.
As you've gotten older and more mature, so to speak, the figures have progressed with you.
[NARRATOR.]
For ages 35 and up.
To keep the torch alive for Masters of the Universe, it's absolutely amazing.
It's an honor.
What I would love to be able to do is go back and visit my nine-year-old self and tell myself, "Oh, yeah, this is what you're gonna be doing for a living when you grow up and you're gonna be having a blast doing it.
" [NARRATOR.]
The future of He-Man now lies in the dainty hands of these fully-grown fanboys.
The sky is still the limit for Masters of the Universe.
[NARRATOR.]
But the glorious days of He-Man's reign can be squarely attributed to these colorful, crazy, diabolical bunch of weirdos.
[BOY.]
I can't breathe! [NARRATOR.]
But not them.
I mean, this bunch.
Those guys just nailed it.
They captured something really, really special.
[GABLE.]
It was magical.
So many things had to happen right.
So many things did happen right, and it became bigger than anybody could have ever dreamt about.
It's about as thrilling as it comes when you can get a successful toy and have it take off and you can see kids enjoy it and have it be a big success.
The most surprising people have said, "I want to thank you for doing He-Man because it was all I had.
" Dad, you saved the castle.
[TAYLOR.]
He was a template for little boys.
He was their best friend who was fair and a good man but at the same time could kick anybody's ass.
[NARRATOR.]
And he did.
For that brief, five-year run, He-Man was at least the master of the toy universe, and thanks to these incredible toys, we all had the power to learn valuable lessons.
There was a really wonderful moment in today's adventure story.
[ORKO.]
It was when He-Man lifted the whole top of the mountain.
[MAN-AT-ARMS.]
That was incredible, but that wasn't it.
The most wonderful moment was Bong! [THEME SONG PLAYING.]
[CHILD AS SKELETOR.]
I'll be back.