He-Man and She-Ra: Universe and Legacy

Hello everybody, this is TFD on Mike with Professor

boss K dog and we're coming to you before episode

10 We would like to let you guys know that I

am still working on the audio issues I thought

I had the echoing issue fixed and By now when

we're recording this Kevin's already here heard

multiple Echoing just picture yourself in a tunnel

and enjoy sorry. I'm sorry. It's not my fault

these bastards Pamela dot biz. Oh my god their

software doesn't freaking work i'd paid twenty

bucks for this damn thing it should work for

christ's sake but uh... yeah up next you'll hear

episode ten of to cast the man and she Prince

of Eternia, defender of the secrets of Castle

Grayskull. This is Cringer, my fearless friend.

Fabulous secret powers were revealed to me the

day I held aloft my magic sword and said, By

the power of Grayskull! And I became He -Man,

the most powerful man in the universe. Only three

others share this secret. Our friends, the Sorceress,

the Man of Arms, and Orko. Together we defend

Castle Grayskull from the evil forces of Skeletor.

and defender of the Crystal Castle. This is Spirit,

my beloved steed. Fabulous secrets were revealed

to me the day I held aloft my sword and said,

For the honor of Grayskull! Hello and welcome

to the tenth episode of Tooncast. Wow, that echoed

a little bit on my end. Yes, we are up to 10

episodes. It's actually very funny. Oh, by the

way, I'm TFG1 Mike and I'm joined by Kevin. Yes.

Hello Nothing. I'm here. Well, no, I wasn't trying

that It's very weird that tooncast is already

up to 10 episodes because technically It wasn't

supposed to start until yesterday Recording this

August 2nd. My original target date for this

to start was August 1st And of course, as everybody

knows, we started it early, and we're already

10 episodes in. It's just very, very strange

for me to be up to 10 episodes with a show already,

considering I just finished TFG One podcast.

That's done. The other thing that's kind of weird

is, like, I remember when you guys were busting

out this whole new lineup of all these different

podcasts, it was all kind of being planned at

the same time, and it seems like Tooncast, like...

hit the ground running almost even faster than

all the other ones in a way. It pretty much did.

The only reason why M -Wire movie we can review

did not hit, the only reason why we couldn't

move that up was because we were going to have

Steve Snowball Sailor from This Week in Geek

premiere with us in the first episode and we

basically set the date for him to be on with

us which was July 11th. So that's why M -Wire

didn't get moved up. uh... and at this point

probably uh... beast unleashed won't start until

because i a i haven't found anybody that's willing

to buy me that the three season dvds of the stores

and i can't get them myself because i just paid

bills and yada yada yada actual usual crap i

don't have a reverse contest uh... yeah it's

a good idea I would like to mention though I

thought that the call recorder was fixed I have

an email into the people for Pamela call recorder

asking them about the echoing issue I could have

sworn I had it fixed with this updated version

of it and it's still not fixed I'm going to try

to have Steve even though we're going to use

clips they will echo but I'm going to before

the episode goes up on Wednesday I'm going to

try to have Steve substitute the echoing clips

with the actual clips just you know send him

the files and he can substitute them in so that

way it's not echoing but still the fucking software

should work i'm sorry it just should it should

not echo i agree yes um what else is i gonna

say Yeah, ten episodes. Wow. Yeah, it's it's

it's really really taking off The only thing

is we haven't gotten any reviews from anybody

I don't I haven't actually asked Steve what what

the listenership is for this show yet, but people

send us iTunes reviews, please Even if you even

if you know, just be honest and send us your

views. Otherwise, we're gonna keep doing the

same stuff every week It'll echo and echo and

echo. But you know, and I say that to mainly

the people that listen from the US and Canada

because apparently the UK and Australian iTunes

stores do not allow you to either see or write

reviews, which I think is stupid. So yeah, what's

been going on with you over there, Professor?

Let's see, last week, step closer to home ownership.

I had the home inspection, nothing major found

so it seems to be smooth sailing. Supposed to

be moved in by the end of this month so that

should be exciting if everything keeps going

as planned. Hopefully there's no roadblocks that

come up. Other than that, I am unfortunately

two weeks out from school starting up again.

The first day for myself having to be there is

August 13th, and the first day for the kids is

August 17th, so the clock is ticking. Other than

that, I've been doing a lot of work over it.

I know I say it every week, but we've got a lot

of new stuff going on at BehindTheVoiceActors

.com. We're eventually going to have probably

forums up. on that site within the next week

so that people can start giving feedback of what

they want to see on that site. So that's a lot

of stuff going on there. No, that's fine. I mean,

we are plug whores over here. So it doesn't really

matter. We'll plug anything. Sweet. Oh boy, that

didn't sound right. Not sweet. I take it back.

No, no, no, no. I said we'll plug anything. I

know. Sound right. Sounds like a scene from Dr.

Doolittle 2. uh... yeah uh... you know uh...

i i should mention uh... hopefully uh... darkling

duck may end up getting moved around again only

because i do actually did order the dvds off

of ebay uh... two days ago problem is one of

them even though it is the u .s. retail release

version it's coming from fucking china Not fucking

good and it's the first volume that's coming

from China the second volumes coming from somewhere

here in the state Nice. I was I was in what store

was it? I was browsing through Barnes and Noble

who Is in one of the nearby malls from where

I'm at and it tends to have a pretty good section

of TV shows on DVD type stuff And I will admit

I was I was just browsing through the aisles

and I'm seeing like every Series that we have

on our schedule not not every little one but

like Chippendales and tailspin and duck tails

and like every series that we have on our schedules

there And I'm like good lord. I should buy all

of them, but that's way too expensive Yes, yes

We, well actually it's not released yet. It was

supposed to be released on Saturday, but Steve

had a yard sale to attend. Him and his wife were

apparently having a yard sale. So, MWIRE episode

5, even though it'll have already aired by the

time this airs, it will be going up this past

Monday. Not episode 5, episode 4. Oh, Christ,

I'm jumping ahead of myself. Mike's lost his

mind. Shut the hell up. Ten episodes in and he's

gone. Yeah, ten episodes of Tooncast and I'm

done. He's turned into a Toon. Yeah. And now

I can't even hear that. Ah, damn it. Oh well.

Um. You smug son of a b - Jesus Christ. Oh crap.

Anyway, that's interesting. Yeah, it was supposed

to show up after you said that but it didn't

show up till late anyways, uh, I don't know again

the The call recording software that we've had

even even audacity sometimes Doesn't well, I

don't know if it's Skype or if it's internet

connections or whatever on mind or whoever else

I record with and I don't know, but Skype always

hasn't been the greatest software in the world.

But anyway, I think we are going to get into

today's show topic we've rambled on long enough.

And here is a little tease. Before we get into

the history lesson today, I would just like to

say, Even though He -Man and She -Ra kind of

crossed over with each other, especially with

She -Ra being launched in the 100 minute feature

of The Secret of the Sword, as far as it comes

to voice actors and the actual plots and stories,

we're going to talk about those separately, but

they will probably mesh together a little bit.

So take it away on the history lesson, Professor.

Alright nerds, this is the professor and it is

indeed time for a multi -part history lesson,

the tenth. And for episode ten we start in 1983

with He -Man and the Masters of the Universe.

He -Man was an American animated television series

produced by Filmation based on Mattel's successful

toy line called Masters of the Universe. The

show was one of the most popular animated children's

shows of the 1980s and has retained a heavy following

to this day both in America and worldwide. It

made its television debut, like we said, in 1983

and ran for two seasons of 65 episodes apiece.

And reruns then continued to air in syndication

until 1988, at which point the USA Network bought

the rights to the series. USA aired He -Man until

September of 1990. The second part of the history

lesson takes us to the topic that bridges He

-Man and She -Ra. Continuities Together, which

is a Secret of the Sword film. Secret of the

Sword is a 1985 American animated feature film

produced by Filmation. Although released before

the series She -Ra Princess of Power began, the

film was a compilation of the first five episodes

with minor edits made. The film was part of a

trend of theatrically released animations created

by producers of TV shows and toys during the

80s. The film was also the second one ever to

be based on a toy franchise, the first being

Raggedy Ann and Andy, a musical adventure, released

in 1977, and the third being the Care Bears movie,

which was actually released a week after The

Secret of the Sword. We'll get more into the

topic of Secret of Sword a little bit later,

but the third part of the history lesson takes

us obviously to Shiro Princess of Power, which

is another American animated television series

which ran from 1985 to 1987 for a total of 93

episodes. There's a spinoff obviously of the

highly successful He -Man and the Masters of

the Universe series. however, aimed primarily

at a younger girl's audience to counterbalance

the latter show's popularity with boys. As was

the case with He -Man, the show was based on

a toy line by Mattel and was produced with financial

backing from Mattel to promote the toys. The

show follows the adventures of She -Ra, He -Man's

twin sister, who is leading a group of freedom

fighters known as the Great Rebellion in the

hope of freeing their homeworld of Etheria from

the tyrannical rule of Hordak and the evil Horde.

That does it for the Multipart History lesson

and let's move on to the rest of the episode

Class is Dismissed. It is time for the General

Memories Recollections segment. Why don't you

go first? I think the thing that I remember most

about He -Man first and foremost would be the

toys. Obviously the toys came first, but I honest

I was just trying to think of this a second ago,

and I don't recall having any other action figures

before He -Man I I mean I could be wrong I mean

I know I had a ton of action figures as a kid,

but I think He -Man probably was the first ones

that I ever had I remember having He -Man and

Skeletor I had a couple different versions of

Skeletor as well as some of the other characters,

and I just remember the you know even going over

the cousins houses and friends houses and playing

with him and before i remember ever getting into

transformers and and all the other things i came

after so i remember the toys specifically uh...

i think the other big memory for me which is

probably similar to almost all he man fans is

the the catchphrases or the the things that happen

in the show over and over again like the transformation

scene you know obvious is going on the backyard

and holding up a whatever i was pretending to

be a sword and and given the whole you know i

have the power thing arm so as some of those

lines that you saw over and over again arm as

well as the introduction with theme song singing

the theme song there's just so many parts he

meant it a good job of getting something in your

head that you couldn't get out Yeah, I mean I

know a lot of it was because they repeated a

lot of the stuff over and over again But as a

kid you don't notice that instead that just becomes

the thing that you then repeat out in the backyard

when you're playing with friends so that's my

biggest memory is a Reciting some of the the

catchphrases and the first toys. I think I ever

played with when I was a kid yeah for me Well

first of all the only surviving thing out of

my he -man collection is as far as the toys go

And I'm looking at it right now on my desk. I

specifically put it out there, out here on my

desk for this episode, is my Castle Grayskull

playset. And it is not complete, unfortunately.

There are pieces missing. But the one tower above

the window, right above the left eye, it still

has its little placeholder so you can set somebody

up there. I don't have the drawbridge anymore.

That's the only thing that survived from my he

-man collection unfortunately and I think I think

I've told people this in the past I don't know

if I've said it on an actual show that we do

Let's travel back to 1986 for a second. I was

six years old My mother and father had been divorced

for four years. My dad lived in Rhode Island

at the time. We were still living in Massachusetts

And that's where the majority of my He -Man toys

were, other than like maybe one or two versions

of He -Man, Battle Cat, and Panther, and Castle

Grayskull. The majority of the rest of the He

-Man toys, like Evil Lin and some of the Skeletores

and stuff like that, were at my dad's house in

Rhode Island. So I go down there, you know, I'm

all set to play with my He -Man toys. They're

gone. They're gone. My dad threw I don't know

if he sold them like I can't be clear on this

It's either he sold them or he threw them out

because he said I was 60 He said I was too old

to be playing with toys. I would say fucking

years old I think we have an appropriate sound

effect But it's like, you know, what I just don't

get it I had something similar, but I guess it

wasn't as bad. I didn't have that many of the

toys. I probably have less than six or seven

of the actual action figures, which is one reason

why I like to go into my cousin's house a lot,

because he had seemingly everything. He had a

whole bench full of these things. But I didn't

have that many. And I remember coming home from,

I don't know where I was or how old I was, but

having my mom had sold all of them in a garage

sale, except for He man Skeletor those were the

only two that I still that are the only two surviving

members But I do remember the all sudden all

of them being gone Which wasn't as big a deal

because I didn't have as many like if she had

done that with transformers I probably would

have gone into an insane asylum But yeah, similar

experience parents. What do they know? No, I

There was only a few that I did not have I had

everything literally everything the only the

only things I mean I was only missing a few figures,

but the only big things I did not have, which

I absolutely wanted, I did not have Snake Mountain,

the Snake Mountain playset, and I did not have

the Palace of Eternia playset. Wasn't there one

of them that like, I don't, I vaguely remember

something that you could like pour like some

type of ooze or goop into and then it would like

turn and dump down like a I remember there's

some type of place that they had some type of

goop or gap or something. Yeah, it was probably

Snake Mountain because in the show it had the

waterfall in the back of the back of it, so it

was probably the Snake Mountain place that I

never had that. And I never had the Palace of

Eternia, which I found out, another podcast that

I listened to, Jenny C. over at Earth2 .net,

the show, she actually had the Palace of Eternia

place that, ever since I heard her say that on

their... He may in there or secret of the sword

review episode or whatever. They you know her

and Michael David Sims were talking about it

and I so wanted the Palace of Eternity a place.

Yeah, the the place that's were cool for him

and Grayskull even though my grayskull is not

complete. It is just so awesome My mom has been

carrying this thing around with her for the last

25 odd years I'm 29 now and I left Massachusetts

with my father in 93 to come down here to Kentucky

and I did not bring any of my He -Man stuff or

really a majority of my toys I didn't I didn't

bring my mom kept them all So yeah, she's been

carrying this thing around with her everywhere.

She's moved for the last 20 odd years Even though

like I said before and I'll continue to say even

though it's not complete it's just the the structure

itself is in pretty good excellent condition

i would say ice yeah i you know i i love this

show i actually started getting into this show

after i started getting into transformers even

though it was out before it uh... aside well

i don't know they actually all kind of ran together

for me i mean not As in, you know, mixing up

each show, but just like they were all my favorites.

He -Man, Trance, Thundercats, Voltron, Mask,

all those shows, you know, and then later Turtles

and stuff like that. They all just kind of ran

together for me because they were all my favorites

and I liked them all. Yeah, and at one point

in the 80s you got to imagine like if you if

you just like went to I don't know 1987 or something

by that point you have all the ones that are

being new shows and you have reruns of all the

other shows so it was very likely that you were

watching all those shows you know within the

same year or two. Oh very much so. This show

was just it was so awesome. I truly believe my

mom asked me a couple years ago. I don't know

how long ago it was Might have been closer ten

years ago. She asked me where I got you know

a lot of my values I don't know we you know in

some some conversation or something or other

or you know doing something and She's like oh,

I know I didn't teach you that and I'm pretty

sure your father didn't teach you that where

would you learn? I don't know now that I've gone

back and watched some of these these PSA is at

the end and stuff like that with you know Giving

the lesson of the story. That's where I learned

a lot of the values that I have today is from

me man Yeah, I mean you got to understand a lot

of people look back at those as like cheesy little

You know all the cartoons were doing it they

had to and it's so cheesy blah blah But when

you're a kid like that, you know kids are very

You know, they're very influential the shows

are very influential on them and they'll pick

up the littlest stuff So when they hear their

favorite character is given stuff like that it

can they can really hit home the only and I know

this This is gonna cause a lot of controversy.

The only ones I found really cheesy were transformers

in GI Joe The way that they work the the actual

show into it Or the knowing is half the battle

thing and everything else only because that was

worked into both shows is the reason why now

I I feel that a lot of those PSAs for those two

shows cheesy where these I'm like, oh Okay. Yeah,

that's fine. Like I will see you next time or

whatever they say and it's like, oh, okay, I

Think I viewed them all as somewhat cheesy But

at the time it was still my favorite character

is doing doing the stuff And you know what, it

wasn't until just recently that I even realized

that the Transformers ones did do that knowing

it was half the battle thing. I always thought

that was just a G .I. Joe thing. Looking back,

it must have been somehow like it just bypassed

my mind when I was a kid that they were doing

the same thing. Do we have any other thoughts

for General Memories? Only that this show is

a thousand times better than last week's show.

You really can't compare them they're from two

different generations and this is from the better

No, that's that's my only thought yeah, and I

think we're gonna move on with or go Last time

you tried an egg trick the eggs were all over

me Now it is time for the characters, voice actors,

and everybody that had to do with this show.

We will be starting with the He -Man characters,

both the good guys and the bad guys. So where

do you want to start with these? If you just

want to go over some of the main good guys, I'll

take the evil ones. That's because Kevin is so

evil. So for the good guys, the main ones you

have obviously He -Man and Prince Adam, because

technically they are the same person. Then you

have Battle Cat and Cringer, Ram Man, the Sorceress,

Man -at -Arms, Orko, Tila, Stratos, King Randoor,

Queen Marlena, I can't believe you didn't bowl,

Bill, is that a main character? Bastard. If I

was going to pick a favorite or a couple of favorites

out of the good guys, I don't know if I could

actually because I liked some of them so much.

Obviously, you know, He -Man and Adam and then

Battle Cat and Cringer kind of go hand in hand.

But as far as like the other just the side off

characters, I liked Orko. Like Stratos and I

liked the king King randor As far as like some

of the side characters that were more side characters

Like Manny faces and Mechaneck Zodiac and cyclone

and and all those I really I Remember Mechaneck

and I remember Manny faces But they weren't characters

that I was so like really that involved with

as far as really interested in them See I kind

of I kind of had a similar Take on like if you're

comparing the good and the evil characters, which

will get in the evil ones in a second But I I

tended to actually like the evil characters better

For some reason, the good characters, a lot of

the side ones didn't stick with me as much. I've

always been kind of perplexed as to why my favorite

character is who he is, but my favorite out of

the good ones is by far Stratos. and you mentioned

him too and I don't know if there was just something

about the character design or how they did Stratos

that made him so appealing but I really wish

you just would have been in almost every episode

like I really like Stratos. Yeah Stratos was

really really cool and I mean you know even though

we'll talk about the toys a little bit later

in more depth but I mean his toy was just awesome.

i think it was fashion no i was actually before

uh... haha i've done the rip -off so uh... stripped

off the man gold i think straddles had the way

it had the same thing with with the arms in the

wings i i think he did i can't remember but i

think he did so yeah there's nothing silverhocks

ripped off Oh, everything. Everything in the

80s ripped off of He -Man, so I think that's

fair. And He -Man ripped off of everything before

it, so it's all good. That's true. I'm gonna

sound like even more of a sexist than I normally

do. My least favorite character by far was Tila.

Me too. I couldn't stand Tila. Bitch. I just

didn't like anything about her, really. Yeah,

I'm considering she's the sorceress his daughter.

That's kind of weird. Yeah, I didn't mind the

sorceress, but I just didn't know I'm saying

it's like wow the seed really fell from the tree

with Taylor's like Yeah, I think one of the problems

with with Tila's character because she wasn't

in on the secret and she didn't really know You

know, she always you know, that's the same thing

with randor Marlena really didn't say too much

is for actually Queen Marlena really didn't say

half of anything until they actually gave her

I don't even think she had a voice actor. I'm

just kidding. She might have actually had two

I think I don't know anyway You know Marlena

really didn't say much but randor randor was

just a jerk to his son because he was so disappointed

in in Adam because Adam had to be the one to

basically be the bumbler where He -Man could

come in and save the day. He had to play that

off so well because of the simple fact that if

he showed any kind of courage it's like they're

going to find out and we'll get into... I just

want to say something because I think you touched

on a great point and I think that really speaks

to a possibility of why He -Man resonated so

much with kids is because I mean, not necessarily

all families, but I think a lot of kids deal

with the challenge of trying to impress and be

good enough in their parents' eyes. I think a

lot of times parents are hard on kids, and I

think in He -Man, you could see both things.

You could see that, hey, here's Prince Adam who

is not living up to anything. The dad's always

giving him a hard time. He's never good enough.

But then in your fantasy world, you want to be

that person, and you want to be able to turn

into this He -Man, which is obviously the hero

and the impressive person that everybody's proud

of and looks up to. I don't know if they meant

to do it or not, but I think they kind of got

into the psyche of kids in a way where you could

view yourself in these characters and and see

yourself transforming almost. And that was the

difference and I mean I know we're talking about

the characters and the voice actors but that

was the difference with these PSAs because they

were specifically speaking to you know kids.

I felt more connected to the PSAs in this show

than I did any other show that did PSAs. I can

see that. Just because it felt like Man at Arms

or Oracle or whoever. Tila he man Adam, you know

whoever did them and I think those are pretty

much the only four that did them I Didn't actually

watch all 130 episodes, but I did watch a majority

of them You know and it was like that they were

just Like they were jumping out of the TV and

talking right to me. Yeah If I had to pick a

favorite out of the good guys it would be a tie

between he man and ram man or because ram man

is it's just so ridiculous i mean i know that

i know that he has to you know he is kind of

lacking in intelligence but i think he i think

he puts that on so you know people don't come

after him i don't know there was something that

that one of the creator said in in one of the

specials about about ram manor that they might

actually been an episode but i just thought it

was kind of cool where you have the this guy

who is in this like suit, again, you know, people

in suits, how the hell does he go to the bathroom?

Anyway, you know, you have the guy in a suit

where the, you know, he, he, you know, he springs

around like he's on a pogo stick, basically.

It is another great toy, by the way, too. Yeah,

his, his was an awesome toy. I will say one other

thing, though, real quickly, since you mentioned

He -Man, it always did get... Well, I guess this

is more for Prince Adam, but I always thought

it was peculiar as a kid that they had this character

that was supposed to be the guy, he's the main

character. I know they did it because they wanted

him to be more of a trans form and the He -Man

stuff, but he was always wearing purple pants,

a pink shirt. Like why is Prince Adam wearing

all girl colors and you know as a kid you don't

understand and the other thing about that is

if you know and again I'm not really paying any

attention to this but because I've seen so many

shots of it if You look at his waistband. He

has for underwear that he's wearing outside of

his pants That matched his pants. It's good style.

It's a good stuff. I mean, you know, I understand

that was the whole You know character design

for him. I don't know why that they did that

like that I think it was because it was to contrast

with all the other characters because if you

look at each one You look at man -at -arms, you

know, he's got orange and green Orko has got

like a pinkish red and orange Outfit with like

a purple mask randor is in all blue Marlene is

in all green and then Tila has this gold thing

gold and white So I think it was to contrast

with the other characters, but I really couldn't

be for certain The only thing I could think of

is that they were just trying to make this dark

contrast between Prince Adam and he man since

he goes into you know From these girlier colors

to he man suit. Yeah that that that too I Think

it's time for evil. Yes. Yes. Ha ha ha. All right.

I think the evil characters for a lot of i mean

as much as as strong as a character as he men

was i think that the evil characters really helped

carry the show uh... there's some amazing characters

i see a skeletor which we all know what he looks

like uh... another purple instance here uh...

you have uh... it was early purple well bluish

And then you had purple with Evil Lin. Evil Lin

was the evil sorcerer, obviously. You had triclops

with the three different eyes, which was always

kind of a cool effect. You had Beast Man, which

we'll get into probably a little bit more in

a second. You had Merman. You had Skeletor's

version of Battle Cat being panther. Let's see,

a couple other ones I'll mention. You had Moduloc.

What other ones did I not? Lacan was a big one

that they used a lot. Which one did you say?

Cobra Khan. Oh, yeah. Yeah. With the bad characters,

I really liked just about all of them. I'm going

to be very similar to Mike with this and the

fact that my least favorite is Beast Man. But

I think every other one I really liked. And I

think if I had to pick favorites, it would probably

be a tie between Evil Lin and Merman. I would

pick Panther if he had a bigger role because

I loved Panther, but since he was not really,

I mean, obviously he's not one of the big speaking

characters and stuff like that, but I really

liked Evelyn and I really liked Merman. I don't

think, now I know that Cringer and Battle Cat,

they speak. I don't think Panther ever spoke.

I think he just did the growls and the roars

and everything else. I don't think that he ever

spoke at all. I think they mentioned something

about that on one of the DVDs where they have

their little fast facts. We'll get into this

more later, but on the DVDs you can either watch

the show seamlessly or you can go and pick out

episode by episode. If you do episode by episode,

it has a bunch of facts up in the corner. I think

one of them says something about Panther not

speaking. I could be wrong. I do have to since

we kind of are on Panther I do have to touch

on his toy a little bit since since it is part

of the character the toy for the two cats Cringer

and the battle cat Again the toys for this show

were amazing. I know they came up before the

show but Mattel knocked knocked it out of the

park with the show that The Cringer character

was a hard plastic But the the mask and the saddle

that came with him to be for him to become battle

cat Was another hard plastic, but it looked like

it came right out of the show. Oh, yeah I mean

it just and and I know that they were animating

around the toy to get the animation correct,

but It looked so so cool But like I was saying

the actual cat part of the toy was a hard plastic.

Whereas the panther toy was almost like a crushed

velvet. I always wanted the panther toy that's

the one toy that I always wanted that I never

got. Yeah panther he was almost like a material

like a cloth material like like I said like a

crushed velvet almost it wasn't hard plastic.

Yeah I know what you're talking about. Is for

his like sides and his fur and his head. It's

similar to the material I'm gonna sound Weird

here, but I had a sister. It's similar to the

material that they used on some of the my little

ponies Well, Mattel did my little point, right?

But I'm saying it's similar to the same material

where it's got that like like you're saying that

soft feel to it. Yeah I Really can't pick an

evil character that I like. I mean I like You

know Skeletor, you know, he's He's evil, but

he's not so so evil. He's he's not like a demon

person. He's not like super super evil Evil and

she was alright. I really I don't know. I just

really can't pick a Bad one out of the he -man

characters But you you like me. I believe to

have a similar least favorite beast man Yes,

Beast... We agreed on something! Actually, actually

Beast Man, when I was watching like the first

couple of discs from the Season 1 Volume 1 set,

Beast Man is He -Man's version of Starscream.

Only because, and I know He -Man came out before

Transformers... But as I was watching it back

this week, and you know, every now and then Beastman

would make, oh, when I take over, and you know,

just like these little side remarks, and Skeletor's

like, why did you say Beastman? Yeah, if you

could switch the voices. Yeah. And you know,

we're going to get into the voice actors here

in a minute. But you know, he was the Starscream

type character for the show, which is Beastman.

I don't know, I just didn't. root here for beastman

much i didn't either uh... i think we're going

to split up the he -man and shira characters

because the segments almost running long as far

as the voice actors you know we can talk about

the the he -man was really quick and then we're

going to go and come back and talk about the

uh... the sheer ones uh... you had john erwin

who played he -man prince adam ram -man beastman

webster whiplash and more alan open allen openheimer

play a he played cringer battle cat man at arms

skeletor merman buzz off roboto and others linda

garry who is now passed away she's been dead

for a number of years now i believe i don't mean

that in a in a bad way but that's just what it

is she played tila evelyn queen marlana the sorceress

and more Luce Shimer Who was the mastermind behind

these shows as far as you know at? Filmation

he actually went under the pseudonym of Eric

gundon He played orko King randor strados many

many faces Mechaneck and zodiac zodiac cyclone

Moss man trapjaw triclobs Cobra, holy crap. He

played a lot of Yeah, he played a lot of stuff.

And then his daughter, Erika Shimer, she actually

plays Queen Angela in The Secret of the Sword.

And then Kevin and I will argue this till the

day that we probably both die. He has George

DeCenzo listed under the He -Man ones, which

I still maintain that DeCenzo did not start until

The Secret of the Sword. But as smarter people

know, no, I'm just kidding. The contention that

I have with that is I say he did five shows of

He -Man before Secret of the Sword as various

voices, guest voices, stuff like that, nothing

that was major or credited. So we can argue on

that one, or agree to disagree on that one. I

will still argue that point because all of the

voices in the first season, you listed the Diamond

of Disappearance to me on Skype. All of those

episodes in that first season, it was four people.

Well, it's listed on his bio as as him being

in those five episodes what other voices played

because every voice that I heard in a lot of

those first season episodes was either John or

one Alan Oppenheimer Linda Gary or Lou Shimer

as And I'll write him I'll write him and we'll

find out Speaking on the voice actors, I just

wanted to mention a couple of them that I thought

did an excellent job on this show. Alan Oppenheimer,

I thought his version of Skeletor was just excellent.

He did a good job on the other ones too, like

specifically Merman, but Skeletor just cracks

me up. Like, I just watched, I know this is kind

of not the same topic, but I just watched The

Secret of the Sword, and his lines in there,

I mean, he's just, he's bad and evil and all

that, and somewhat, you know, scary at times,

I guess, but he's almost like comic relief at

the same time. I thought, I thought he did a

great job of that. And I have to say, and this

is gonna shock everybody, but Linda Gehry, I

think, did a fantastic job with all of the female

characters. you could have never told me that

the same person was doing those voices when I

was growing up. This is the opposite of Lynn

Lipton. This is someone who can take characters.

I'm never gonna let that go. Lynn Lipton, you

should have watched Linda Gary and learned something.

Tila, Evelyn, the Queen, the Sorceress, to me

they all sounded enough different where as a

kid I never picked up on it. And you know, I

think she just did a fantastic job. The only

issue I had with that was when Evelyn turned

into an old woman a couple of times. It sounded...

It was the Evelyn voice, except in an old woman.

That was the only issue I had. And as far as

Skeletor being comic relief... A female key man!

This is the worst day of my life! That made me

laugh that one and Well, I'll wait till we get

to the secret of the story I mean Skeletor you

know and you know we'll get to this but Skeletor

in the secret of the sword was meant to be nothing

but a side off it was you know, we'll get that

down But overall the characters just for For

this show even though the majority of them were

done by four or five People and that and that

was the other thing when you and I were arguing

about this and I sure I sent you that picture

it only lists for people in in in the credits

and that's That has to be the the the only show

that we've covered so far that has the least

amount of actors doing the most amount of work

and And just to prove my point since you met

you brought that up. It doesn't list Erica Ever

in the credits does it? Erica Shimer. No, I never

did apparently lists uh... i believe but but

she did your voice is right one secret yes what's

it so it started yes uh... but uh... it is as

far as a lucienmer her father as eric gundon

he is listed uh... as both lucienmer and eric

gundon because he used both names to well he

used both he used the eric gundon as as a pseudonym

for his voice acting thing for some of them though.

Didn't he credit himself as some of them and

Eric as some of them? No. I thought what he wanted

to do from what I read in a couple books that

I have on He -Man was that he was trying, obviously

he was doing it to save budget and stuff like

that but at the same time he didn't want it to

look like he did every voice in the show so he

created a pseudonym so he was credited as some

and this other person was credited as some so

it looked like it was more spread out instead

of him doing all of them. Right, but I'm going

to pull up the picture really quick so I can

look at it. Why don't you talk about some of

the other voice actors really quick. Actually,

hang on. It says on here, of course, if the program

wouldn't open. Crap. This segment's gone down

the drain, hasn't it, folks? The Voices of He

-Man, it says, on the credits where I took a

screenshot, starring the voices of John Irwin,

Linda Gehry, Alan Oppenheimer and Eric Gundin

Okay, is what it says and those are the only

four that are listed on the He -Man credits for

the majority of the episodes now I can't speak

on the second season episodes because I only

watched like one or two of those I was expecting

to see a whole list of voice actors like we would

normally see like with transformers and and everything

else, but You know for the majority they pretty

much those four people did every voice in He

-Man for the majority. They did a good job. Yes

very much so. I guess we can get into the She

-Ra voice actors. For the She -Ra characters

you had for the heroes for the Great Rebellion

which is a copy of Star Wars, which everything's

a copy of everything else we know. She wrote,

Princess of Power, the alter ego of Princess

Adora, twin sister of He -Man and Prince Adam.

Prime defender of Aetheria, as a child she was

abducted from her parents by the Horde and raised

to follow their evil ways, but after being visited

by her brother realizes the Horde's deceit and

now fights in the name of justice to free Aetheria

from the Horde. This is more of a discussion

for when we get to Secret of the Sword, but I

liked the way that they brought this in. I think

it was very clever. I liked the way that they

introduced her and the fact that they tied her

to the He -Man universe that was already existing.

And that they tied her to this evil side. Well,

yeah. Well, that's the other thing we'll discuss

once we get to the Secret of the Sword. If you

look at the two worlds, Eternia and Etheria,

Eternia, the good guys... are the rulers in the

you know holding off the bad guys right they

wanted to do the exit you know they said what

why don't we do the exact opposite with it bad

guys are in charge in the good guys have to try

to free the world the bad guys which again is

a is it is a star wars ripoff but you know whatever

up and then you had both was a young archer who

seeks to ensure his heart but often ends up making

a fool of himself uh... bowl You know, I just

finished watching secret of the sword not I don't

know half an hour before we did this recording

Bo to me seems like he's Just from watching secret

of the sword That he and glimmer would be more

together than he and Shira Another big character

who was also voiced by Eric Gundin who is Lou

Shimer was cowl. Cowl basically replaced orko

as far as a character for the show. He's a wise

owl -like creature who helps She -Ra and is one

of the few characters who shares She -Ra's secrets.

There are just so many She -Ra characters. Oh

yeah. Adam Raz. Madam Raz is basically a female

orco. She's very very old and she also shares

the secret of She -Ra. She uses her magic to

aid in the rebellion, but she's sometimes absent

-minded due to her advanced age. Her spells usually

go wrong, similar to orco. She flies around in

her talking broom. Madame Raz has the typical

white hair and purple skin of a twigget, suggesting

she is of their race. However, she is considerably

taller than the average twigget. I have to disagree

with this listing, because unless it's said in

the actual show, Just because I haven't watched

every episode of Shira. Unfortunately. I don't

have those DVDs If you would like to donate those

to us, you can email us at CR in tune cast at

gmail .com It is never said in secret of the

sword that she shares the secret of shit It says

it in the intro of every episode though of every

episode Yeah, when it gets to the actual sheer

episodes She goes into her speech like he meant

does and she says it's you know shared by cowl

madame Raz and light hope So she says that in

every episode. I don't know if they ever I haven't

seen the actual episodes of She -Ra specifically,

right? You know, I've seen a lot of human I watch

secret of the sword. I haven't seen like the

specific sheer episodes I don't know if they

talk about it a lot You watch the movie because

if you didn't watch the movie, that's a wasted

DVD rip for me Oh, no, I watched the movie. I

love the movie anyways Light hope is the guardian

of the Crystal Castle who also knows she was

secret. He is being made entirely of light and

then the The Twiggets, I just have to bring up

Sprague because he is so, so funny. In the movie,

he actually scares Cringer. It's just so... Yeah,

here it is here. Sprague you nanny. It's us.

Oh Sorry, I thought you might be horseman. Who

is that? That's Sprague. He's a twig it they

live in the whispering woods Sprague run ahead

and tell glimmer we're bringing in some new recruits

The only thing that bugged me about Sprague is

I thought the voice was way too close to Orko.

I thought they sounded the exact same. He was

higher pitched. It was higher pitched, but it

was basically the same. You could tell that one

was a complete... I don't know. Sprague bugged

me. Even though the character was funny, the

voice bugged me. I'm like, that's Orko in a different

costume. Obviously, there's the main villain,

which is Hordak. He's the leader of the evil

horde. I thought his character design was really

cool. I thought it was menacing looking. I kind

of wish that the voice for it would have been

a little bit more menacing and darker and deeper,

but it worked. He was the main bad guy. He's

the one you remember if you remember any of the

evil characters. You had Catra, you had Shadow

Weaver, which was the Mistress of Dark Magic,

kind of like Evil Lynn. You had the Scorpia,

you had Mantena, Grizzlor, Leech. So you had

some similar type characters like the He -Man

version did of the bad characters, but Hordak

stood way above all the other ones for sure.

Oh yes. As far as these characters here, when

I first saw Shadow Weaver, the first thing I

thought was Hagar. Okay. Well, I mean, it's just,

you know, again, like I said in the general memories

and stuff, most of the shows that I liked back

then kind of all ran together because I liked

them all. No, I see the connection. And, you

know, if you listen to her voice and you listen

to Hagar, Hagar is more menacing, but... Shadow

Weaver, it's almost the same. Yeah. If I had

to pick a least favorite She -Ra character, I

would probably actually surprisingly go with

another female. I didn't like Glimmer. I don't

know why I didn't like Glimmer. At first, I thought

I was going to like Glimmer, but she just got

annoying to me. I don't know why. And surprisingly,

I think Howl's my favorite character. I don't

I don't know why I just really liked how they

did. I think cowl was a better version of orco

Yeah, well cowl didn't have any magic or anything.

He was just an animal, but he was a nice side

character to bow As far as glimmer goes I think

it's the only time in the entire history of both

shows that somebody is smitten with Prince Adam

because as soon as bow entered Adam Dar she's

like You know, it was like, you know I'm surprised

they put it in exactly like they put it in. Yeah,

she's like gasping for air. She's like, ooh,

what do we have here? Catra would have been an

awesome foil for Battle Cat if it was done more.

Obviously, He -Man was ending. And of course,

Grizz Lord, all that is is Beast Man. I'm sorry,

that's all it is. It's basically the same character,

just a different color. I will say one thing

about one of the other bad characters. I thought,

although I think they did a great job animating

and designing most of the characters in both

He -Man and She -Ra, I think the one exception

for me is Leech. Think leech looks too much like

the toy like he looks too much like those are

actual suction cups like I don't know He almost

looked fake to me on the screen like everybody

else was fantastically drawn and designed for

some reason leech I guess they did too good of

a job to make him look like the toy. Oh, yes

very much So I'm just gonna run down these these

voice lists really quick as we said The majority

is he man actors With the exception of George

DeCenzo, he came in new. Eric Ashamer came in

as an actual, you know, up and... Accredited

voice. Yeah, accredited voice. You got John Irwin

who played Prince Adam, He -Man. He also played

Broom, which I did not know that. Broom cracks

me up a little bit too, although it looks like

the exact same thing that you see in Disney's

Beauty and the Beast. Yeah, yeah. And then you

had Melindi Britt who played Adora and She -Ra,

and she also played Madame Raz. uh... of course

alan openheimer uh... skeletor man -in -arms

cringer beastman battle cat uh... linda gary

who played uh... shadow weaver in glimmer which

i did not know that either i i did not know who

did shadow weaver uh... but you know it just

shows the the wide range that that that that

miss gary had when she was alive and she i mean

to play you know if you do if you look at all

those characters you look at the love marlena

the sorceress shadow weaver in glimmer They're

all so different, yeah. And then George DeCenzo

played Bo in Hordak. Erica Shimer played Queen

Angela. And then Lou, who was credited as Eric

Gundon, played Randor. He played Spirit, Swiftwind,

Cowl, Mantana, the Horde Troopers, Cobra Khan,

Trapjaw, Triclops, and everything else. You know,

I mean... Because like I said before you had

so little voice actors doing so much work. It's

like You know, it's it's just like going on and

on and on and on and on It's amazing how different

they they made their voices for everything very

much so Compared to some other shows where you

can tell it's the same person doing every voice

when lifting and others, but No, never. She's

gonna put a hit out on me at one point in time.

Before what, do you have any other final thoughts

on the? No, I just, I think it's a, I think the

one thing that made He -Man what it was, was

the, I think the actual, not how they did anything

with the show necessarily, but the actual design

of the characters. I think they were awesomely

designed. They made everyone unique and everyone

had like some way to make you kind of like it

or... I mean, most of them you just didn't dislike.

There wasn't a lot of characters that you just

hated. Oh, yeah, very much so. Not at all. So

I'm going to play this really quick and... Glimmer,

I'm back. Bo, where have you been? I... Oh. Glimmer,

this is Adam. Pleased to meet you. Adam helped

me teach some horde troopers a lesson in Thamor.

Madam's coming! Madam's coming! Madam, come on!

Just before we go into the break because we are

going to take a break on this segment and you're

going to hear the first part of the He -Man's

special that I got from the DVDs. Listening to

that clip, I don't know if you heard it without

Echo Kevin, but you can tell the differences

between Glimmer and Madame Raz. And I'm sorry,

I just can't see John Irwin doing broom. I just

can't see He -Man playing a broom. It is so different.

from any other voice that he does on on these

shows so yes we will be right back after this

special And when we saw the letters that started

coming in, it was extraordinary. I mean, it was

just really a phenomenon. It was probably the

first show that was that successful in the history

of animation. From 1965 to 1988, American animation

studio Filmation developed and created dozens

of popular television series and several feature

films. Many of them featured larger than life

licensed heroes, such as Superman, Batman. Captain

Marvel, Tarzan, Zoro, or the cast of Star Trek.

But one hero would rule the airwaves and carve

out a place in television history. Join us now

to explore the secret origins of He -Man and

the masters of the universe. In the wake of the

success of science fiction films such as the

Star Wars and various superhero films and television

series, the sword and sorcery Melio was about

to be invigorated. I guess Tom Kalinsky called

me. He was president of the Mattel at the time.

And he said they had this character called He

-Man. He said, would you be interested? I assumed

it was going to be for Saturday morning because

it was the only way you could get something done

was go to the network, try to sell a show. If

they bought the show, they usually paid you almost

enough to do the show. And then the foreign sales

would make up the difference. And so I said,

yeah, I'd like to do it. And I knew that we weren't

going to be very busy. And I also knew that I

was really getting to the place where it was

so difficult to sell a network show and so unrewarding

creatively that there had to be something else

that would be done that could help the industry

stay awake during those periods. After approaching

ABC, CBS and NBC in early 1982 and being turned

down Scheimer hatched a plan to sell He -Man

and the Masters of the Universe into syndication

as a first -run syndicated show, airing an unprecedented

65 new episodes on weekdays. He -Man not only

was the first show that was produced 65 episodes

in one season, it was also the first show to

go in what was called first -run syndication.

And this hadn't really been done before for cartoons,

and it really created a new business. a whole

new business model that frankly ended up evolving

into the NICs and the Disney channels and the

cartoon networks that dominate children's television

today. Prior to He -Man, there really wasn't

original production that was made to be aired

five days a week. It was only made for Saturday

morning. So He -Man was breakthrough, not only

in terms of its content, and not only in terms

of the number of shows that were produced, but

in terms of how those shows were broadcast. 65

allowed the stations to have four runs a year.

And it was on a daily basis that they only had

to show the show once every three months or something

like that. And it was a number that allowed them

to have a rotation in the shows that was not

overwhelming. You knew what reruns were and what

they meant to the company, and no one had really

pioneered making brand new syndicated shows,

which were in essence brand new reruns. You know?

I mean... Obviously, everything's planned to

make money in reruns, but Liu planned to create

a new dynasty for filmation, and he stuck out

his territory in working with the smaller networks,

the small independent stations all across the

country. To sell the series to the independently

owned television syndication market, Liu and

Westinghouse executives went to a convention

called NetBeat. the National Association for

Television Production Executives in July 1982.

They brought with them development materials

from the show and ran into the man who was the

star of the just -released feature film Conan

the Barbarian. We had all of our drawings, we

had some storyboards there, and it was interesting.

People came up and they saw these drawings, they

liked these characters, and we talked about the

fact that we're going to do them with pro -social

values built into the show. And I look up at

one guy and... And he was looking at some of

the drawings. I said, that's Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Yeah. It was funny. And he was looking at these

drawings. And you could tell he was ticked off.

Well, didn't we know he'd be our governor? Yeah,

that's right. I wasn't calling him high governor

in those days. I got involved with He -Man because

there were five directors at that time. and Lou

came to me, Lou Scheimer, and said that they

had to have a really quick, like three minutes

of full animation to present to a trade show

to sell the series. So we were in the middle

of production on our other shows at the time,

so Lou said, you ought to do this after hours.

So I pulled in a couple Disney animators and

had some of my own crew working after hours and

I literally stayed every night and just, it was

just... Not even a complete scene just series

of drawings going from my desk right to the distance

Just kind of keep the stuff rolling because we

were really up against a really tight schedule

And we did it They took it to the trade show

and it sold the series While the series was being

sold into syndication work had already begun

in earnest on the series itself But even as the

filmation crew prepared the world of Eternia

to be unveiled to kids everywhere Lou Scheimer

was faced with some real -world concerns in the

form of protests. This was coming off of the

70s, which was the most regulated era of children's

television, where no violence was allowed. And

this was all the result of an action for children's

television, otherwise known as ACT. And what

had happened in the 70s was all of violence and

adventure and everything. was basically just

knocked out of children's television and it became

very pat, very puerile, there was no Johnny Quest,

there was no superheroes really to speak of.

It was basically the era of Scooby -Doo. And

Scooby -Doo sort of came out of the fact that

they couldn't do anything else with action. It

was one of the funniest things about this show,

is before it even got on the air, they were up

in arms about how violent it was going to be.

And I remember just being so frustrated because

nobody had seen a frame of film. He -Man was

a real lightning rod in its time for the kinds

of critics that paid no attention to the content

of the show. Because I think if you saw the content

of He -Man, you would be... I think there's not

a lot to complain about in terms of violence

and the lessons and messages it's giving. He

-Man obviously was primarily an action show,

but again I think what differentiated it from

others of its genre and why it has resonated

for so long and so deeply is it was about family.

It was about a family of characters that really

cared about each other and it had a moral tone.

It had a lesson and a message that underlied

all the action. And it also had comedy. And so,

you know, every episode had an action goal and

a conflict that resulted in action, but there

was always far more going on beneath the surface.

Arthur was very, very concerned always about

story and character development and doing nothing

that would harm our young audience, the children.

He always wanted to make sure that everything...

was positive and pro -social values and nothing

that children could imitate. He was always very

concerned about that, very, very responsible.

And in fact, we hired Don Roberts as a consultant

to go over every story and make sure that there

was nothing detrimental to children, everything

had a pro -social value to it. I got premises

and scripts from writers and... My job was to

say, is there a concept in here that can be highlighted,

emphasized, reshaped to teach children some kind

of a pro -social message, some kind of element

of character, some kind of element of behavior,

something that we want our kids to know. And

so my task was saying, here's the characters,

they're a given. Here's the world, that's a given.

Now it's the story, and how can I work with the

story? to emphasize the kinds of things that

I would hope kids would learn. The approach I

wanted to take with that program was that whatever

the lesson was about is what the show should

be about. Politics in the economic recession

played a role in the development of He -Man as

the Federal Communications Commission made some

major changes in policy. The United States was

going through everything to try to increase,

to get out of the recession. We had oil problems

in those days. worse than we had now and of course

this was one way to help stimulate the economy

so they thought that if they relaxed the FCC

rules they would be able to you know generate

more income from the private sector. Relaxing

the FCC rules allowed manufacturers to make their

own programming again which they hadn't done

since the early 60s when they used to fully own

a whole television show. Even as Lou Shimer was

working on business deals and battling controversy,

Arthur Nadel and Hal Sutherland were working

with the writers and animators to explore the

vast and varied world of Eternia. Interestingly

enough, there was some confusion about the phrase,

masters of the universe. I don't think Mattel

or Filmation ever really was completely clear

on who was being referred to in that phrase,

whether it was the villains. whether it was the

good guys or whether it was both together. And

I suspect there was probably some sort of shift

or revision on that thinking because my first

script referred to the villains as the masters

of the universe and subsequent scripts referred

to the heroes. But in my personal mind, as I

think of it this day, they're all the masters

of the universe. There's the good masters versus

the evil masters. Together we defend Castle Grayskull

from the evil masters of the universe. I remember

going down to Hawthorne to the Mattel offices

with a group of writers and producers for the

show to see the He -Man dolls for the very first

time and we were taken into a room there and

the whole product line was showed to us along

with a lot of development artwork. And it looked

very interesting. It looked like Buck Rogers,

like Flash Gordon, a little bit of Star Wars.

Like a big amalgam of a lot of the fantasy movies

of the day. Everything from a little bit of the

Sinbad movies by Harryhausen right up to Battlestar

Galactica, things like that. Spacemen, monsters,

wizards, the whole thing. At the time that I

wrote the pilot script, I believe we knew that

the show was going forward. I think we knew it

was a go production. And we would have... Started

to schedule how we're going to produce our scripts

in a fashion that would allow us to produce six

produce 65 episodes in one season which hadn't

been done up until then and I think the plan

was to use a lot of freelance writers We had

a staff and we did indeed expand the staff as

we started he man and and hired other writers

who were not there at the beginning So it was

a combination of using staff writers and a lot

of freelance writers. I think he man probably

used more freelance writers than any previous

filmation shows, certainly more so than any of

the shows that I've been involved with previously.

I first learned about He -Man when Arthur Nadell

called me in to talk about it. He was going to

be the producer and the story editor and he said,

we have a new show coming up. It's something

that really hasn't been done before. You're interested

in writing. I said, what, they're just going

to be like, what, long commercials? No, no, no.

We'll have real stories. Frankly, from a little

girl on, I always loved superheroes. You know,

Superman was my hero. And the next thing I knew,

I was in a meeting. There were about ten of us

around a table, and they were explaining what

the concept was. I was the only woman in the

room, and I... understand I was the only woman

writing these at all. But that was not an unusual

situation back then. That was really how it went.

And I enjoyed action adventures. I remember hearing

that Filmation was working on this project with

Mattel Toys and that it was based on some toy

characters, some action figures they had. When

I heard about it, I went looking, found a DC

comic adaptation or early story, I think a couple

of issues. I saw what the characters looked like.

I looked in the toy store, saw what the characters

looked like, and said, oh, this could be interesting.

This could be really fun. The thing that was

really exciting to me was that We were creating

something absolutely new and different, and in

a format that was new and different. One of the

main things we were faced with in this project,

once I had agreed to stay there to get the series

rolling, was building the stock library that

we had had before in our history. In order to

do that, we... had been over to Mattel and they

had introduced us to some typical models in makeup

that they were going to tour around the country

to promote the toys and of course we couldn't

use those. I went with an assistant from one

gymnasium to another trying to find bodybuilders

both male and female that would sort of fit the

bill of He -Man and we interviewed them, we tested

them for agility, for jumping and rolling and

twisting so that they weren't just totally muscled

down. And we shot an extensive library. We did

a storyboard on it first of the shots that we

wanted. And we filmed this library to each character.

And from there, we went ahead and had our layout

artists and character design artists follow Mattel's

designs. And then we started introducing the

action, the talking pieces, and with He -Man

there was a lot more action because of the situation,

his character. That took a while, and we only

had a few artists, as I said before, that were

capable of drawing those figures. But once it

was completed, it was a tremendous asset. I was

calling every studio in town. And I wanted to

get onto a series, and the He -Man series was

gearing up. They needed a lot of people. I just

called up, and they said, come on down, take

a test. And that's how my He -Man story began.

My feeling about the show was that... It was

great because there were 65 episodes, which meant

we'd be working for probably a year. And I remember

that being the promise at the beginning was,

well, you're going to get a year's worth of work

out of this. So I was very happy about that.

And then it was kind of fun to see that we were

going to be doing an action -adventure show.

I thought that was kind of cool, sort of drawing

these comic book -looking characters. belting

it out and doing cool super things. The development

of characters, stories and the animation process

itself will be explored in future documentaries.

But as faithful fans know, after its September

1983 debut, He -Man became one of television's

most popular animated series ever. We did the

shows and they were syndicated and the shows

went through the roof. The networks then... really

got mad at me because I almost blew ABC out of

the water for Saturday morning because we did

so well that they didn't do it and we started

running some of the shows on Saturday morning.

They got ticked at me. Now the networks wouldn't

talk to me anymore. I don't think any of us had

any idea at all how huge this was going to be.

I mean maybe Lou did, but I don't know how we

could have. It hadn't been done before. There

had never been a show where the toys and the

show came out simultaneously. There had never

been a show where there had been 65 episodes

done at once and where they were going to be

broadcast daily. There had never been a huge

sort of culturally transcendent phenomenon such

as He -Man. So I think this took us all by complete

surprise. You're good. Getting the segments wrong.

Again. It's a massive show. Yes, very much so.

I guess you can take it away. Production companies,

obviously like we've talked about, Filmation

and Mattel. And basically what happened here,

I'm going to actually go off script here for

a little bit. But if you want to know some of

the background, big time of He -Man. if you're

not getting it from some of the DVD clips and

whatnot. Obviously it starts as a toy, but what

they did is they tried to test it to see if it

was gonna work as a property first, and the first

thing that they tested it in was actually in

comics. And they actually wrote He -Man into...

the superman comic books and i did not know that

but they actually wrote him into superman complete

with a backstory about life on attorney and everything

and then when the reader response was so positive

they made it to the next you know they took it

to the next uh... step you know they had already

had a little bit of success with uh... show black

star so then they started to commission on thirty

second bits of that kind of animated key man

commercials that took off, which leads us to

obviously the full out show. But I thought it

was kind of interesting that it can even actually

go back and trace to a little bit of a Superman

origin type thing as to where it got started.

We're in the behind the scenes segment and I

do have to mention, I will praise the characters,

the character design. the care the character

development the voice actors all up and down

and i i won't hardly say a bad thing about them

when it comes to behind the scenes i think this

is where you run into a few of he man's faults

um... specifically i'll mention three areas which

is uh... the background drawing the animation

and the writing now i'm not saying there's not

good episodes i'm not saying there's not good

stories but what he man screwed up with and I'm

gonna go on a rant here so take me off my soapbox

in a little bit but where He -Man went wrong

was is they got the wrong writer they got Donald

Glutt who is notorious as giving two shits about

his work he doesn't put any effort towards it

to him it's just getting a paycheck if you watch

the episodes that he wrote They're way worse

than the ones that Lawrence writes or that Paul

Dini writes or that David Wise or Doug Booth.

They had some great writers on this. Unfortunately,

they let Donald Glutt write a majority of the

episodes and Donald Glutt sucks at writing. He's

done a lot of work. Take Transformers, for example,

with 98 episodes. If you want to go onto a fan

site and look up the top 10 worst Transformers

episodes, most likely six of them are Donald

Glutt episodes. I mean, he's just not, he doesn't

put any heart and soul into what he's doing.

So I think that's why you have some He -Man episodes

that are just, you know, one shot, re -done of

the same plot over and over again, because he's

just not that good of a writer. But if you take

the other writers that did it, their episodes

are pretty good. Well, you know, I have to say

that even though it lists him as Lawrence, everybody

knows him as Larry D 'Itilio. Right. he actually

wrote I believe he wrote the series Bible for

the show and he said he seems like he's done

a great job like most episodes I've seen that

he wrote were good yeah you know I don't ever

remember seeing on any of the day you know I

know you only have the volume season one volume

one but on the any of the others I don't think

I've ever seen Donald F glut on the thing Don't

know if they brought him in I don't know when

I don't think they did because not on the not

on the DVDs anyway Because Larry's there Jay

Michael striski strisinski is there Paul Dini's

there David wise is there? Robbie London You

know, I don't think he was ever actually on the

DVDs but you know these stories are all meant

to be one shots they break ever written it was

it was written as episodic cartoon television

it was not written as a series which is unfortunate

because if they've written it that way even better

it would have well it would have been but it

would have been even better but it would have

probably gone long yeah but i mean just look

at the people you i i for those of you that aren't

familiar with paul deenie uh... dog boot they

rise and they've done uh... ton of good stuff

uh... that one of those guys is one of the writers

for which one is a batman yeah paul denny wrote

uh... uh... but you know he's batman fame he

he's he's he's also stayed on for the the rest

of the dc animated universe uh... j michael straczynski

which i did not know this is uh... script script

writing work from babel on five uh... or wait

he was the creator babel on five and you had

uh... david wise who also did a lot of transformer

stuff And he was also the head writer of 87 Teenage

Mutant Ninja Turtles. Yeah, I mean, so these

guys are good. Oh, yeah. Well, it's actually

notable. David Wise even says this because majority

of the stories of He -Man specials that you guys

are going to be hearing throughout this episode,

the four parts that I broke it up into, I recorded

each part as it was on each special features

DVD and just have them as separate recordings.

that David Wise wrote an episode of He -Man called

Day of the Machines. He actually wrote an episode

of Transformers called Day of the Machines title

for two different shows and he actually said

that it works better as a as a Transformers episode

than it does as a He -Man episode. But these

writers just you know they were just so great.

And I'm not vulgar very often, but I just wish

Donald Glutt wasn't involved because he fucking

sucks. Yeah, exactly. But just a couple other

things that's not necessarily in the script here,

but behind the scenes wise. This is a product

of its time, so I can't necessarily harp on it

too bad about the animation and the painting

of the backgrounds and stuff. If you're someone

today who's not exposed to 80s cartoons and you

pop in He -Man, you're going to think it looks

old fashioned and crappy because... you never

were exposed to it. But back in the time period,

this is what they were working with. It was the

best they could do. The backgrounds are going

to look very fake. It's going to look like a

piece of paper painted that characters are walking

in front of, which is basically what it was.

And the animation uses tons and tons and tons

of stock footage. But going along with that,

this is a show that was trying to break the mold.

It was trying to do something that nobody had

done before. And so the budget wasn't huge. That's

why you have Lou Scheimer doing a lot of the

voices. He had to cut corn. Yeah, but it wasn't

just that though. It was the fact that to save

on the budget, not really that they had a, I

mean, yeah, obviously they probably didn't have

a very big budget, but two main things that that

Filmation did with this show was they created

new episodes in syndicated television. Season

one, 65, brand new. episodes for syndicated five

-day a week television and Lou even said on the

DVDs either you know before school or after school

whatever the networks wanted. The other thing

that it did was with the animation it compiled

a stock library so they wouldn't have to spend

as much time going back and drawing and reanimating

new scenes right like you know the the transformation

scene. See, I can live with the transformation

scene being the same every time. No, I know,

but I mean... I just wish they had the budget

so they wouldn't have had to use so much. I realize

why they use stock footage and that's why I'm

saying it's a product of its time. I'm just saying

like if they did it today and they had the big

enough budget to not do it, the series would

be even better because we wouldn't have to watch

He -Man punch the screen the same way every single

time. But so that's the only I mean they're negatives

But they're negatives that are easily explained

as to why they had to exist and they're a product

of this time But we'll get into I mean human

broke the ground for everything that came after

it and very much so and while the animation and

some of the Backgrounds are not that great and

some of the episodes aren't written necessarily

superior It still has a lot of good stuff to

it. Oh, yes And here is this was the transformation

from the very first episode diamond of disappearance

And it actually has a flub in it, see if you

can catch it even though it echoes. Alright,

well I hope everybody enjoyed that first part

of the four -part special. It is now time for

the actual show and because we have two or three

different things to talk about, I think we're

just going to do it all at once. Two shows, starting

with He -Man. The show takes place on the fictional

planet of Eternia, a planet of magic, myth, and

fantasy. The show's lead character is Prince

Adam, the young son of Etheria's rulers, King

Rindor and Queen Marlena. Prince Adam is seemingly

cowardly blonde muscle man dress in a pink and

white Chemists I What the hell is that? I don't

know if the periwinkle stockings and purple boots

However, Prince Adam possesses the power sword

and when holds it aloft and says the magic wards

by the power of Grayskull I have the power he

has transformed into he man the most powerful

man in the universe He man looks more or less

like Prince Adam except Tanner wears a baldric

and loincloth. Together with his close allies,

Battlecat, Tila, Man -at -Arms, and Orko, he

uses his powers to defend Eternia from the evil

forces of Skeletor, a tyrannical warlord with

a skull for a face. Skeletor's main goal is to

conquer the mysterious fortress of Castle Grayskull,

from which He -Man draws his powers. If he succeeds,

Skeletor would be able to conquer not only Eternia,

but the entire universe. Despite limited animation

techniques that were used to produce the series,

He -Man was notable for breaking the boundaries

of censorship, that it severely restricted the

narrative scope of children's TV programming

in the 1970s. For the first time in years, a

cartoon series could feature a muscular superhero

who was actually allowed to hit people, although

he more typically used wrestling style moves

rather than actually punching enemies. Though

he still could not use his sword often, More

often than not, He -Man opted to pick up his

opponents and toss them away rather than hit

them. The cartoon was controversial in that it

was produced in connection with marketing a line

of toys advertising to children was itself controversial

during this period. In the United Kingdom, advertising

regulations forbade commercials for He -Man toys

to accompany the program itself in similar fashion

to other shows at the time, notably G .I. Joe,

an attempt to mitigate the negative publicity.

generated by the controversy was made by including

a life lesson or moral of the story at the end

of each episode. This moral was usually directly

tied to the action or central theme of that episode.

And just to talk about that for a minute, I'm

sorry. You know, fucking stiff -ass Brits in

the UK, what the hell is wrong with you? Well,

actually though, I will chime in on that. I don't

know why they wrote it up like that. The United

States also did not allow commercials of He -Man

during the actual He -Man show. You would see

commercials for He -Man in the show maybe before

it and in the show after it, but that was the

one thing that they couldn't do is it couldn't

show commercials of the toys during the show

itself. And we should have mentioned this, I

should have mentioned this in the behind the

scenes segment, but something that's interesting

is they actually went to ABC first to try to

sell this idea, and ABC turned them down. ABC

said they didn't want anything to do with it.

to give you the background as to why that happened

it was because of these FCC regulations and ABC

had just had a really popular show called Hot

Wheels in the 70s that they just came under fire

for because it was basically everyone was saying

it was a 30 -minute commercial and all this other

stuff so they ended up pulling Hot Wheels off

He -Man came along and they were afraid that

it was going to be a similar situation so ABC

turns it down until obviously the FCC relaxes

their standards and the only stipulation was

you just couldn't show commercials during your

actual show. And see I can kind of get that that's

fine but you know I think that's why now I don't

know if that regulation is still Effective today

as far as not being able to show commercials

of your of your of the toys that are in your

show during your Your shows time slot, but that's

the other thing like you know it's kind of a

it's kind of an off offshoot for this, but You

know when transformers animated came out I never

saw commercials on Saturday morning the toys

at all whatsoever when it came out a Couple years

ago or maybe it's still in place. I don't know.

Well, yeah, it might be but you know getting

back to him in here this show, you know, I Won't

be able to say enough. This show was just awesome.

Yes. It was episodic, but each episode gave you

an each, you know Outlining storyline, right?

It was just so so great And you know kids would

always do the whole transformation scene. Oh,

yeah. Always go out and pretend like, you know,

like you said before, you know, because that

was just one of the coolest things. And you've

heard, you've at least heard me mention it multiple

times probably during the course of these first

10 episodes. You know, 1980s is where it was

at for cartoons. That's the golden era of cartoons.

And it's all because of He -Man. He -Man is the

one that Broke through all the barriers, you

know, it's the groundbreaking one that made everything

else after it possible Transformers doesn't go

syndication if he man's not successful Thundercats

does not exist without he man, you know as a

model either just silverhawks Damn it. Well,

obviously and tiger sharks and none of that other

stuff there. I worked that into the show But

but nothing exists if he man Bombs if he man

falls on its face None of this stuff in the 80s

does not become the decade of, you know, fantastic

cartoons at all. The only thing, since we're

talking about the actual show, I like Team Man.

I think it's a much better version of the same

type of show that Thundercast would later be.

You know, it's got tiny, tiny traces of sci -fi,

you know, and Star Wars influence, but it's a

lot more fantasy. fantasy world, sorcery, that

type of stuff. I think the only thing that bugged

me about He -Man, which is the same thing that

bugged me about Thundercats, which is a minor

detail, but the world that they live in is endless.

And they're always going to a new area that you've

never heard of before and finding new species.

or creatures that have never been heard of before.

And I just wish a lot of times they would have

taken the actual characters that had been developed

and used them more than random monster on X side

of the planet or random other monster in the

swamp on this side of the planet. That bugs me

about Thundercats and He -Man is that there's

no boundaries to, it's just like an endless flow

of new characters and new parts of their planet.

But everything else was good about He -Man. the

difference between the day and i mean i you know

we were really should really get you get into

comparing them but since we are the difference

between human and thundercats attorney it was

a completely different planet uh... going to

the uh... backstory of queen marlena she actually

came from art she was an astronaut that crash

landed on attorney and king randor found her

uh... and he made her is queen and you know what

will get into their The rest are backstory later,

but the difference is is is that Eternia was

a fictional planet where earth was real in that

universe Whereas thundercats they landed on earth

Yeah, or third earth wherever the hell you want

to call it a much different earth than anyone

else has ever seen Yeah, really? You know boiling

lava, you know black tar lava pits everywhere

you know overall I Believe he man has more good

qualities than bad. Oh, yeah It is easily You

know, it's probably easily my favorite show out

of the last ten episodes we've done Although

I will put a disclaimer up there that I think

I agree with you. It has more good than it has

bad But if you had to pick an 80s show for someone

like a kid today to watch They're much more likely

to like other shows besides He -Man. I Don't

think it's I don't think it's as Watchable for

someone that wasn't that didn't live it, I guess

if that makes sense. There are some shows that

a kid could sit down and maybe like more easily

than they could pick up on email. I think there

was something that you had to experience. And

if you experienced it still is watchable as an

adult and it's awesome because it is. But I don't

think if you hadn't experienced it in the 80s,

you probably can't sit through many episodes

today. Yeah, I don't know. As everybody knows,

I'm single. But if I ever do get married and

have kids, They're pretty much gonna be watching

every show that I watched as a kid It would just

be it would be an interesting experiment to see

which ones like if you took a bunch of kids these

days And like had them in their own, you know

You created this your own world for them and

you only gave them 80s cartoons Which ones they

would like and which ones they would not be able

to sit through You know, obviously can never

happen But I would be interested to see which

ones the kids these days would like in the world

that we live in compared to the world That we

grew up in I guess we can move on to the plot

of She -Ra. You can take that. Okay. Yay! She

-Ra revolves around Adora's adventures with the

Great Rebellion. Every time I say that... I think

I'm talking about Star Wars. Oh yeah, battling

against the evil Horde, of which she was once

a part, like we'll get into later. It was virtually

identical to He -Man and the Masters of the Universe

and structure, even down to the show's opening

introduction, even though He -Man's was better.

Some of the theme music and the fact that Adora's

secret identity is shared by three other characters,

that's all the same as it was with He -Man. In

the storyline, the Horde once ruled, Eternia

and Skeletor worked for Horde Act as the second

in command. The Horde was defeated by King Ram.

and the Masters and Hordak fled Eternia, taking

Randor's infant daughter with him and leaving

Skeletor behind as the main bad guy on Eternia.

Many characters from He -Man guest starred frequently

on She -Ra's show. The first season of the show

ran five days a week. Like He -Man, with the

second season actually though being reduced to

Saturday morning cartoons, and She -Ra ended

in 1987, and the character was never again mentioned

in any other version of He -Man since. There

were plans to bring She -Ra into the 2002 re

-imaging of He -Man, but the show was cancelled

before that could happen, so unlike a lot of

the other characters that we talked about, She

-Ra never shows up again after 1987. And I'm

actually glad of that, to be honest, because...

I forgot to say this, I'm not sorry to interrupt

you. I forgot to say this when you're talking

about characters. I must say though, out of all

the cartoons I watched in the 80s, She -Ra was

hot. Oh, no doubt. We'll get into that later.

But, you know, the whole thing about She -Ra,

you know, Lou Shimer said it best and I don't

know it. I actually did grab off of the Off of

a DVD that I have I grabbed a She -Ra special

that I will play later In addition to this episode

Not actually while we're talking but anyway The

whole point of She -Ra was that they you know

He -Man was this big hit everybody loved it everybody

wanted more Lou wanted to Give something for

for the girls to you know To have a role model

for That's what Shira was and they just said

why don't we tie it to he man? We'll create this

backstory and you know, whatever else and if

you look at he man You look at sure you look

at the show separately He man is a show where

the guys where the men are saving the women if

you look at Shira It's the women saving the men,

right? so it's basically you know a lot of it's

flip -flopped a lot of years without coming in

i will say there's an interesting fact author

out there apparently and i can't give you the

source off the top of my head but apparently

when he meant was running they did like some

type of survey or some type of uh... statistics

i guess i don't know if it was how many people

tuned in to watch him and are how many people

bought the action figures but forty percent of

their audience was actually female which also

helped them decide to do a show for these females.

But I was surprised to see that many girls were

into He -Man when it was running. Oh, yeah. As

I mentioned before in today's episode, my friend

Jenny C from Earth2 .net, you know, she was more

into He -Man than she was, she said, in one of

Earth2 .net's, Earth2 .net's shows episodes.

I'm going to go into some trivia. A couple of

them I'm not going to read because we already

mentioned them. Prince Adam is supposed to be

a teenager however to save on animation costs

he was animated with the exact same design as

he man You know again it goes to how the hell

can these people in the cartoon not realize Fucking

person my favorite is like the whole Clark Kent

Superman thing. How do you know he only has death

is to you know? but worse because they're so

much more similar than this one. I think my favorite

part, I know this is still secret of the sword

here, but my favorite part is when they bring

Adora to Eternia and everyone's like, well not

everyone because obviously the king and queen

somehow recognize this girl even though they

haven't seen her since she was a baby. But anyway,

but Tila is like, oh, who is this person? And

they're like, oh, you know, this is Adora. Then

they, you know, go a little bit further into

the episode. He -Man and She -Ra there. Oh, who

is She -Ra? Where'd she come from? Like you didn't

put two and two together that these both these

people just showed up out of nowhere today? In

the not really defense of Tila, but Tila is a

stupid bitch She really can't recognize You know,

it's just like they almost use the exact same

line like when they introduce the Dora who is

this and then that's I swear to god They took

that exact same voice clip when when she shows

up. Oh, yes Very much so but going back to Adam

is supposed to be a teenager. I would say Adam

is probably is just me guessing that's fine if

he was supposed to be a teenager uh... all teenager

i would say he's mid -twenties early to mid -twenties

he's got to be between eighteen and like twenty

three uh... while the show is conceived to help

advertise the action figure lines several characters

were created for the show and later made into

toys those include prince adam or go king randor

and the sorceress uh... i like the next one uh...

episodes in which the characters still appear

to or never broadcast in france the so what the

hell was he he he he he he he he he he he he

he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he

he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he

he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he

he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he

he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he

he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he

he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he

he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he

he he You French bastards. That's funny. No,

I'm sorry. I feel sorry for the French kids in

the world that never got to see Skeletor. Who's

actually Skeletor for Halloween ones? Skeletor

is one of the greatest villains in cartoon history.

They've done those polls on the internet, random

times where you always have certain characters

show up at the top. I want to say Skeletor always

comes in either number one or two. He comes ahead

of Megatron. He comes ahead of Cobra Commander.

Like if you had to pick bad guys and take adults

off the street and say name a bad guy from an

80s cartoon, I think Skeletor is going to come

to mind before almost any others. Oh yes, very,

very much so. Next up, Orko's name was originally

Gorpo. I thought it wasn't. On steps for the

show, the character's name was changed to save

on animation costs. Animators were able to flip

animation cells, thus using them twice because

of this. the symmetrical on his on his uniform

yeah yeah that's true uh... the writers would

do deliberately give alan openheimer's characters

lines in quick succession so they could watch

him quite a music lease amusingly switch between

characters during recording sessions uh... i

do have to mention this i'd know you don't have

it because i don't think i think just the actual

movie got ripped but the dvd uh... for secret

of the sword comes with a commentary with lou

schimer erica schimer Alan Oppenheimer and I

think the director, one of the directors, Glenn

Wetzler, Lou even says on the commentary, he

has, he's mentioning all these other things that

Alan has done and apparently, There's another

character Alan had done that sounds just like

Merman and was like, well do that voice and now

go straight into Merman and it's like, you know,

it's just so weird how he can, you know, and

a lot of voice actors can do this and play multiple

voices like that. Just go from one character

to the other like, you know, just in a instant.

Right, from the Frank Walker School of Voice

Acting. That's exactly. How is Frank Walker page

coming by the way? It's coming. No, the only

reason that made me think about that because

there's a special feature, I don't know if it's

on the GI Joe or on the Transformers sets, where

they say he would go so fast in between characters

that one of the directors once who had his head

down, Wally Burr has his head down but he's listening

and he actually stopped the take because he thought

there was an overlap and in voice acting you

never want to overlap with another character.

because it makes everything life hell for all

the editors and et cetera. And he stopped the

tape because he said there was an overlap and

it was a scene where Frank Welker was talking

to himself. And so they're all like, well, it

can't be an overlap. It's Frank talking to himself.

But that's how quickly he could change in between.

So I'm getting the feeling that Alan could do

the same thing. Yes, very much so. And the final

trivia for the He -Man show, the first cartoon

to air in the US on a weekday afternoons instead

of Saturday mornings. You can take Shira. I'm

designated Shira man. Shira's name was originally

supposed to be Hera after the Greek goddess and

wife of Zeus but copyright issues forced the

creators to change her. So you add an S in front

of it and instead of Hera you have Shira. Another

one, darn it. Shira's skirt never moves. Despite

her acrobatic tendencies, female directors and

animators on the show insisted that her skirt

never move because they found it inappropriate

for the lead character's skirt to fly up on a

children's television show. As far as Shira's

name, Larry DiTillio said that he was looking

through Egyptian things and going along with

God. or not god but you know it egyptian gods

and stuff like that and he said well you can't

have her as she woman that would just sounds

stupid ever as as you know she she or whatever

or whatever because you know he man is basically

he he it's he man which is on the right of a

man is also a piece of one we call she rock you

know raw for the whole dot it's a god thing so

yeah thank you we have any other uh... notes

for the actual show Um, just that we've got to

probably talk a little bit about the secret of

the sword here in a second. Um, yeah, we'll do

that. We'll do that after the second part of

the He -Man special, which is coming up next.

Of course, you fool! The writers, artists, and

production personnel at Filmation worked hard

to expand the world of Eternia. New heroic characters

and dastardly villains were featured. There's

nothing to it! Come on! And some surprisingly

serious and scary stories were created. Brave,

you clod! That was nothing for he -man! For a

series which already broke new ground in the

animation business, The creators of He -Man and

the Masters of the Universe were also breaking

the rules. Now, you will hear the origins of

the spectacular stories that concluded Season

1. From the writers and artists who created our

adventures, you have the power to know... The

Stories of He -Man and the Masters of the Universe

Part 2. I wrote a show called The Dragon's Gift.

I'll get into the plot in a minute. The name

of the dragon, Granimir, does come from a role

-playing supplement that I wrote for Flying Buffalo

in Arizona. It was called The Isle of Dark Smoke

and there was a dragon inside this complex whose

name was Granimir. Since I needed a name, I said

that's as good as any other. And it's my character.

You have a super strong character in He -Man.

You have a very powerful character. Certainly

Skeletor has been handed his head by He -Man

70 million times. Not a problem. We know He -Man

is going to beat guys like that. And I wanted

to put him up against something he could not

beat physically. So I said, well, Dragon. Silence.

I did not say I respected the name, only that

I had heard it. Dragons pay little attention

to the lies of legend. Dragons are the biggest

thing I can think of. If I do one that talks

and also uses magic, I got him pretty well covered.

I am Teela, captain of the Royal Guard, and I

will speak as I please. We shall see how your

tongue wags when my magic sends you to the realm

of demons. So the whole point of that episode

is He -Man cannot beat the dragon. No way. If

there's a fight between the dragon and He -Man,

the dragon is gonna win. That's obvious. It's

obvious to He -Man. And that he has to make a

sacrifice at some point. He has to really negotiate

with the dragon as opposed to fighting. This

was against all the rules of human. He was supposed

to go out and beat the heck out of everything

that got in his way. Couldn't do it with this

dragon, so he had to find other things. I really

love it. I have a thing for dragons. I always

did. I like negotiating with a large intelligent

beast. And I can get really sarky and sarcastic

with dialogue. When I was writing the Dragon's

gift. This was a dragon you could say anything

you want Where is my gift? We don't have it,

but you agreed Sky tree in fact any tree has

as much right to life as you or me or man -at

-arms It appealed to people because Skeletor

wasn't in it at all another rule broken or send

us to the realm of demons now Skeletor was the

main villain. I show him all the time it would

wisdom compassion and the honoring of a bargain.

We used to call it the Skeletor Center. It's

like every day Skeletor had a plot and He -Man

would beat the heck out of it. And I said, that's

going to go for five episodes and that's going

to become terrifically boring to people if we

don't go somewhere else. So I went somewhere

else with us. I said, it doesn't have to be Skeletor.

He doesn't have to have the plot. It doesn't

even have to be a plot that's bad. In a sense,

the dragon was a good guy. and came back later

on as a good guy. The Dragon's Gift was my calling

card at Filmation, and I'm still proud of it.

I think that was... It's my best episode. This

is where He -Man has to go after the thing that

will tempt you into ultimate evil. and not give

it up and he's being tested to see whether he's

been worthy. Yeah, that's called The Lord of

the Rings. A variation on the same. That was

a fan favorite, probably because it was strong

on character. My point, exactly. Also, I recall

it's a very simple story. I could rid the entire

universe of evil. Nothing could stop me. No one

would dare oppose my will. Whatever I want...

I could have. He goes on a quest. He's got to

get to it before Skeletor gets to it. And so

it's just a simple quest that's a race against

time. You've got a ticking clock because you've

got Skeletor after it. You have obstacles because

Skeletor is going to throw all sorts of obstacles

in He -Man's way. But basically, simple, very

linear A, B, C with a big twist at the end. Those

often make for the best character story. Who?

If the plot is too convoluted or too fancy or

doubles back on itself too much or whatnot, it's

hard to get character material in there. You

almost want kind of a straight clothesline to

hang your character beats on. So I have to assume

that that's a fan favorite because it's strong

on character. Was there a temptation to take

it to make He -Man's temptation to the darkness?

to the evil side stronger than it was. I'm sure

I would have pushed him right to the edge if

it had been me. I would have had him right on

the edge of the cliff. I have a feeling I didn't

do it because I knew they wouldn't let me get

away with it. You see, some time ago you were

given great powers, so great in fact that from

time to time it is necessary to test your virtue.

That is why I myself allowed Skeletor to learn

of the Starseed's location. You did? But why?

Because by refusing to use the power of the star

seed even on one as evil as Skeletor He man has

proved himself truly worthy of his powers There's

some man woman for song and I can't believe I'm

using the word for song in respect to He -Man

and the Masters of the Universe, but a certain

amount of man -woman frisson with the sorceress

and Adam and Tila. I mean usually in a show like

that you don't have a lot of female characters,

but I mean there was a pretty strong population

of female characters, so it sort of made sense

to go to an Amazonian society and kind of take

a look at that. What I wouldn't give for a decent

road map of this place. Teela! Adam! Am I glad

to see you! In the trouble with Arcadia, I used

the number 8956. Many years earlier, that was

the address of a house I lived in in Laurel Canyon

when I first moved out here. And it was 8956,

and I'm not going to say which street it was,

but... I got a better one than that. I got one

I did like that where I didn't even know I did

it. My Wonder Woman episode that had Ted Shackelford

and Joan Mann are coming from the future to the

present. They come from the year 2155. And I

just picked that number out of a hat. And after

the show aired, when it aired and it came up

as like a super on the screen, I went, that's

my birthday, 2155. I didn't even realize I'd

done it. I wanted to write a horror episode.

That was it. And because I was already working

on this Lovecraftian thing, I wanted to write

something Lovecraftian with cyclopean things

and dark magicians and all this stuff going on.

Nothing to be afraid of, she said. Nothing. So

magic and horror were the two things I was looking

for. But when I did the episode, they said it's

just too expensive unless we make it a two -parter.

So can you write a little more about it? I couldn't

go... I couldn't write a second half of it because

it was the second half. It really... It had a

beginning and an ending. So I wrote another episode

and I have to admit that that episode, it doesn't

really jive... It's hard going the other way.

Well, you know where you're going and you get

there. You get there and now you go back and

see where you came from. That's what they were

really asking me to do. Say, oh, let's see more

of where we came from. So I created the mask

and everybody that was in Chakoti Part One. Chakoti

Part Two is really what I had written. But they

needed the other. They said we can't make it

unless you do it. And that was one of the few

two -parters made on He -Man, unless you amortize

the cost by doing it. And they liked it so much

they wanted to do it. And a lot of fans say...

Boy, that scared me when I was a kid, and I said,

geez, that's great. I hope you'll really get

nightmares. Not that I wanted to drive them crazy,

but that's the whole idea of writing a scary

thing is to scare people. And it was scary, and

it was atmospheric. I'm blowing my own horn,

but Randman was funny. Funny is all get out in

House of Chicago. His particular dumbness really

worked for me in that one. He was... He became

my favorite character kind of after that, because

Rehman was really totally dumb, you know? The

man with the head of lead we used to call him.

Uh -oh! Another illusion! I got the idea for

Double -Edged Sword. There had been a lot of

talk about violence in children's television

and, you know, He -Man had gone out of its way

to try to send good messages about violence and

when it's justified and when it isn't or if it's

justified. And, you know, I decided, why don't

I hit this idea head -on? Rather than dance around

it, why don't I absolutely focus story on the

issue of when and if it's appropriate to use

violence? That became a big challenge because,

really, Some people are pacifists and think violence

is never justified. Other people, probably most

people, think violence is justified in self -defense.

And there's a whole broad spectrum of philosophies

about violence in our culture. And the challenge

of television is you have to write for a mass

audience. So the way I decided to hit it was

not to make a value statement about whether violence

was right or wrong, but to try to put violence

in a context that there are consequences. you

think if this had never happened? Right or wrong,

I couldn't say, but it was important to me that

kids understood that there are very serious consequences

to violence. That was the whole thought process

that went on in my mind before I even started

writing the story for Double Edged Sword. It

was thematically driven. Many years ago, I could

walk, run, play ball just like you. Chad was

very much a surrogate for the audience. You know,

my concern with kids watching the show is, and

any show, not just He -Man, this is true of any

show that portrays action on television. You

know, they tend to glorify action and they tend

to show action in a way where people don't get

hurt and it's just fun and cool and I want to

be a soldier, that kind of thing. And so yeah,

Chad was supposed to be a kid who was consumed

with how much fun it seemed like to fight. And

I really want to send the message that whether

you fight or not is a hard decision to make,

but... It's never fun. That was the message of

Double -Edged Sword. And Chad was indeed the

recipient of the message and the surrogate for

the audience that I hoped would receive that

message. Double -Edged Sword at the end references

death. And the thing that's interesting about

animation writing, certainly in that era, is

that was a big taboo in animation writing. You

were never, ever supposed to mention, reference,

or show death. It was just considered too upsetting

for the target audience that we were. we were

aiming for but you know every now and then there's

an episode or an appropriate context where our

advisor such as Don Roberts or Gordon Berry and

Fat Albert would basically support a reference

to death because it was necessary to make a very

compelling point and I think Double -Edged Sword

was one of those exceptions where it was considered

okay to mention it because the point being made

was was you know such an important and powerful

one. Later, I pulled myself out of the rubble.

My legs were paralyzed. I would never walk again.

But I was one of the lucky ones. Many didn't

come out at all. Another thing about Double -Edged

Sword that I'm pleased even today to realize

is that I included a character that was disabled.

One of the protagonists was in a wheelchair which

we made into a jet chair because it's eternity

and everything has to be fantastical. Hey there,

Chad. Why the long face? It's the scatter ray.

How am I ever going to join the Royal Guard if

I can't aim straight? Maybe you aren't cut out

to be a soldier. I was pleased to sort of show

a positive image of somebody who'd been disabled.

Sometimes movies and television adventure series

like this one make it seem as though shooting

a gun, fighting and taking chances are fun and

exciting things to do. And what's more, the good

guys never get hurt. But in real life, people

do get hurt, even killed when they fight or use

guns. The tag for Double -Edged Sword had He

-Man actually reveal that he was an animated

character and sort of talk about the the fact

that this was a fiction and the sort of differentiation

if you will between fantasy and reality and that's

a very important point for very young kids and

it's one of the one of the ways we that produce

cartoons justified when we do show action and

things that could be dangerous or perhaps unhealthy

we always justified by saying our audience realizes

that this is a fantasy and they're able to differentiate.

And the point of that tag, because again this

message was such an important one and I just

felt so strongly that I wanted to hit this message

home. I really wanted to help kids understand

and Don Roberts, you know, supported this and

loved this idea. but the difference between watching

something on television and how you behave in

real life. Make believe can be fun, and there's

nothing wrong with imagining great adventures.

But never forget that when it's the real thing,

someone can get hurt. Even the good guys. Even

you. Sure I remember things about it. I've done

that on like three or four other shows. I did

it on a Space Ghost. I did it on Mighty Orbots.

Space Ghost was actually with a Phoenix Firebird.

It's one of my favorite plots is the thing that

looks like it's really valuable contains this

thing inside. It's actually an egg and it contains

a thing inside it which you can't keep because

it will be very dangerous to you if you keep

a baby Griffith. So that's what I remember about

that show. One of my favorite plots. It's afraid

of water. So's the baby. Hey man, do something

to help it. The only thing I can say about City

Beneath the Sea is it's something I never wanted

to write. I had a thing about underwater shows.

City Beneath the Sea was an underwater show,

obviously. And they said, well, let's do an underwater

show. You know, I really don't like underwater

stuff. There's not much I can tell you about

that one, except it's something I probably could

have done a better job on, just because it's

not a... not part of the... It's part of the

mythical genre, but it's not a part I ever want

to deal with. Drill's return... Actually, I think

that was actually... The genesis of that was

the desire to have a song. We wanted to have

a song. And so I think I concocted this whole

story, so that Denomont, the critical moment,

could be a song. And I think that's where this

whole idea of the Horn of Evil came from, as

I recall. But I wanted to revisit Trala, and

I wanted to revisit Driel. And I mean, that was

a character I had really fondest for, from having

written Dawn of Dragoon. One of the fun parts

about Driel's return was that I had to... force

Lou Shimer to sing in the voice of Orko because

Lou, of course, did the voice of Orko. It was

process. I love Lou and he has many, many talents

but, God help him, singing isn't one of them.

In Eye of the Beholder, did I find it ironic

that the story preaches that beauty is on the

inside, only to have the ugly guy emerge from

the water, transformed into a beautiful? Yeah,

I suppose you could make the argument that it

was ironic. Film, and this is film after all,

is an external medium. You have to externalize

everything. Therefore, what you are seeing when

you're seeing that transformation is You are

seeing the inner beauty coming out and expressing

itself from inside all the way clear through

to the out. So to me it's not ironic because

to me it's just an expression of the inner beauty.

And you've got to visualize it because it's a

visual medium. Now a lot of people really look

for a transformation sequence looking shot and

this one comes from the episode Quest for the

Sword. Right after He -Man gets his sword back

he raises it and there's sort of a little sparkling

effect that happens here and so this is a really

nice shot of He -Man in the traditional transformation

pose where the camera would pan up and show the

sword exploding with power. This is a pan shot,

an upright pan shot. Well, the camera, of course,

would crop it off right about here. In fact,

there's a line showing where it cropped, which

is right here. And the camera just panned up.

This is also a stock shot that you would see

quite often, of course, in every episode where

he would transform. You would see a shot like

this. And so it was already Xerox in case they

would need it. And I guess the person who was

painting this decided that they would just go

ahead and paint the rest of it down below, even

though it was only going to be used from about

here up. I went to talk to Arthur. He was very

nice and gave me the Bible and I went home and

I wrote all this just 40 or 50 ideas. I was very

young and very green and I had 40 ideas for what

he man should do and I went and I pitched them

to Arthur the following week or two weeks later

or whenever it was and he said well let's do

this one which turned out to be the Castle of

Heroes. and that's how I got into He -Man. Castle

of Heroes was kind of fun because being a history

cuckoo when we had to recreate Blackbeard and

I forgot what are some of the other historical

figures, I could sort of show off a little bit

what I knew about the design of the different

characters. The thing that I remember most was

in the Castle of Heroes. there are all these

bad guys from the planet earth and one of them

is Blackbeard the pirate and when I wrote Blackbeard

the pirate I had assumed that he would look a

lot like Robert Newton you know with the long

coat and the big buttons and the hat you know

and R -Matey kind of thing now when he showed

up on the episode he he had the R -Matey kind

of voice But he looks sort of like he'd just

fall out of a Flash Gordon episode. You know,

he had the little tights and the mask, and it

wasn't right. Aye, you'll be finding me, Blackbeard

the pirate. And me, Hannibal, mighty warrior.

What do you want? Ah, it ain't what we be wanting,

matey. But what Mr. Montague wants. Let's shove

off. Sounds like a good idea. Come on Orko, we'll

play their game until we find out what's going

on. Monty was Skeletor's friend who came and

wanted to... wanted to collect He -Man and make

him the head of his intergalactic terrible bad

guy army. I was really surprised what he looked

like. I thought he'd be a little taller and he

ended up looking on the TV sort of like a frog.

I thought, well, that's kind of interesting.

He did not look dangerous. And I think that that

was part of what they had in mind, is that he

should not look dangerous. Montieg, it seems

to me that the hero of Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's

novel, wasn't his name Montieg? Something like

that. It was something, anyway, this is what

it was in my head. And I always liked that name.

And I thought, well, I'll just slap it on here.

And that's what I did. Sorry, Ray. But I really

liked the idea of somebody coming from the outside.

I wanted to see if I could make Skeletor root

for He -Man. You know? And that I succeeded in.

That I succeeded in. So maybe there was a little

character stuff going on, but it was Skeletor's

character rather than the good guys. That's what

it was, basically. I needed to create somebody

for Skeletor to push against. And that was Montague.

I'm very particular, you know. Did I ever sneak

anything into the storyboards? Yeah, once in

a while you do something, it'd be fun. In fact,

in one of my first shows in Castle of Heroes,

I had this scene that at the beginning Skeletor

has all his bad guys at their conference table

and they're having their meeting about what they're

going to do. And I had this long section of dialogue

where Skeletor just seemed to be talking for

inordinately a long amount of time. And I had

that character, Clawful, whose hands were like

lobster claws. And at one point, while Skeletor

was talking, we cut away to Clawful. And Clawful

was sitting like this. And that got cut. And

Hal Sutherland said, are you trying to be funny,

Ceto? Is this satire? I'm sorry. Why is Evelyn

in this cave with Skeletor? What's her connection

to him? Why isn't she off being a villainess

on her own? Tila is the warrior girl. Why? That's

sort of the question. Adam and He -Man are pretty

much... You know, set. There was not a lot you

could do with Adam. Usually when you saw him,

he was just sort of, you know, Bruce Wayne, Don

Diego type guy. He didn't really have dark moments

off to himself when he was questioning his fate,

or at least not too often. There just seemed

to be a little more leeway and more of a chance

to tell a story with him. And Skeletor, you know,

from the get -go, there wasn't a lot you could

do with him because he's like, I want to take

over Eternia, I want Castle Grayskull, so you

were never able to do... Really do Shakespearean

moments with him where he's questioning his villainy

or why he's doing this or or his motivations

So, you know with the villain with him it was

sort of like almost like a hands -off policy.

He is who he is So, you know Do I want to tell

another story with Orko feeling bad because they

forgot his birthday or something or do I want

to try and tell another story with? The female

characters maybe broaden them a little bit, you

know, I'll have to stop you. I Know you'll try

Too bad, really. We make a nice team, you and

I. In a strange way, we do. The return of Granamir,

I did in fact bring back the dragon from Dragon's

Gift. And that was lots of fun for me. I really

enjoyed bringing Granamir back. He was a good

character and people were asking to have him

brought back. And so they said, can you bring

him back? And I said, yeah, no problem. I can

bring him back anytime. I really, really enjoyed

that script. But I did not invite you. This is

my friend, Man at Arms, the one you saved when

we first met. He wanted to thank you in person.

Poor excuse for bad manners. But I didn't mean

to be rude. Please accept my apology and my thanks.

At least you speak with respect. I wouldn't speak

any other way to one as grand as you. You show

good sense for a human. You may stay. Thank you

again. And now, the reason for my invitation.

The evil overlord having, you know, forcing heroes

to fight. I'm sure there was a little bit of...

There's been a little bit of everything from,

you know, old Roman gladiator stories to Star

Trek episodes where Kirk has to fight the Gorn.

You know, everything, you know. Hero and a bad

guy fighting for the amusement of a tyrant. You

know, it's a classic. You got to go with that

for an action story. Your opponent is Krag -Ox

the Terrible. You can see how he earned that

name. Until our next exciting adventure, goodbye

for now. I hope everybody enjoyed that second

part of the four -part feature for the He -Man

behind the scenes. We're going to talk about

Secret of the Sword for the actual show segment.

Secret of the Sword, this was something for me.

We had a video store in Kingston, Massachusetts

called Adventure in Video. They had one copy

on VHS. and I rented it. I had my mom rent it

for me every chance I could get her to do it.

I actually broke the only copy they have because

I watched it so many times. If there's anybody

out there that hasn't seen He -Man or She -Ra

or that is interested in anything about it, this

would be the thing you want to watch. You wanna

watch Secret of the Sword, it'll show you He

-Man's world a little bit, it'll show you She

-Ra's world a little bit, and the writing on

this is phenomenal. This is what you need to

watch if you wanna, or even if you're a fan and

you haven't watched it in years and you wanna

take a nostalgic trip down memory lane, this

is what you wanna watch. Yeah, very much so.

The Secret of the Sword was just awesome. It

was an all new storyline that had never been

told before. You know and they had to figure

out a way. How are we gonna? How are we gonna

tie this female? He man like character To the

he -man universe and Lou Shimer said we'll just

make it his long -lost twin sister And you were

saying earlier that you know how did how did

the king and the queen? You know remember that

well it said in the in the in the movie that

the sorceress hid you know she basically wiped

everyone's minds in attorney of of the events

of what happened this far as for that stealing

her away so that no one would know of itself

the queen the king and men in arms right and

what i've got is how they recognize her as an

adult uh... when they had never seen her since

she was a baby that always got me off a little

bit like uh... but uh... I don't know, maybe

Hordak sent her pictures, sent them pictures.

Christmas cards, Christmas cards. Yeah, exactly.

Christmas with the evil family. Man -at -Arms

was such a special character apparently to, he

always got in on all the secrets. Well, you know,

that was the other thing, you couldn't, with

He -Man, you know, like I said before, Tila,

you know, besides the fact she's a stupid bitch,

you know, always shoot her mouth off about any

and everything. You know it really wasn't so

much for me as far as how did man -at -arms get

in all the secrets? How did it fucking orko get

that's what I want to know because orko You know

he came so close several times to spilling the

secret of of Adam being he man You know in a

few of the episodes You know and it's like what

the hell but the secret of the sword Even though

it was it was originally supposed to be five

a five -parter for She -Ra and if you have the

She -Ra season one volume one DVD set it is those

five parts it is episodic but they cut it down

for a feature film release a hundred minute feature

film release which actually got released in theaters

I never saw it in the theater but it got cut

down to a hundred minutes and it was just an

awesome awesome story it was nice to see that

you know they had an awesome way of introducing

this female role model for for girls at the time

the only way that's the secret of the source

is awesome like you're saying the i i know it

was supposed to introduce your i know it's supposed

to be based basically in her world the only way

that this movie could have got it and any better

was if it had been more of a combination of both

worlds i wish They could have even brought more

of the He -Man characters in and got them involved

in the movie. I mean, it was an A -plus movie.

It would have been even better if they could

have got some of the bad guys from He -Man's

world to be in it. But I understand they couldn't

do that because they were trying to introduce

She -Ra and that was the goal. No, they did get

the He -Man villains in there. I mean, I wish

they would have been even more of a... well how

much more can you i mean you've got the three

main ones of skeletor is you got beast man which

whatever you get my cloths and trap jaw and that's

that's three of them right there not including

skeletor i needed some evil in you couldn't I

know I just wish actually though they could have

solved that by just letting Skeletor be more

of a part of it I wish Skeletor would have somehow

got into a theory for part of the movie or something

Skeletor in that movie was just awesome the lines

that he says in this movie are awesome like him

calling King Randor a boob like it's just classic

there is there's a scene where Skeletor and Hordak

are talking and Hordak tells Skeletor that He

-Man had a twin sister. Skeletor's reaction was

just hilarious. It's just like this real quick

abrupt like, what? And then they just keep moving

on. But I don't know, Alan Oppenheimer did a

fantastic job with Skeletor in this movie. He

cracked me up even though he was only in it for

a little bit. Oh, yes, very, very much so. It

was just so... I just can't... you know i just

can't stop using the same words awesome great

super united it was an excellent way of introducing

a new property or new characters and you actually

got a backstory for skeletor everybody was wondering

where did that's where come from and i don't

know i can't remember if they ever gave him a

backstory uh... in the actual human cartoon this

you have him you know being a part of the court

and you know he may even says ah, so Skeletor

was originally a part of the Horde. And it actually

shows in an episode of He -Man, I forget which

one it is, it probably mentions it in one of

the special features audio that I've been playing

throughout this episode and will continue to

play. I forget what episode it is, but they actually

show the Horde troopers on Eternia and they actually

brought that back with this movie, you know,

with the whole fact that the Horde are the evil

rulers of Etheria. Yeah. This is the only time

you'll hear me ever say this in my entire life,

but this is one thing that He -Man does better

than, I know we're comparing again, but He -Man

does better than Transformers of bringing new

characters and a new property into the show.

I think they did it better than Transformers

did because you got to see a little of it mixed

together, you got introduced to everybody while

still having your characters. They didn't all

die. So I think Transformers maybe should have

taken a page out of He -Man's book and took that

into consideration when they were trying to introduce

a bunch of new characters. I mean, I do agree

with you, but there's a big difference. Transformers

was a toy commercial. That's what it was, the

whole show. Well, they're both equally a toy

commercial. One's not more of a toy commercial

than the other. I think Transformers is more

because you have more Transformers toys than

you do He -Man. That's just I mean whatever that's

a company, but I'm just saying overall You know

look at Rebirth Rebirth introduced a hundred

and thirty characters. You got headmaster starter

message all stuff, but you know That was it.

I don't consider that part of transformers. That

was at the end I'm just saying like if you take

the first two, okay He -Man ran for two seasons

and you take the first two seasons of Transformers,

they're both at the same point at that time and

place where they need to reintroduce themselves

and I think He -Man did a much better job of

reintroducing itself by shifting into She -Ra

than He -Man did by, or than Transformers did

by killing off its entire plot is I guess my

only point. Yeah, I guess oh, yeah, and this

is a little late because I'm sorry for someone

who doesn't acknowledge Ray Barth you I Acknowledge

it. It's just you can't take anything after season

two. Seriously, can you? Oh, come on. Can you

but but but I'm not gonna let you get away with

saying that whole other discussion That's a whole

other argument for another time both toy commercials.

Oh, yeah, pretty much. Um, you know I am so glad,

I mean, I know we're talking about the actual

show for She -Ra, but I'm actually so glad that

the character of She -Ra was not introduced in

any of the other, you know, the 2002 version

or the 1988 or 87 or 89 version, whatever it

was, New Emergence Demon, because it means, you

know, that whole storyline is exclusive to this

universe. I didn't really get into the 2002 version

of He -Man. It would have been nice maybe if

I could have gotten into it or gotten to watch

it more. It would have been nice to see her in

it, but at the same time I'm glad it's exclusive

to this. As most people probably have heard me

say, I'm so sick of rip -offs and remakes nowadays.

For Christ's sake, they're going to remake Short

Circuit. Anyways, the overall show was just so,

so awesome. Do you have any other final thoughts?

You mentioned the new adventures of He -Man that

ran from 1989 to 1992. Don't anyone ever out

there watch it, please. Don't do that to yourself.

Don't put yourself through it. If you don't believe

me, go to the internet. Go to Google Images,

type New Adventures of He -Man and Skeletor and

see what Skeletor looked like on this show. He

was a complete joke. I haven't seen any of the

2008 or 2002 whatever it was. I haven't seen

any of those episodes, but at least all the characters

look cool. It looks like it's done pretty well.

I would actually want to sit through and watch

a couple of those, but don't watch the New Adventures

of He -Man. That's just terrible. my co -founder

and co -creator GeekAss Radio is going to listen

to this and say, you bastards, because he liked

that show. Oh my god. You know, I actually grabbed

a clip from it, not from the show, but it's actually

on the, I believe it's on the Season 2 Volume

2 DVD of this He -Man, where it's previewing

the next DVD release of the new adventures of

He -Man. And I did not know that He -Man was

basically Optimus Primal Light. Carried show

this is he man in that show now. I'm not downgrading.

Mr. Chalk at all He's an excellent voice actor.

He's an excellent actor in general, but I'm sorry

That's not how he mentions now. He should not

I like optimist I just can't get past Skeletor

because he looks like a Halloween costume with

a toupee Like he just looks awful is gonna be

the Twitter quote of the week for me uh... if

you don't believe me though i don't know i saw

it i saw it up usual i was grabbing the audio

for it uh... actually uh... i know it's gonna

echo and i know you're gonna hate me for this

but i will since since we're talking about i

will play it I, He -Man, was summoned to the

future by the last of mankind to defend them

in their hour of need. But my old enemy, Skeletor,

followed me. Now, here in the future, he has

found new allies to help him in his never -ending

fight against all his crew. Yet on Primus, I,

too, have found new brave friends and a new family.

Thus, with the power of the good and the will

of the magic, we struggle against the forces

of darkness. Good against evil. The battle continues.

When it came to working on the second season

of He -Man, it seems that the scripts got a bit

more sophisticated. The directors were now starting

to feel their ults a little bit more, feel a

little more freedom, because they had a runaway

hit in He -Man. So a little bit more was expected.

The first season of Filmation's He -Man and the

Masters of the Universe broke ratings records

and changed the face of syndicated television,

with its unprecedented 65 new shows airing Monday

through Friday afternoons. Before they could

bask in the sunshine, however, The talented producers,

writers, animators, voice actors, and crew of

He -Man were given the go -ahead to start on

a second season of 65 more episodes. The writing

staff gained some new faces, including some future

science fiction stars, while the art team flexed

their drawing muscles to keep up with the dynamic

new scripts. Debuting in the fall of 1984, He

-Man fans were treated to all new animated stories

featuring the dazzling and dastardly denizens

of Eternia. Now you have the power to hear how

your favorite He -Man stories came to be from

the writers and artists who created the action

-packed escapades. Join us as we explore the

stories of He -Man and the Masters of the Universe

Part 3. After we finished the first 65 episodes

of He -Man the first season we transitioned into

doing more episodes of Fat Albert and the Cosby

Kids. Boy was that a switch. We went from doing

He -Man action adventure, fantasy, science fiction,

to urban comedy with the Cosby Kids. But that

kept us working. And we were unprepared for the

success of He -Man. It was very well received.

It was a phenomenon. I believe the first year...

combined revenue of the TV show and the toys

and all the merchandise and everything was somewhere

around a half a billion dollars. There was never

anything like that before and never anything

since as far as TV shows were concerned and maybe

the Simpsons after all these years have come

to equal that but it was a phenomenon. It was

just tremendous and we got orders for an entire

second season, another 65 episodes, that's 130

episodes of the show. So, after Fat Albert, we

went into production on season two of He -Man.

I came in, I believe it was the second season.

It's hard to tell after so many episodes, you

know, they blend in together, but it was just

as She -Ra, as just as it was coming out. As

we were working on He -Man, a lot of the artists

had been drawing other shows like Fat Albert,

which didn't really get too involved with the

detailed anatomy. And we had a chance to work

on that and hone it. And if you notice, from

the beginning of the first season to the very

last season and even into Shira, the ability

of the artist to draw human anatomy grew. If

the board artist did something, the directors

weren't afraid of it. They were willing to push

it. They were willing to do stronger layouts.

or more advanced camera moves. And part of that

was just the competition. He -Man created a competition

out there in the world of, because Lou sort of

uncovered that syndicated world, now Marvel was

doing it. Now Hanna -Barbera was doing syndicated.

And now people, and they didn't use the stock

system, so you could go to other studios and

do freer work. You could draw any scenes it felt

like. So the board artists at Filmation started

to do more advanced stuff. You wanted to push

it more, and that all led towards the quality

level. growing and growing and growing. I think

the second season of He -Man had a significantly

higher quality look than the first season did,

just because of that. And that just kept growing

through the rest of the filming. It kept getting

better and better and better. They would start

with saying what's an issue that might be relevant

to a child audience and then write a story around

that. That was pretty firmly established toward

the end of the first year and I didn't notice

any change in that in the second year. The second

year, the only thing I can say about the second

year was it was a lot easier because the writers

were writing that way. They knew what the structure

and format of that show was going to be and wrote

to it. And so a lot of the things that I had

done in the first 25 or 30 or 40 episodes, I

no longer needed to do. The second season we

started to, you know, after you've done 65 episodes,

it's hard, you're hard pressed to go over something

you haven't done before. And I have to hand it

to all the writers and just filmation in general

is that, you know, we kept coming up with new

things and with fresh things that worked well.

Or revisiting things and giving a different push

on it. But the biggest thing about the second

season is you see more villains, a lot more villains

than Skeletor. Because we had realized in the

Skeletor Syndrome that we just can't do every

week. You can't have a plot that... You know,

that he -man foils. And worse, when you go into

syndication and you do it as we were doing it.

You know, about six or seven days a week. I say,

oh, because it becomes so apparent then that

the Skeletor is just so totally inept. You know?

In the second season, we were visiting characters

that we hadn't visited so much before, and Tila

was one of those characters. Her relationship

with her father, her relationship to Prince Adam,

they were more prevalent in the second season

than they were in the first season, because again,

now we were looking for new things to do. We

had had every big monster we could think of,

and now we had such a backlog of monsters, basically

we just used stock. By that time, we had created

quite a world. I also updated the Bible for the

second season, and that was an important thing

to do. I went back, I looked at every episode.

We put together everything. I said, okay, here's

villains, here's friends, here's foes, here's

foes of the foes, here's friends of the friends,

enemies of enemies. I had all the relationships

all set out in the Bible by the second season.

That hadn't been in there, that Michael hadn't

already put in at the beginning. But we had a

lot of relationships then and we had a lot of

things to work with. So we could kind of pull

and choose because this stuff was already there.

So it worked for the stock footage, the way we

worked. And then it was just finding out, you

know, do new different great things about these

people. and then keeping up with the moral lessons.

Larry and I functioned as story editors on the

series, but we rewrote scripts and commissioned

stories and everything else, so our job was that

of story editors, particularly Larry, who was

a very good script actor. I must have been about

30, 31 as I watched the series, which would seem

to be old to be watching cartoons, but I liked

the mythology of it, and after I got onto the

show and I met Larry, I found out how much of

the mythology he had created and added to the

show. Larry is good on universe building and

world building and he brought to the table a

great knowledge about how to create a mythological

environment and I responded strongly on seeing

that textural background. It wasn't just about

blowing stuff up. It was about real stories and

a real underlying mythology. When I first came

on to the show I'd never gone on a TV series

as a regular before as a staff writer or story

editor and I was very nervous for the first three

or four weeks because Larry had been there for

a while and finally having not really spoken

to Larry much before then because I was kind

of sequestered I went to his office to try and

strike up a conversation and I said let's turn

my first script in and I'm very happy with it

and I'm very relieved because I wasn't sure if

I could do this job Larry said his first sentence

to me since we're coming to the filmation I'm

still not sure and I went back to my office and

sat there for the next several days and we didn't

talk. But he scared me. Cat and the Spider is

one of my favorite scripts because I wanted to

do something with Cringer or Battle Cat. And

what better than to give him a girlfriend? and

it worked out really great. The character obviously...

One of the things I like to do is I like to create

my own characters. Hello, big boy. Who are you?

The name's Katrina. Katrina was just one of my

favorite characters with the marauding and she

was sexy and all kinds of stuff. And, you know,

I totally had Battle Cat on Twitter, really.

And I thought, oh, I gotta do that. And that

one was really a D &D set, because it had the

old temple and the traps and the weird statues

that would come out, you know, typical sword

and sorcery stuff, you know. But the character

was strong, and that's what made Cat and the

Spider really fly. I mean, it was just a fun

romp. with, you know, again, this kind of wild

lady. It was kind of Xeno -like at that time,

you know? In the Energy Beasts episode, people

have commented on all the transformations that

appeared on that episode. And while I can't be

real specific why there were so many transformations,

I think I may have a reason. We were writing

these scripts in a very tight time schedule.

and those sequences were already printed out.

So I would just be able to retype them, and that

would maybe save me about a half a day of writing.

So the more transformations I could put in there,

the better. It was always a wonderful point of

writing a script when it had at least two transformations

in every script. And that one I had maybe three

or four, and I could get the script done faster.

The energy beast has an element in it about where

it's declared to be He -Man Day. And Orko gets

all involved and that all becomes part of the

reason of that episode. And then later on, apparently

around 1986, Mayor Bradley declared a certain

day Masters of the Universe Day. And people have

asked me, well, what did I have to do with that?

What did I think of that? Well... Anybody can

get a day proclaimed under their name. It could

be Roby, Worst Writer of He -Man Day, if you

give the city of Los Angeles enough money to

pay for the proclamation. I was not only inspired

by puff and stuff when I was writing He -Man,

I was also inspired by some classic writers,

and in one of my episodes there was a raven,

and that was certainly inspired by Poe. For those

of you who don't know Poe, just go on the internet

and look up Poe, and you'll see who he was. that

brave in which people talk about for some reason,

I don't know why, I can barely remember it, but

it was definitely inspired by Edgar Allan Poe.

Interestingly enough, two years later I did an

episode of Transformers with the very same premise

and the very same title. This shows you how little

I remember He -Man, because I'm sure when I was

doing that Transformers episode I thought, they're

the machines, great title, great idea, the machines

rise up. If you think about it, it makes more

sense as a Transformer that does a He -Man. I've

always liked magical characters and too often

they get to be misused as just plot solvers.

And I thought, here's this person who's been

living in this castle for hundreds of years potentially

and never leaves. How did she get to that position?

Who was she before she took that on? We all come

from somewhere, we all go somewhere. Where did

she come from? And as I whittled back that trail

and expanded to her original name, Tila Na, I

thought, here's someone who learned this skill,

this power, from someone else. Who gave her that?

Why did they pass it on? Again, what does she

want to do? She wants to pass on her power. Who

does she give it to, Tila Na? How far was she

going to get that power and then use it? And

it became a very personal story in that respect

for the character. I saw the actress not long

after doing the voice track by sheer accident

in the hallway. And she thanked me for that because

no one had ever answered for her where this character

came from or who she was. And the acting from

that point onward became much more interesting

for her. I'm a very obsessive -compulsive individual.

Everything has to kind of fit for me in one way

or the other. And I knew we were doing the Shira

series down the road. And I thought, let's...

show these guys in the He -Man series a long

time ago having come in, who were the bad guys

in the She -Ra series. So I introduced the Horde,

which was basically the alien race in the She

-Ra series, in He -Man. So the Horde we see attacking

during that episode of He -Man becomes a major

player in She -Ra later on. Yes, Captain! Hey!

That's not supposed to happen! It's a safe Skeletor

that was a... Yeah, we wrote the episodes, you

know, one after another and they... And when

we got and they simply stockpiled them for For

future seasons I remember that one that was that

was sort of like Skeletor conjures up something

he can't control and it takes over Him and he

he gets in trouble. So yeah, so the villain biting

off more than he can chew type of story and He

man has to kind of you know, pull him out of

the fire in order to save everybody and I like

stories like that. They're kind of, again, you

know, my reference on these were sort of classic

Marvel comic stories and every once in a while

the hero and the villain have to team up in order

to survive. And that's a good place to build

a story out of. That was another Troyan piece

where we could use all our old, you know, that's

one of the things is you had to use those old

sets and back over and over again. It kind of

saved money. So we went back there a couple of

times because we didn't want to take a world

and only use it once. And that was the whole

reason for it. They said, well, it's about time

for us to use our old Troyan footage again. So

come up with a story on that. It was fun working

with Orko and Troia because he was a totally

different character in Troia. On Eternia, there

was not much he could do. Most of the time, his

magic would mess up. On Troia, he was powerful.

He was very powerful. He was thought to be one

of the greatest wizards there. So it was interesting

to take him back to his roots and show a different

Orko than the kids were used to. An Orko that

really, this time, he didn't mess up. You know,

he could really do stuff. It probably was a case

of somebody said, do something with these bird

guys. We got these bird guys, we have to do something

with them. You pull the short straw, you lucky

fool, you. And it had another, it had the egg

of, is the egg of Avion, is that what it's called?

Yeah. That's another egg. That's that's like

what my second he man show with an egg in it.

I loved eggs I you know you can't you can't have

enough eggs in a good action adventure show I

don't know why I guess because it was bird guys

it makes it but it's not really an egg This one

actually is a jewel the other one is a jewel

looks like a jewel, but it's really an egg this

one Is a jewel that looks like an egg, but it's

not an egg It's actually a jewel because I think

it powers their force field or something like

that, doesn't it? That's the, you know, that's

the solving the mystery and helping the guy out

who's in trouble, which you have to, you have

to show you're a good guy, you know, coming to

the aid of people, you know, and also I was thinking,

well, what's the worst thing that can happen

to a bird guy? Well, you clip his wings. So we

clipped his wings and that motivates He -Man

and Slash Adam to help him. Two things that sort

of followed my career as far as storylines were

outer space and volcanoes. And there was an episode

I did called Shadow of Skeletor, which I just

always was interested in outer space. So I thought

a moon would be another different place. I did

a circus later on, so why not another location?

That was the moon. So I had a moon, and Arthur

Nadel, because he always... He always contributed

to the scripts. He said, let's have a second

moon. And of course, OK. And he and I sort of

figured out what was the purpose of the second

moon, and that was to have this conflict between

these two countries. You know, I didn't always

understand what I was writing. Arthur would say,

why don't you try this and do that? But I would

do what Arthur said. And that's how it evolved

into apparently one of the best episodes of He

-Man and the Masters of the Universe. So I wrote

some people consider the worst. Some people consider

it the very best, He -Man. Just like the moon

of darkness. That's right, Ram -Man. The moon

of darkness is always positioned over Skeletor's

domain. In Shadow of Skeletor, there was a cliffhanger,

I guess it was Act 1 or Act 2, where He -Man

is about to reveal his secret identity and a

lot of people... like that particular ending

and really was just trying to find something

different to do with He -Man and I thought why

not try that and up to the end of that act break

at least you think that He -Man's gonna reveal

his secret identity and I just thought it was

an interesting thing to do and I went as far

as I could and of course he didn't reveal his

identity as it always works out. Yes, by the

way, Tila, remind me to show you my great new

jacket when we get back home. Some of the shows,

some of the He -Man episodes featured things

you could stretch your muscles a bit more on

that you could be a little more comedic with.

He -Man is a relatively straight character. You

can't have him doing bug -eyed takes. So everybody

always wanted a good cringer show or a good show

that featured one of the more cartoony characters.

And some of the villains were very cartoony.

And this one show, Frady Cat in particular, it

offered an opportunity to really do something

comedic. And we had like new animators that were...

would always come to the board guys and say can

you give us put something in the show that we

can do something with because they knew it would

come to them because they would go to the directors

in turn and say give us give me a hard scene

give me one that would I can really animate and

so the challenge we came in those shows like

okay do something that has to be animated but

give it a starting point for example could be

cringer walking in which they could use a stock

and then for like two feet it could go into this

Brand new actions, very funny. Then he could

run off in the stops. They could work in and

out of it. They could make their footage. The

show could make budget. But all of a sudden you

had this neat little thing that happened. And

so that show lent itself particularly to that

kind of thing. The Rainbow Warrior was done by,

was written by a storyboard artist who had moved

into writing and it's a very well done script

and Bob was already like working on his first

novel and it was kind of interesting to see a

double threat like that, a guy who can storyboard

and write as well and actually kind of worked

into more of a modern thinking about television

production where there's a lot of writing involved

in the storyboarding. Bob was very excited because

it was his first show that he was getting done.

There was sort of that nervous energy of it being

his first produced script and he was like an

expectant father running back and forth and looking

over my shoulder like how's it turning out and

it was kind of fun helping him get his first

show to like a to the delivery room oh who are

you and where on earth am i i know not of earth

i am randor king of eternal eternal you need

rest return with me to my palace you shall be

my guest while you recover but i think you will

find it comfortable and pleasant in a few days

you will be well and can return to your earth

Bob said he deliberately wanted to make a story

about Queen Marlena because she was the most

underused character in the entire show. Like,

there's never anything happens to Queen Marlena.

She just kind of stands there, you know, like

a First Lady and just smiles. You know, just

no reaction. You know, she never does anything.

You know, King Randor seemed to do more than

Queen Marlena. So Bob was like, let's do a show

just about Queen Marlena. Like, let's give her

an entire back story that she was once this very

energetic... warrior princess thing or you know

or space I think she was an astronaut you know

in that show. One of the things is as we used

to try to cut back on you know again like not

wishing to spend too much money I mean digitally

now you can like build you know soldiers and

you could just multiply them in infinities you

could have 20 ,000 soldiers running around. Back

then you had to draw them all by hand and we

used to joke around about King Randor would say

call out my royal guard. And you knew the Royal

Guard was going to be three guys going, you know,

and two guys were Xeroxes of the first guy. So

all three of them would go. And you would just

try and alternate the exposure a little bit so

they didn't look like cookie cutter. You know,

we just didn't have the budget to do a huge group

like that. And we were always arguing with the

writing department. I go to Arthur and I say,

you know Arthur, if you write the evil enemy

battle fleet spins out into the supernova, we

got a really expensive show. If you do He -Man

and Skeletor handcuffed at the ankle, dropped

in the desert, you're going to have a really

cheap show. So can't we do some psychological

dramas? And Arthur would go, that's very funny,

Tom. I mean, like, go do your work and shut up,

so... I wanted to have a character introduced

in, uh, told my middle name, which would be as

annoying to him as he was to us. And someone

who was... a mischievous imp, and would give

us a chance to really play with the characters,

and again, in a humorous episode. The voice of

the attack track, I must say, does not quite

convey the humor that I had been hoping for.

But then we ask for a truck to do humor, it's

not always the smartest thing in the world to

do. But that having been said, it's a fun episode.

Journey to Stone City was probably one of my

first episodes for He -Man. And I always try

and think of the obvious point. And the obvious

point when you have an animated series where

it costs a lot of money to animate things, you

think, hmm, maybe they should go to a city where

everyone's made of stone. Therefore, you don't

have to animate anything, which is my pitch to

Arthur. It'll be cheap, Arthur. You don't have

to animate anything. It's going to be great.

Well, they're stone, and they stand around a

lot. Oh, who cares about statues? Where's the

treasure? It was really just more of a straight

-ahead adventure story written around a concept

more than anything else, and also brought in

the mythology of those who had been fighting

the good battle centuries before. And we get

a sense from them that this saga of the good

versus the evil struggle, particularly as embodied

on Eternia, has been ongoing for a very, very,

very long time. And it's very hard to find parking

there now. When I saw my script animated on the

screen, I was delighted. You know, I told everybody,

because I knew what the date was going to be.

Actually, it was sometime in November. involved

the whole family and I just you just sit there

with a big smile on your face that's that's mine

that's mine that's mine well I've always been

a big fan of time travel and the idea that there

was that there were kings in earlier Eternia

of course I thought was an interesting idea and

what would happen if one of them was brought

forward and had to deal with things as they are

now. And so the time wheel was, it just drew

out of my interest in time travel and my interest

in the idea that there were other kings, because

I mean if you have King Randor there's got to

be earlier kings and I thought, well what would

that earlier king be like and what would he be

doing? And obviously he was a lot more warlike

than Randor was. I didn't run into any problems

making him making Tammuzk more violent anyway.

I mean, that's just the way he was. It's what

came out of his mouth. Generally, the dialogue

that I write for any character grows out of who

they are. And so I knew who he was. I knew who

this ancient king was. I knew he was kind of

a violent guy because that's the kind of life

he lived in. and he had that club which he could

do magic with. So there was not really a problem

coming up with things for him to say. Now, there

were moments when he was too violent. You know,

you talk about blood and guts and wars and battles

and things, and I had to kind of bring myself

back a little bit. Once again, dealing with He

-Man, you could do a lot of property damage but

not much in the way of actual violence against

people and things. I should have known. Randolph!

We are not yet finished, pretender! This warrior

of yours is strong, but I will defeat him yet.

And then I will defeat you. When somebody says

He -Man to me, I think of all the wonderful people

that were involved in creating it. It was really

a wonderful, wonderful time to be involved in

animation. He -Man was a brand new adventure.

Before He -Man, everything was on Saturday morning.

There were no other outlets. And then Lou carved

out the syndicated market. Monday through Friday

after school or before school, whatever, you

know, whatever the local stations wanted to do.

It was five days a week. That's a lot of shows.

And yeah, Filmation was just a wonderful place

to work. Not just He -Man, but everything. Because

of Lou. Because of Lou. Because of Arthur. Roby,

Robbie, Paldini, Larry DiTillio. parade of freelancers

who came through i can't even begin to imagine

how many people did scripts uh... from the hundred

and thirty and it's a lot of scripts when you

come right down to it there's only one thing

others can expect of us and that we can expect

of ourselves to do our best see you next time

alright i think that that was the third or fourth

clip of i think it was the third clip that i

played for the uh... There's one of the clips.

No, no, no for the special That's right one between

I think I think it was the third or fourth. I

don't even remember now but you know When we're

recording this episode, I actually stopped it

before we could actually give our thoughts on

that that horrific Special maybe it's maybe it's

better if we didn't I'm sorry that that he man

all Z is is an optimist primal light Okay, so

we're gonna get into the music of the show Again,

you know, I'm pretty shocked that Shuki Levi

and Haim Saban did the music for the show, just

like last week. They're busy people. Yeah, they

did all 130 episodes of He -Man from 83 to 85.

And, you know, go ahead. Oh, Lou Shimer also

did all 130 episodes. And then his daughter Erica

had a majority of the music for She -Ra. Yeah,

and then the theme song for this one. I mean

the theme song for He -Man You can group together

with the theme songs for most of the other boys

action flicks of the time None of them necessarily

were that great of theme songs But they're so

memorable that you know that they're good enough

in their own respect I would say that it's better

than the GI Joe Thundercaster Silverhawk's theme

song maybe not quite as good as the Transformers

theme song, but they're all in the same group.

I mean, they're all very similar to the point

that they're memorable, not fantastic actually

songs, but they're very memorable in the music

part of them and in the stuff that they say during

them. I really don't have too much to say about

the She -Ra music, but with the He -Man music,

what I noticed again, like I noticed in Thundercats,

you had themes for everything. Oh, yeah. You

had a general attorney a theme where you're going

over the cameras. panning over the palace. You

had a snake mountain theme where it's like dun

dun dun dun, you know, where you're panning into

snake mountain with a camera. You know, you had

different themes for the characters. But the

theme itself, it was so cool. Like I said before

today, I did not watch all 130 episodes of He

-Man, but I did watch enough of them to where

I... Practically have it memorized now where

I held aloft my magic sword and said, you know,

I Every time I saw that I said it right along

with it because I've watched so much of this

stuff this week that Just it kind of all blends

together, which I actually like I mean I like

actually going through that through that title

Yeah to give you an idea of what I feel about

both theme songs on my CD He -Man comes in at

number 25. Sheer doesn't come in until 71 So

I don't know that you know, it's it's kind of

understandable. I mean Shira, you know The best

thing about Shira first of all, she was hotter

than hell Well, you know, I think you know before

he man realized he was you know, he was his sister

I think he was the jumper bones. Oh, you know,

but That would have been a whole nother show

Shira is gear. Yeah, exactly sure to tune cast

supplemental special Shira is more geared towards

females. That's that's just what it is. That's

the way the music was I mean, you know, she made

up for how much T -List sucked exactly. Oh Wow,

oh gee that thought 37 I don't think so Oh my

god. That's a clerk's reference if I ever saw

one. Go back to music. Exactly, back to the music.

You know, the only thing I like the best about

the She -Ra music is the song that Erika Scheimer

did for the... I'm glad you mentioned that. For

the Secret of the Sword. Yes, because I am going

to be playing it as well. That song's good. Oh

yes, very much so. But the theme for She -Ra...

You know, really, I can't really see a difference

as far as the theme music because what takes

me for both themes is the voiceovers, is the

stories of how, you know, I wasn't really paying

attention to the theme itself, the actual music.

I was more paying attention to the story that

whoever the actor, you know, when doing He -Man

or whatever else, you know, I wasn't really paying

attention to the music until the actual show

started. but uh... you know it was just super

you know super awesome i don't think that's i

don't think super awesome can be said enough

in fact in today's episode because if there is

a number of how many times i could get it back

when because that that there really isn't enough

you know it's like i said before the good with

both of these shows even though you know she

read is really not our bag of uh... uh... our

cup of tea but uh... there's more good than bad

out of both of these shows That's just the way

it was. I mean, both of these shows were huge

hits. And actually, I should mention, I believe

if you go over to, and I know this is separate

from the music, but if you go over to PredaconEmpire

.com slash CafeSpark and you look under the,

I believe it's the Tooncast Screenshots thread,

if you look, I think on the second page, when

I did the Thundercats screenshots, there is a

ratings screenshot, and I believe um... he man

was right under thundercats back whenever thundercats

first came out in 85 so i mean that that just

goes to show you that this these shows raked

in the ratings so yeah it was at one point it

was the second highest rated show but we'll get

into that in a little bit oh yes very much so

do we have any other thoughts on the music? heck

no alright we're gonna move on probably i think

this is gonna be the final segment uh... of the

special like if not it's going to be some filler

what's going to be something so we'll be right

back all my animation shows including him and

sure on my resume and i'm very proud of the show

it is surprisingly resilient and the fans out

there have been supporting the show for many

years. Though ratings were strong for Filmation's

He -Man and the Masters of the Universe, word

came down from financial backers that the show

would not be renewed for a third season. But

as the He -Man finale approached, the writing

staff set their sights to write some startling

stories that explored new ground, such as physically

challenged characters in Eternia, as well as

returning to characters that had been seen previously.

Secondary heroes and villains got more time on

the stage, even as humor and adventure won the

hearts of fans. How were these final He -Man

stories created? And what did the writers and

artists behind the show have in mind? You have

the power to learn the answers as we unravel

the stories of He -Man and the Masters of the

Universe Part 4. When we developed He -Man, I

had no idea that it was going to be what it turned

out to be. I mean, you can't play on hits. I

mean, that's the wonderful part of showbiz. I

mean, if they're worthwhile, they'll work somehow.

I just knew it was a way to keep a lot of people

working for at least a year. And when we saw

the letters that started coming in, it was extraordinary.

I mean, it was just really a phenomenon. It was

the probably... the first show that was that

successful in the history of animation. It made

people very aware of the fact that children should

be given programming that is appropriate for

them. That they can take it in many, many directions.

You can do it with comedy, you can do it with

humor, you can do it with adventure, and it became

almost second nature to shows after that to do

something worthwhile. I must tell you, one of

the things that really worked for He -Man is

it really got writers who had never worked for

animation, never worked in the industry, had

done science fiction to do and enjoy working

on a show. Because Larry and I were treating

the show very seriously and bringing to it a

sense of mythology and science fiction and literature,

much as we could in a show, we were always concerned

that the show wasn't getting enough proper attention,

particularly from the science fiction fan community.

And so... I went to the Worldcon one year, and

a lot of folks who were there were huge fans

of the show. And I wrote up a memo saying, look,

guys, you should be aware of the fact this is

a good show. And those fans who do see it respond

to that. We have to now broaden our direction

a bit to incorporate and go after these fans,

and to some degree, legitimize the show. Going

to the convention, the World Science Fishing

Convention, there were so many fans who came

up to me and said, how much I liked the show.

They actually wore costumes. The massacre was

filled with He -Man costumes. Some quite well

done, actually. And a real sense of validation

from those fans that this show has something

more to offer. Why did He -Man eventually end?

I can't say. It really is just after 130 episodes,

we were basically at the end of our tether. There

was not much more we could do with the show.

And again, part of that was every episode had

to be episodic. You couldn't tie long stories

together. If we were going in that way, then

we could have had a third season, 65 episodes.

But we didn't go that way. Every episode had

to be able to stand on its own. And because of

that, there would just be too much duplication.

I mean, you know, we just couldn't beat up Skeletor

anymore. So we had to end the event. I just thought

it would be fun to have a... circus and we I

didn't know what other plot to use and I thought

a circus would be a fun thing to do and much

to my surprise Arthur Nadiel said sure that's

a great idea so so I wrote the greatest show

on Eternia which was my last He -Man episode

then I went on to other shows other other other

animation companies and I thought there was some

good elements in there I mean there was a circus

train that flew in you know and there was a circus

tent it certainly was an expensive show for for

filmation to do because most of the shows used

existing backgrounds, and the greatest show out

on Eternia used new backgrounds, which, you know,

added a lot to the budget. There's a character

on the episode called Crackers who was the owner

of the circus, and Arthur Nadel, who was running

the writers, in charge of the writers, he accepted

that name, but he thought Crackers the Clown

had a certain sinister aspect to it, almost,

you know, religious or something bizarre. But

he let me use that name. And so I wrote it. We

had to write these shows very quickly, but I

wrote it and finished it. And the one change

that the storyboard department did, I ended it

with Skelter being shot out of a cannon, which

I thought was very funny. For whatever reason,

when the show was finally produced, he's tied

to a firecracker. I remember Bob Forward came

to me, I left the show, I was writing story editing

in a show called Berenstain Bears, and I came

back to see how it was going, and he said, you

know, how dare you put Skeletor in a cannon and

shoot him off, and I just thought it was funny.

While I felt I should not be writing He -Man,

I am very proud of my He -Man scripts. In fact,

I read his show on Eternia. is my favorite because

it was so silly and ridiculous and in fact my

feeling is you know it depends when you look

back at a show 25 years later you have to remember

that things change and I suppose if I would have

stayed on He -Man and if my approach took over

the show would have become a very funny show

and perhaps it would have changed its name to

He -He -Man And they would say, boy, my shows

are good, and all those other ones were the worst.

So you really can't look back 25 years later.

We were trying to get the show out all the time.

We just did the best we could. And we never thought

we would be reviewed 25 years later or certainly

never appear on a DVD honoring me and the other

wonderful people associated with He -Man. Robby's

a lot of fun and everything. He's a very... a

very underrated talent, and I think he has a

mischievous streak, a mile long, and I think

he had the same kind of perverse delight as we

all did, and sort of subversive quality to making

these shows on a budget. and working in this

melodramatic style, yet having fun at the same

time. I remember I had this other little perverse

thing I tried to put in, and that was, there's

a stock laugh cycle that He -Man used to do with

stock 16, and stock 16 is he has his hands on

his hips and he goes, like this. So I kept putting

that shot in until it got annoying. It was just

like every other cut, every time Orko or anybody

did something. Until you wanted to scream and

start to look like an avant -garde video. It

just got more and more out there. I can use it

16 times in five minutes. And of course, that

all got cut out. It's very funny, Cido. On Greatest

Show in Eternia, yeah, He -Man and Skeletor battle

on a trapeze. They go swinging back and forth

and swinging at each other, and it was very silly.

And it's funny, because in some shows, He -Man's

movements were so... His use of his strength

was so exaggerated. There was one show where

He -Man actually stood up in the Wind Raider

and pushed a moon out of orbit. And we just thought,

that's a really strong guy. He can stand up and

push the moon out of orbit. And I thought, if

I was Beastman and Merman, I'd be kind of dubious

about going up and duking it out with this guy,

if he can do that sort of thing. And we used

to do a lot of little joke drawings of He -Man

just taking Skeletor's face and going, crunch.

I'm going, show's over. You know? I mean, ow!

Pretty good, Skeletor, but not good enough. Wouldn't

want you to hurt yourself, Skeletor. interesting

to have a story about a blind child, that He

-Man first takes pity on and decides to take

him on an outing, only something blinds He -Man

and the blind child ends up saving the hero.

And that idea interested me and I pitched the

idea to Arthur. He really, really liked that

idea. And I wrote that script, which became Not

So Blind. I brought back Ram -Man in that one.

I put Ram -Man in because of my experience with

him in Hoppichakoti Part 2. And I decided that

Grand Man was not stupid or dumb, he was just

slower than other people. And brought that bit

of his character out and had some fun with him

in that script. On the strength of those two

scripts, Arthur offered me a position on the

writing staff. And I talked it over with Bob

Barak Wright and Hal Sutherland. It was agreed

to and I just moved into one of the offices in

the writing wing and started writing scripts

for the second half of the second half of He

-Nam. It was halfway through the second season

where this happened. I thought the not -so -blind

episode was done actually extremely well. It

was very realistic, it was very true to life

from what I was experiencing. I did see that

well after I lost my vision. I liked the fact,

I know I discussed it, asked people how they

handled some of the blind kid getting around,

and as I understand he's got some sort of a similar

cane type thing like we would have here. uses

it a little differently, which I liked, because

it's another planet, it's another world, it's

not going to be the same as here. So I liked

the fact that they changed it, but kind of kept

the main idea, and I thought it was extremely

well done, and I enjoyed it. One of our storyboard

artists, Warren Greenwood, came up with a story

idea called The Arena. And he got a writing assignment.

So all of a sudden, he didn't storyboard anymore.

He got a little office down at the end of the

hall. And he was really going into the whole

Edgar Allan Poe writing thing. Remember, he had

a little skull on his desk. He was into this

whole thing. He was going to be a writer now.

And he started writing the script. And he named

the main villain after my last name. My last

name is Tetra Brunowicz. and he named him General

Tatteran. And basically he felt it sounded evil,

which, okay, I'll go with that to some extent.

And it just, it seemed, it had a vibe of sounding

foreign enough that he wanted to use it. And

so he put that character in there. General Tatteran,

how nice of you to respond so quickly to my call.

Brian Chin, I believe, boarded it a great job

of boarding that show. And then when the problem

with power came up... Ford I guess is a tribute

to me coming up the story idea decided to make

that character the focal point of the story So

he got some kind of a weird life out of something

that was just somebody doing it for some unexplained

reason It looked more like a goblin out of Lord

of the Rings Maybe you've asked the makeup lady,

you know, that's what I do look like, but I didn't

think it was particularly close resemblance.

Today I broke a promise and proved myself unworthy

the great power that was given me. And if I am

unworthy, I can no longer permit myself to be

he -man. Let the power return! On the problem

with power, Bob Forward was a writer at that

point. He had been doing really pretty neat things

with the E -Man scripts he was writing and we

had worked together a lot and I pitched in the

idea and he wanted to write it and it never really

occurred to me to try to write it. Bob wanted

to write it and that seemed just fine with me

because I think he's a terrific writer. Nowadays

I might take a crack at it but it just felt like

such a significant idea and that it had actually

gotten approved that There's no doubt in my mind

Bob did it better than I would have ever written.

With Skeletor it was a chance to just let him

go nuts. Give him something to really tick him

off and let him go off. So in Double Trouble

we had a device which we used numerous times.

We're going to make a double of the good guy

or some good guy to cause trouble. At one point

the technology duplicated Skeletor. He has to

deal with himself now. And that dynamic of him

dealing with himself and seeing how annoying

he actually was, was, again, one of those funny

things to me that I love building an episode

around. And it's one scene where they stand in

a doorway with each other and have a very bitter

exchange that I'm very happy about. That sounds

familiar. Gotta go! Happy birthday, Roboto. Really,

I believe it is the only time Roboto ever actually

appeared at the show. He was a new... He was

odd in that he was the first really science fiction

-y character that was brought onto a sword and

sorcery landscape. I mean, obviously we had flying

vehicles and telecommunicators. all of which

were part of the science fiction thing. But I

mean, He -Man was more sword and sorcery fantasy

type of stuff. So to have this robot suddenly

show up from space, first of all, it opened a

whole new dimension to the show. They said, you

know, they can have other visitors from it. They

can have a robot come and visit. They can have

other visitors from space. And it suddenly was

opening up an area that we really didn't do a

whole lot with on He -Mean. We didn't do a whole

lot of the science fiction aspect of the show.

The Roboto was a perfect, perfect foil for Man

-At -Arms. Man -At -Arms was the character I

think I kind of liked the best. I don't know

why particularly. But I liked working with Man

-At -Arms quite a bit. I liked the voice actor.

I liked working with almost anybody but He -Mean.

I'll tell you the truth. Not because they did

not like He -Man. The problem with He -Man was

he always had to carry all the action. You couldn't

let anybody else. After the first season was

done, that changed a little bit. And then suddenly

we started to be able to feature other characters

in He -Man. And that was good for us. And Roboto

was one of those instances where it was more

Roboto's story actually than it was He -Man's.

It was kind of a pleasant little fun thing to

do. There was a lot of good humor in it. That

was it. Roboto didn't seem to just disappear.

He just kind of never saw me. I don't know why,

but he just... I never thought of doing a sequel,

and nobody else ever thought of doing a sequel

to Roboto. I like dragons, and Larry loves dragons.

And it was Larry who created Granamere and the

other dragons who come up every so often in the

course of the show. only because they were, again,

very hard to animate. And I've always wanted

to do a dragon story, because these dragons are

just cool. And the idea of using that story,

that kind of a character, again, gave me a chance

to play with a non -human point of view, which

is what I liked, and see how dragons viewed us.

You know what humans feel about dragons? What

do they think about us? Other than the fact that

we're, you know, littering in their backyard.

So I wanted to tell a story that would bring

that culture and give them a culture and give

them their own history and background of philosophy.

And that was the end of the purpose behind that

episode. I fear that there will be war soon between

your people and my dragons. Couldn't you stop

them? Regrettably, no. They have not fought in

a war for a long time and they have forgotten

what it's like. They have forgotten the pain,

the darkness. The madness that is war. And now,

without my magic, I'm not able to stop them.

The show really wasn't one thing or the other.

It wasn't fish nor foul. And on occasion, it

was foul. But for the most part, we tried to

incorporate lots of different elements to keep

things moving, partly because we like science

fiction technology as well as the fantasy stuff.

So... We had magic and science operated hand

-in -glove, which made for a nice dichotomy,

where the bad guy could be using a spell or he

could be using a high -tech device. And that

helped to keep the episodes fresh. If it was

all just magic or all just science stuff, I think

in a while it would have gotten more repetitive

than it did. Well, I'm a big Superman fan, and

I've always been intrigued by the obvious peril

of Clark Kent's Superman. They look the same

except for the glasses. And it seemed very peculiar

to me that you have an entire planet that looks

at Adam, looks at He -Man, same face, same basic

voice. They can't put two and two together and

figure out, oh, it's the same guy. So I wanted

to play with that a little bit. And with assumption,

he must look very different. I think somewhere

someone thought, hmm. Adam is exactly the same

as He -Man, therefore they can't be the same

person. He's too clever for that. If you have

a kid who basically pretends to be... that alter

ego and gets in trouble because of that and has

to take the repercussions of people thinking

that he's actually human's alter ego. So to play

with that dynamic of the concealed identity was

a big plus for me. I try to re -inject more menace

into into Skeletor's character, and one of the

of the creative department of the writing department,

he says, Skeletor's not the devil. I mean, I

had made him really innocent, so I had to take

it back and make him more comical. Everything

I do is for the sake of evil. But there's some

good in everybody. Not in this body. After a

while, we grew to enjoy Skeletor. Once we finally

gave up the fact that he wasn't going to be this

evil, evil, monstrous villain, that he was going

to be kind of a buffoon, we kind of dealt with

it, and in some cases embraced it. After nearly

three years of development and production, He

-Man and the Masters of the Universe ended in

1985, after airing 130 episodes. That wasn't

the end for the attorney and heroes, however.

The characters frequently guest -starred in She

-Ra Princess of Power, and eventually, He -Man

would go on to appear in the new adventures of

He -Man, and a third, later, animated series.

Ever think of going into the circus? Now, over

20 years since he first drew his sword, the changes

that the He -Man series made in the animation

industry are still being felt. And it has left

a legacy that generations of fans celebrate.

I can no longer permit myself to be He -Man.

Let the power... You really are wonderful! The

only trick we want to see is you disappearing!

We must climb down, and I know someone better

suited for the task. I'm reaching back, you know,

28 -some years to think about that, but I do

remember people being, you know, kids liking

the show an awful lot. The one time I saw that

close -up is close to the show's premiere. They

cobbled together three episodes in a sort of

a little feature, which... was called He Man's

Greatest Adventures or something and it was narrated

by the sorceress who took you through Castle

Grayskull and I remember that they showed it

once at Man's Chinese Theater and on a Saturday

morning and they had busloads of kids coming

to see it and they loved it and I remember going

with Michael Reeves and a couple of the other

writers to watch them show it and you had the

Chinese Theater filled with kids and they were

all screaming, they were all cheering, they loved

it. because they had never seen anything like

it and I think that's an important thing you

can say about the Masters of the Universe show.

It did kind of kick things off over a 20 -year

period where the shows got a little bit better

and better and with the action shows people were

willing to take more of a chance on them and

I think that set the way for things like Batman

and Superman, Justice League, certainly a lot

of the anime shows. I think probably The best

thing that came out of He -Man from my particularly

weird and skewed and potentially perverse point

of view was that it kind of brought, it was the

beginning of bringing action back into kids shows.

And I'm a big action adventure guy and I'm a

big action movie fan and I'm also, you know,

a big fan of Grand Illusion and other things

that aren't necessarily action adventure. But

kids television The kids television I grew up

on, you know, in like the early 60s, had a lot

of action adventure in it. And once Action for

Children's Television came along, and that all

got cut off the menu, as it were. And there were

literally, there was Super Friends, which was

always sort of staving off a disaster, and there

was never any fighting. And with He -Man, was

the first step toward actually doing conflict

action stories. So bringing... just the beginnings

of real action adventure back into children's

television, I think was the best thing that came

out of He -Man. I think He -Man's legacy is sort

of multi -fold. I mean, obviously, I think it's

a show that's lasted and has resonated with people

and that people grew up with. I think it's also

had a remarkable impact on the industry, on the

animation industry, and the children's television

industry, along with Inspector Gadget, which

is by Diek, where I work now. It was the first,

they were the first two series to have 65 episodes

come on on a daily basis and that really changed

the landscape of children's television up until

today where it's now dominated by the 24 -hour

dedicated children's channels. That would not

have happened had not the sort of evolutionary

step between Saturday morning when He -Man started

it was only Saturday morning television for kids

and He -Man really opened the door to five day

a week afternoon television for kids. The other

aspect of the He -Man had on the industry itself

is all the production that was spawned in the

years afterwards. He -Man was such a success

that many, many people were doing 65 episode

series for really the rest of the decade. And

whether or not the series was successful, it

meant a ton of employment for animators, for

artists, for writers. It really spawned a lot

of careers and helped, really helped the economy

of the animation industry. I think... The main

legacy for He -Man is it probably marked the

end of domestic TV animation and I think everybody

will agree on that. I think we all felt it. It

was the last gasp for everyone working in the

TV animation industry to work together and we

saw it evaporating before our eyes and it was

kind of going down, you know, desperately. With

He -Man, we had so many limitations to try and

make the show look and be as interesting as it

could be, and I think we did pretty well, but

the limitations were strict to Lusheimer's credit

to keep animation here in this country and keep

everybody working. He found other ways around

it so that we could do that, you know, and eventually

economy and just one out. I think He -Man was

really important to my career and it's weird

to say a sentence like that because at the time,

you know, I mean, He -Man, these things just...

get such a funny value to them as years go by.

Because at one point, He -Man was just this funny

little embarrassment that we all would admit,

yes, I worked on He -Man, it's true. And it vanished

away for a long time. It almost felt like we

could go to an AA meeting, like, hi, I'm Vicki

Jentz, I worked on the He -Man. But I really

have to credit it for teaching me how to storyboard.

teaching me a lot about directing, about visualizing

a script and visualizing how a story can unfold.

I definitely credit He -Man, the show, storyboarding

on the show with teaching me how to direct and

I think it led to a lot of other possibilities

for me including eventually directing on Shrek

and on Shark Tale. It's fascinating how now that

I work at Warner Brothers and most of the editors

are younger than me. And so editors in their

late 20s and early 30s, when they find out that

I have worked on He -Man and She -Ra and those

two shows particularly, they flip out. It's like,

you worked on He -Man? I can't believe it. And

they're just like, I'm like a god to them because

I worked on He -Man because they were like eight

years old and now they're editing with me right

alongside me. And so I get a lot of comments

from people in their late 20s and early 30s.

which is remarkable, late 20s and early 30s,

but who are just amazed that they are working

with someone who actually worked on the He -Man

series. He -Man and Masters of the Universe really

were almost the start of a new part of a career

for me and I am internally grateful and honored

that I was part of it, having started with Sesame

Street, the electric company, working with Muhammad

Ali, was... probably build up for working on

He -Man, but from there I just continued writing

and being showrunners and creating and developing

series to where now where I'm doing, you know,

prime time law and orders and all of that. I

feel that He -Man, a message to the universe,

kind of launched me into the career which I'm

still continuing to have. It's so difficult to

come up with one thing that is the most important

thing to hear in a show. The best thing about

working on an animated show is working with the

people who are doing it It really was a pleasure

on a daily basis to go in other problems all

the time But to go in and see a lot of people

working together doing something worthwhile happy

with it making a living at it and doing something

that was Helpful as far as the audience was concerned.

It was emails 25 years ago and people still remember

it I mean, how many other shows were around then

that people care about? Of all the shows I think

I was involved with, I was proudest of that show

more than anything else. I've met so many people

over the years say, He -Man? You were connected

with He -Man? Oh, I grew up on that. And gee,

what a warm feeling that is. It's interesting.

When I heard about there was going to be a documentary

made about the DVD, I spoke with some people

and found out that there were websites over the

years where people communicated on these things.

I feel satisfied with the fact that fans have

kept this alive because I have this feeling of

a legacy and I believe that what we do... We

have to stay faithful and that's what I like

about formation. We were trying to do good things.

It feels good that we did it and it mattered

enough that people want to watch these shows,

that kids have grown up and they remember it

fondly and it affected the way they do things

and how they think about life and that they're

still dedicated to it because that's what it's

all about in the long run is you remember what

was important to you when you were young and

you hold on to that kind of thing. We'll see

you next time. See you next time. Until later

until later so long All right, well I hope everybody

enjoyed that third or fourth part of the special

feature 16th. Yeah, exactly 17th 37th Yes, another

clerks reference two in one episode Wow So now

we're going to be moving on to the legacy segment.

Take it away with the awards. All right. He -Man

actually was nominated for two different awards.

They were both Young Artist Awards, one for exceptional

family animation series or special, and one for

best family animation series or special, once

in 1986 and once in 1987. So that kind of shows

that there was, you know, it was this groundbreaking

thing and people kind of were appreciative of

that in a getting awards. And, you know, we've

mentioned a lot of times over the first 10 episodes

of Tooncast that one way you can judge how much

a cartoon resonated with its audience and in

pop culture is how many times you see it again.

And I don't think this is a stretch to say that

He -Man may be the most referenced, spoofed,

spun -off, whatever you want to say. It appears

more in pop culture than just about any other

cartoon that we've talked about so far. Yeah,

and maybe that we'll ever talk about. I mean,

it's just everywhere. Because number one, it's

one of the oldest ones that we've talked about.

As far as if you want to go through the 80s,

it's right at the beginning. Transformers might

come close, but I really think He -Man even has

more pop culture references than that does. Yeah,

I haven't really searched for like... fandoms

are like spoof videos of him and that i've seen

more of those on you to book for transformers

than the human just you know fan made you know

bright lights up but you know as far as like

references in actual show we have the the the

this clearly has the most out of out of out of

the ten shows that we've talked about so far

into death uh... the show was so successful it's

one day spin -off series she represents of power

following the adventures of him and sister mattel

subsequent attempts to relaunch the human have

also led to the short -lived sequel series, The

New Adventures of He -Man, in the early 1990s

and the update of the series for the contemporary

audience in 2002. What it doesn't mention in

there, just interject real quick, it doesn't

mention that it also spawned off on its own live

-action movie as well, which is a topic for a

whole other podcast. Yeah, we can hit on Masters

of the Universe, since it is part of the He -Man,

She -Ra universe. And I think I've heard rumors

that they're gonna do it again. Yeah, it's I

don't know if they are not but I've heard that

too But anytime you have an animated cartoon

that leads to a live -action movie of any sort

that's kind of saying something Oh, yes very

much so and that movie was actually I'd like

to even though it was completely different not

in of the same Almost not even of the same universe

with all new characters and stuff like that.

I thought it was really It's I've actually watched

I watched it last year and I still enjoyed it

Oh, yes, very much so. I mean, we can talk about

that on the tail end. Yeah. But this has been

seen everywhere. I'm just going into a couple

things. I'll let you go into them because Steve

is messaging me. OK. One thing that Michael appreciate,

it's referenced in Knight Rider. I can watch

that episode. Dead of Night, a he -man piñata

is hanging from the ceiling in a Mexican cantina.

It's referenced in Ghostbusters 2. I'm not sure

exactly how or where. I might have to go back

and watch Ghostbusters 2 to look for it. In the

movie Prancer, this is 1989, the boy who sits

on Santa's lap just before Jessica asks for a

Skeletor toy. You have, let's see, Saturday Night

Live. One of Will Ferrell's character refers

to himself as Skeletor. A lot of times it's Skeletor,

that's the reference. Family Guy, obviously it's

in, Family Guy does everything. Stewie uses toys

to protect himself from the Tooth Fairy, including

manny faces from He -Man. That's kind of funny.

It's in, lost. In season three, Sawyer calls

Roger, which is a skeleton that they find, he

calls him Skeletor, because he's always calling

people nicknames, so that's another reference.

Park, Drillbit Taylor, House, it was actually

in House at one point. So it's also been parts

of the, obviously I remember the 80s or all those

different things that have been on VH1. Also

the 100 Greatest Kids TV Shows and the 100 Greatest

Cartoons, it's been featured in both of those

television shows in 2001 and 2005. It was spoofed

in The Simpsons, The Front. We see a clip of

the show within a show called Strongdar, Master

of ACOM, which is a spoof of the show. The name,

animation, and characters are all based on it.

Robot Chicken, which they do everything, Toys

in the Hood, He -Man and Skeletor in Traffic.

That might actually be funny, but whatever. there's

a lot of robot chicken. Yeah, we're not going

to read all the robot chicken thing. I will read

the last family guy one. Stewie just after the

steroids take effect, holds up a parvo and says

I have the power, much like he did after his

transformation from the mortal. Prince Adam.

In 2009, IGN ranked the series as the 58th greatest

animated show of all time in their top 100 list.

And as we said in episode 9 last week, the IGN

list is officially defunct to us. Well, we might

keep mentioning it, but the list is so skewed.

Just to see where shows that we cover falls,

but the list is so skewed from what is actually

good that it's not even friggin relevant. There

needs to be a list made of top animated cartoons

for kids or something like a top 100 list because

In order to get in their top ranking that you

almost had to be more current You had to be a

fairly new show and you had to be one that was

for adults like I mean the list is full of Simpsons

and Family Guy and Futurama and all the adult

swim shows. It's like There needs to be one just

for cartoons that were made for kids. Oh, yes,

very much so. And we'll make it. Exactly. Going

into the DVD releases, BCI Eclipse LLC under

license from Entertainment Rights. has released

all 130 episodes of He -Man and The Masters of

the Universe on DVD for in Region 1 in four volumes.

All four volumes have also been released in Region

4 by Madman Entertainment. Each volume contains

an extensive array of special features including

documentaries, character profiles, commentaries,

DVD -ROM features, trivia, photo galleries, and

more. A 10 episode best of collection was also

released in region 1 and 4. It's basically season

1, volume 1, season 1, volume 2, season 1, volume

2. And hopefully someday a complete series set.

See, I don't know if they would do that for maybe

a 30th anniversary or a 40th anniversary. I'm

not really sure. I'm waiting out. I'm holding

out for it. Well, yeah, I know, but you know.

If you're a He -Man fan, and I know you are and

you only have the first volume, you really should

go get the other ones or go find them online

because one of the most awesome things about

the He -Man and the Shimmer DVD sets, and I know

this is kind of trivial and people are like,

ah, who cares? The spines of the volumes show

a pictorial of Grayskull and Snake Mountain on

your shelf. Yeah. And that's just so super cool,

I don't care what anybody else says. What did

you want to say? I was just saying the four biggest

cartoons from my childhood, Transformers, G .I.

Joe, He -Man, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

And I'm hoping that Turtles and He -Man both

come out with a complete set series so then I

can have the complete series for all four. That's

what I'm holding out for. I don't know if Turtles

will ever do a complete series. They gotta do

it! The first few seats? It should be the van.

It should be the turtle van. Yeah, exactly. Just

to go over the special features for season one,

volume one. Oh, back page. Sorry. I was looking

at the smells. The special features for the volume

one set include two brand new documentary features

bringing viewers a comprehensive look inside.

The creative process for this landmark children's

animation program, including interviews with

the producers, writers, director, exports, and

more. The secret origins of He -Man and the Masters

of the Universe, and then the stories of He -Man

and the Masters of the Universe. You can explore

the beginnings of He -Man and Skeletorans. 15

of the producers, writers, and creators of He

-Man and the Masters of the Universe share in

their tales. This conceptual DVD documentary

also features never seen by the public artwork

and photos showcasing the genesis of the popular

action adventure series. Every one of these books,

every one of these sets came with two, what is

it, four by six cards that depict an image of

the cartoon. I don't actually have my He -Man

cards out. I don't know where they are. I know

I still have them somewhere. I just can't remember

where I put them at the time. One was done by

Alex Ross, one of the Entertainment World's most

celebrated painters. Offers up a slightly penciled

battle scene of attorney as champions and villains.

The second one in this first series, Bill Sankowicz.

I don't know how to say his last name. A top

abstract and expressionistic painter, Bill, spotlights

the dark side where they look at Skeletor, Evelyn,

and Panther. I'm gonna have to go find those

things. The DVD also features a full -length

animated storyboard with interactive episode

comparison for episode 30, The Taking of Grayskull.

There's 50 detailed pro-, you know, I mean, it's

the only differences on each set. Outside of

the you know the cards being different is that

there's that there's a comic -con feature where

they're at comic -con You know They're all just

so super awesome And I think one thing that we

mentioned earlier something that I really enjoyed

when I was watching it Was going in like I said

to each episode where they have trivia about

every single episode Yeah, see I know I never

you know I I haven't explored it that that in

depth because I'm not I'm not an episode -by

-episode kind of person. I'm a play all, you

know, I want to watch now. No. Yes. This is what

made me, actually this box set is what made me

not do that for almost every show I've watched

since then. It's because I got so used to going

back to the episode and reading the new trivia

facts, then watching the episode. You know, I'll

have to go back. And the only, actually, I don't

know if I will include this in episode 10 today,

the other feature outside of the four part stories

of He -Man and the Masters of the Universe on

the season two volume two disc is animating He

-Man and the Masters of the Universe, where as

the last major studio still producing American

animation in the 1980s, Filmation and its talented

creators and production personnel. worked hard

to create exciting adventures for He -Man and

the Masters of the Universe from script to storyboard

to voice recording to direction and animation

to backgrounds and color to editing to see how

the power was created. And that's another thing

we didn't really hit on the show topic on the

actual show or the characters voice actors or

behind the scenes thing was, filmation was the

only studio back then. that was employing Americans.

It was an American, it was never sent over, He

-Man and She -Ra, they were never sent overseas

at all. It was strictly done here in America

and it pretty much gave Americans jobs for about

one to two years. I mean it was another year

of work. It was just so, you know I think that

was just so so great and you know that there's

a lot of stuff nowadays that the That you know

is sent overseas and yet comes back great and

everything else, but you know i'm sorry, you

know i'm an american I think we should have our

own jobs Do you want to take that last part before

we get into the shira stuff I just I think it's

a good time to do the dvd releases real quick

for for shira Basically done by the same company,

got BCI, Eclipse, LLC, has released all 94 episodes

of She -Ra. Interesting to see, if you were a

big fan of this, He -Man and She -Ra, you have

over 220 episodes that you could be watching,

which is ridiculous. She -Ra only lasted 94 episodes

compared to the 130 that He -Man did. All three

volumes have also been released in, or have been

released in Region 1 and Region 4. Again, each

one has extensive special features. The way this

goes is basically you have season one, volume

one, which is 33 episodes, season one, volume

two, which is 33 episodes, and then just all

of season two is in one, because season two only

lasted about 28 episodes. A 10 episode best of

was also released in region one and four, which

I actually have the best of. That was bogus the

way they did it though is they they release and

there there had never been anything released

because I remember working at Target when they

did this they released the but the ten you know

one through ten best of of He -Man and Shira

first and then they went back and then they went

and released season one volume one and you're

like if you bought the best of you're like screw

you well like the the the the interesting thing

about the best of of Shira the best of Shira

is it includes The full -length feature of some

sort That's ten best episodes five of which are

really one story. Well, yeah, I know but I mean

for me for that when I first saw that in Best

Buy when I went, you know I was looking through

Best Buy when I still had money a couple years

ago and I'm like, oh wait What's this? Because

I mean I knew that the season one volume one

and season, you know volume two and see but I

hadn't seen them there and I was I just saw the

best of sheer I'm like It has the secret of the

sword on it. I have to get that because I have

I had never had it on DVD before I said before

and earlier in the episode, you know today that

I pretty much Watched the only VHS copy that

the video store had so much that the video store

broke just to go on the the special features

for the best of There's a feature like audio

commentary with Lou Shimer Larry de Tileo Gwen

Wetzler and Alan Oppenheimer. It's hosted by

Andy Mangels. And then there's trivia fun facts.

That's what it's called. I have the power. music

video featurette. There's new storyboard comparisons,

new sheet music sing -along. On the second disc

for special features you have a brand new documentary

revealing the variety talent involved in the

making of the original animated series, including

the creators, producers, writers, voiceover actors,

animators, and others working behind the scenes.

And then you just have some trivia fun facts.

You have DVD -ROM scripts for the five episodes

that are on disc two. I do I did grab the audio

for this brand new behind -the -scenes documentary

and that will probably be in this episode somewhere

down the line after this segment I also went

back to on on Target and I Looked for there was

a secret of the sword DVD. It was supposed to

be a variant. It was supposed to be limited edition

I don't think this is it the one that I have

but I have my my disc one of the best of actually

will not play anymore so I had to go back and

get this one which it's basically disc one of

the best of that's all it is yeah that goes right

into the DVD release because first it was released

as part of the best of in 2006 and then in 2008

it was released as just a standalone feature

without the extra episodes right it was a standalone

feature but there was also a variant there was

supposed to be a variant cover there was uh...

if you look on human dot or there's that there's

a story over there somewhere uh... where it says

that is supposed to be a variant cover and there's

supposed to be another features on the other

but i'm just glad that i have it that i can actually

watch it and it actually works yeah you know

uh... you know but again on the sheer a dvd sets

they form a i believe it's Might be Castle Brightmoon

and maybe part of the Fright Zone from the Horde

side, but they form a mural instead of having

the titles of each episode, or of each release.

They form a mural just like the He -Man one's

doing. I think that's super awesome. Yeah, it's

a cool feature. It's very, very much so. Going

back... The reaction I really don't care. No,

I mean the rate we've basically covered I mean

both shows were extremely popular You know in

the action figures they they were soup talked

about them. Yeah, you know again another comparison

I can make the only two swords I ever wanted

as a kid the sword of omens I wanted it right

out of the show and the power sword I wanted

right out of the show. Yeah, you know those were

so so super cool We talked about this off air

a little bit, but just to give you an idea of

the popularity, especially of He -Man. It came

out in 1983. At the time, there wasn't a lot

of new stuff happening. A lot of people were

kind of scared at the whole backlash of toy commercials,

et cetera. And really, He -Man and the Spectre

Gadget were about the only new things that came

out in 1983. He -Man went on to be number two

in ratings for its demographic in that those

couple years. It also not only was number two

as far as a cartoon goes, but it was number two

as far as a toy goes too. So it was successful

on both fronts. The only toy more popular than

it during that time period was, of course, Barbie,

which is understandable. But to be the number

two rated cartoon and the number two rated toy

and to break ground like it did and set the stage

for everything that came out after it, the reception

and the reaction is huge. Yes, very very much

so oh and the other we forgot to mention the

gross for the well the girl You know a lot of

people don't remember a lot of people that I've

talked to a lot of people that a lot of things

I've seen online Not a lot of people remember

that this was a feature film release. Just like

the 86 I didn't just I didn't know that just

like the 86 Transformers movie was it was a featured

film theatrical release and it grossed seven

million six hundred and sixty thousand eight

hundred and fifty seven dollars You know for

an animated movie. That's a lot of money in that

time period in the 80s of being an animated show

I mean, that's not how the bad total no not at

all But I mean if you take even you know some

animated movies today You know not you know obviously

like Pixar stuff, but if you just you know a

lot of animated movies today I don't think make

that much Well today, they probably I don't know

maybe they do I mean yeah, the only one that

you can I mean there's really there's not a lot

to compare it from from the eighties and you

can use the transformers movie you can use care

bears so like that which none of them can touch

care bears as far as how much it made but even

you know for that time period if you you know

seven million dollars is a lot for something

that was already going to be part of your cartoon

anyway yes very very much so it's not like they

had to go to a lot of extra expenses to produce

that and uh... so i think before we go into the

closing uh... you will hear uh... the shira special

And then we'll be into the closing, so we'll

be right back. Sure was a very fun show in a

lot of ways because it was out of the ordinary

with all these strong women. This was pre -Lucy

Lawless and Xena. This was sort of a really great

chance to work on a girl character that had a

lot of energy and power. So I really liked that.

Of course, you're not much of a lady anyway.

With He -Man and the Masters of the Universe

a huge hit on television, Filmation Studios decided

to create a spinoff series. Well, let's show

her our kind of punch, sis. This new show was

to be aimed at the girls market. But its crossovers

with He -Man and the action -oriented storylines

were designed to keep the boys interested as

well. Funny, I thought I just did it. Although

the She -Ra television series debuted in the

fall of 1985, its first five episodes were edited

together as a feature film called Secret of the

Sword. 20 years later, the talented creators

of the She -Ra cartoon are about to share with

you their memories so that you too can learn

the secrets of She -Ra was a series that Lou

Scheimer decided to do because the little girls

out there needed a superhero and it was timely

and it was the first of its kind. The little

girls loved it. She was magical and strong and

had integrity and beauty and grace and all that

stuff. It gave the little girls something to

look up to. And it was well received. He -Man

had changed and really revolutionized the way

things were distributed and the way things were

viewed on a daily basis. I wanted to do another

show to launch onto the back of that. And I said,

wouldn't it be appropriate if we could do something

with a lady, a girl, a superheroine? The way

we decided that Shira would be He -Man's twin

sister is that Lou came up with it. Him and Norm

Prescott got together. They put their heads together

and say, hey, why don't we do a series like He

-Man, but with a woman? And then Lou said, wow.

You know, let's make her He -Man's twin sister.

Now, through the two seasons we had of He -Man,

no one ever mentioned a twin sister. or any other

sort of relative. So that right away was the

first challenge is how did he have a twin sister

that he didn't know about and that apparently

nobody knew about. And that's when I came up

with the idea of Hordak having stolen her as

a baby and raised her as part of the Horde. It

was for the time, and this is what we're talking

about, 1983, 84, when this was happening. It

came at a time when doing a heroine as the lead

of an action series was just unheard of. I mean,

it just, no one did it. No one wanted to do it.

They said, oh, no one will watch that because

girls are not interested in action and boys are

not interested in girls doing action. And I think

we pretty much proved them wrong in all those

aspects and really... created a show that led

later on, years later, to things like Xena Warrior

Princess. Reading the Shira Bible from page one,

we are empowering girls. We are, you know, showing

how women can, you know, do the stuff that boys

do, or girls can do the stuff that boys do. And

that's what the show is about. And I don't believe

that the makers intended to hide that or mask

it or be anything else but right up front with

it. So, I know about proto -feminism, but it

was certainly a very female -empowering kind

of show. And in a way, it was really refreshing,

too, because a lot of the shows I've worked on

since have been pretty much boy shows, and this

added a nice twist. Just as you turn She -Ra's

power against her, I, a mere woman, can also

turn yours against you. Because She -Ra really

spun out of the He -Man series, we came out of

He -Man and the lead female character there was

Teela and she was kind of a real warrior and

she was impulsive and she got into trouble all

the time. So when they introduced the She -Ra

character, we kind of thought we were going to

have the same kind of character. But she wasn't.

She was a very motherly, very appropriate character.

She was very mature compared to, even compared

to He -Man. She was a fairly mature character.

Her alter -ego was very laced up tight with the

high collars and very proper. But She -Ra herself,

even as a warrior, was pretty straight. We made

the point in creating the show for girls that

we did not want... this to be, however, a soft,

princessy, fluffy kind of show. That we want

to take a feminist position with the show as

much as we could be in guys, which there are

certain limitations there. So that there would

be male characters, but they would not carry

the show. They'd be there in a supporting role.

They would get in trouble and the gals would

save them. They also wanted to make the show

lighter looking in appearance, more effects,

more different colors, a range of things. on

their sense that that's what girls respond to.

I'm not sure that's true or not, but that was

the theory. They engaged consultants who came

in and gave us the worst possible advice in terms

of creating the show to the point of saying that

for an action show that the character should

not hit anyone because girls would like to see

that. I think that anyone who's seen more contemporary

shows knows that that's not necessarily the case.

And our feeling was we should bring in little

girls to beat up the consultants. We then of

course proceeded to ignore that recommendation,

we were humanly possible. We kept her movements

very balletic and very artistic, but she never

stopped being a strong fighting character. Our

feeling is that both girls and boys and men and

women respond to good, strong stories about characters.

It was easy for me to come up with wanting to

do a show that involved a heroine. I was surrounded

by... females at my house. Surrounding was very

easy. There were two of them. My daughter and

my wife. My son wasn't living at home then. He'd

already left. And Erica once said to me when

we had somebody trip and fall in a show that

we're doing and it was the girl. I think it was

the Hardy Boys. And she said, why do the girls

always have to slip and fall and the guys never

do? I said, well, let's do one where the guys

slip and fall and the girls never do. That was

part of the motivation. We also done a show called

Isis, which in a way sort of is the same relationship

to the previous show which was Shazam. Isis was

the female counterpart and I wanted to do something

where there was a female counterpart to He -Man

and that's how it happened. When I first started

to look at the scripts and the development that

was coming out on She -Ra, I was really pretty

excited because it was really refreshing to have

a potent female the character who also had a

big heart and had a real sensitive side. So my

initial reaction was really one of excitement

because I thought it was something that little

girls needed to have their hero. So I was ecstatic.

The origin of the name. Originally they wanted

to call her Hera, Zeus's wife. But apparently

that name was trademarked. I guess Zeus was going

to sue somebody. And they said, well, we can't

call her Hera, so let's call her something else.

So Larry, other writer, come up with something,

is what they always tell you. So I was thinking

about it. And I said, well, we got he -man. It's

basically like saying he -he twice. And so I

said, well, we can't call her she -woman. That

sounds really stupid. So I was racking my brain.

At the time, I was actually reading a book on

Egypt. And I realized that the Egyptian word

rah for god. And I thought, why don't we call

her she -god, but we'll call her she -rah. She

-rah. And that kind of stuck. People said, oh,

that sounds interesting. It's kind of a little

off beat, a little Egyptian stuff in there. I

have to, however, be very straightforward. And

see that most of the credit for that goes to

Larry. We shared credit back and forth creating

different characters. He created Madame Razz,

I did Light Hope, went back and forth. But the

thing about the world of Shearer is it's based

very much on a role -play gamer's mentality.

Larry has created games, written games, and he's

a good world builder. That's Larry's strength.

So when we sat down to do this, he drew on his

background as a role -play game designer. to

then go through and give each characteristic

and each character their own powers, their own

strengths, where they came from, their histories.

We really worked out the background of every

single character to the nth degree. Because as

a writer, the more you know about the characters

going in, the better the stories will be as a

result. The idea that the villains would be in

charge was a direct reaction. to He -Man. He

-Man was part of the legitimate authority of

Eternia. So, in a sense, he was kind of the sheriff.

He was kind of working for the boss. I said,

why don't we do his sister as being a rebel,

as being against authority, and we'll make the

villains the authority. The villains have conquered

the world and she has to take it back. That gave

us the one thing I really like in his series.

It gave us big stakes. They gave us a big background

to work with and a story that could literally

have gone on for years, depending on how long

a rebellion takes. In trying to develop the Shura

environment, we always look for ways in which

we could spin off things from He -Man. And the

Horde provided a good way of doing that. It was

a threat that we had seen in He -Man, which was

out there conquering worlds all over the place.

So it made sense that if they are indeed out

there in the hard -conquering worlds, that they

may have come across a theory at some point that

gives both stories a common enemy and a common

threat. Because we wanted to have the occasional

crossover, and if they are both facing a common

threat, then they have something to join forces

over. Outside of that mainly, the story we started

to tell in those first five episodes was the

way I wanted to go. Great Rebellion, Magic vs.

Technology, it was all there at that point. Everything

we wanted to do with it and the backstory that

would set up eventually crossovers on She -Ra

with He -Man and other characters from the He

-Man series. She -Ra and Adora as characters

were kind of like sisters. They weren't really

like the same person. They were like sisters

who had different aspects of the way to be in

that world. And so, in a way, when you wrote

about, when I wrote at least about Adora, I wasn't

thinking about Shira. I was thinking about another

character. And when I wrote about Shira, that

was the character. And of course, she was much

more heroic and... bold than Adora. But Adora

could do a lot of stuff herself. She was swinging

from branches and poles and rescuing people all

in her own persona. So they shared that little

bit of stuff. I really liked the scenes and the

expressions where Shira really took on a human

personality. There was a scene in one of the

shows where she was, you know, she was He -Man's

sister, so there wasn't as many shows where she

was flirty as some of the other characters were.

But there was a great show where she turned around

and looked at somebody over her shoulder, and

it had this really kind of softly attractive

look, you know, she was really... It was one

of those moments when Cheryl really looked pretty

in the show. And so I took that drawing that

year. I actually have it in my portfolio still,

as I carry just a few filmation drawings in my

portfolio, and that's one of them. I actually

quite like the character of Adora. She was very

capable, very smart, as opposed to Adam, who

was kind of a doofus in many respects. She was

very capable. There was just something about

the character that resonated with me that I liked

quite a bit. I loved the character designs. She

had really smart eyes, which I thought was terrific,

as did She -Ra. Character -wise, there really

wasn't much difference between them. She -Ra

was just Adora with the powers, whereas Adam

was the coward and the guy who ran away who became

He -Man. She just became more of herself. That's

kind of the cool thing about it, is that when

she accepted her own power, she just became more

of herself. which I think there in lay the lesson.

When you accept who what you are, power results

and confidence results. So I think that having

her that much in line with her original personality

served the character better than a massive transformation.

That was lucky. Now to even the odds a little

bit. For the honor of Grayskull! I thought the

transformation of She -Ra was really good. It

brought in the same elements as He -Man. It's

what the kids wanted to see by her raising her

sword and her becoming from Adora to She -Ra.

She did the same things He -Man did, which was

very popular. Little boys were running around

raising their sword, yelling, I am He -Man. And

little girls were running around yelling, I am

She -Ra. And the kids really liked it a lot.

And I thought it came out really nice. I was

always surprised when they said that a lot of

people just dug the transformation seat. They're

just like, you know, when she used to, like,

transfer, you know, when she would change it

to Shira, like, everybody would, like, dance,

like, da -da -da -da -da -da -da, you know, and

do the whole, like, sort of routine. And it was,

like, a big favorite with kids. That's my dance.

Da -da -da -da -da. Yes, they rotoscoped me for

Shira. Da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da. One of

the things that... we always ended up needing

to do was making sure she was always looking

proper and she was in this kind of tennis outfit

leaping around off of a flying horse and so you

can imagine it was a challenge to make her skirts

always appropriate and make her look good and

still make her always looked animated. So somehow

or another I got dubbed as the flying nun of

the animation department because I was always

working to try and keep Shira's dignity intact

in her character. I think Shira herself was fun.

It was fun to just kind of throw her around and

everything and the fact that she was a strong

female character and you know she had the little

skirt and everything she was always jumping on

things and stuff and like I said in the animation

stages we always had to make sure that her little

skirt never flipped up but it always stayed very

demure. and you know our head of cleanup and

I would always get into it about you know she'd

be like jumping off buildings or wrestling octopi

or something like that and that's great always

stayed you know modest you know which was good.

Male animators like to draw pretty girls so there

was always that and you quickly found out who

could do that because everybody thinks they draw

a pretty girl the reality is very few people

do draw pretty pretty girls and you know The

key was also to make them control what they were

drawing so they didn't get too carried away.

Everybody was just on program with everybody

was working on the show and the level of drawing

had gone up appreciably by then and people were

just polishing their craft and doing a lot better

at drawing things they hadn't really had to draw

before. Working on She -Ra had a very tight deadline

more so than He -Man where we had to do a show

within three weeks and it made it a little bit

more harder but just as challenging to make it

as interesting as possible. We had some great

artists on the show and we were able to bounce

ideas off of each other while we were working.

And that was also a nice time because there were

some really great guys who went much further

in the industry. And there were some really good

artists at the time. So I really enjoyed Shearer

as much as I enjoyed working on He -Man. When

Shearer started, everybody was kind of pumped

on it because everybody at that point had been

through the He -Man seasons and another show.

And you were feeling vested in filmation, and

you wanted them to do well. And then also, like

in any artistic endeavor, you start competing

with each other. You look at a board that Swannigan

would do, and you go, that's pretty good. Well,

I can do better than that. And you try, and then

he'd look at you and go, I can do better than

that. And you're always pushing yourself a little

bit. Or somebody directs something, and you like

the way it went. You go, no, I'm going to do

that. And it's a sort of. competition in the

ranks, a friendly competition that really makes

for good subject matter when you work together

long enough. You were just trying to do it for

your own sake and you just wanted to do good

shows and Filmation was providing a ground where

you could do that. I was lucky to be involved

with a lot of different aspects of production

not just the voices. and not just directing them.

I also was working with the writers when they

were developing some of the stories. I also got

to work with some of the artists in terms of

coming up with what the character looked like.

I sort of stuck my nose in about everything.

I mean, there is no doubt I was in a very unique

position being the daughter of the boss. When

we started Cira, we did a five -parter, too.

kick it off. That was going to be shown, you

know, right through the week. It was kind of

a big release and then Filmation decided to cut

that five episodes down to a hundred minutes

and release it as The Secret of the Sword. I'm

extremely proud of the family reunion part of

Secret of the Sword because it was a sentimental

piece and I thought it played fairly well. Sentimental

pieces are not something you often do in kids

shows. And maybe you know, maybe we should do

a little bit more and we'd have more families

together The Secret of the Sword was a really

fun experience for all of us because we got a

chance to sort of taste the big screen without

really spending big screen bucks, but bringing

a really important character to the audience.

We did have a special premiere that we had at

the Motion Picture Academy in Hollywood. Really,

really fun. It was really exciting to see the

picture on the big screen. It was just a really

heady, thrilling thing. And then, of course,

for me to see my music on a big screen in a big

theater, I mean, my mom was like, oh my gosh,

I walked into the theater and hear your voice.

And it's like, oh my gosh. It was really very

thrilling. The first time I remember seeing my

first She -Ra, I was just elated. It was just

a beautiful job they had done. The transformations

came out good. Acting came out good. The colors

came out nicer than I thought they were going

to come out. Everything came out really nice.

And I go, Here's another hit show for Filmation.

This is going to be great. And sure enough, it

ran for two seasons. My whole life is changed

because of this sword. I know. And you should

give yourself some time to think things over.

Indeed, with the debut of She -Ra, Princess of

Power in syndication in September 1985, Filmation

had a heroic new hit on their hands. She -Ra

was just a continuation of the success that He

-Man was. The show did extraordinarily well.

She -Ra really did something wonderful for the

audience. Boys liked her. Girls loved her. I

think She -Ra was really very special because

it was both an action show, and I think it was

really important for girls to see that, you know,

women can get out there and be active and powerful

physically. But there also was a very huge component

of the nurturing and the emotional side to the

She -Ra character. So I think she really was

a perfect blend of both action and heart. And

I think that's a key to her success. My sort

of final thought on Shira that I would say is

that I have to carry a portfolio around to look

for work and I don't usually include much TV

work in it because... TV work normally won't

get you jobs in commercials and feature work,

but the three drawings I do carry are of Shira

looking back over her shoulder, Tila laughing,

and a drawing of the sorceress. So sort of of

all the shows I worked on, He -Man and Shira

have stayed with me out of my TV era the most.

They're my favorite characters, those superhero

girls. It's very difficult to really believe

how these characters live. I mean, I went to

Comic -Con. You know, this is 1981, 82, 83 that

we did. This is over 20 years ago, almost 25

years ago. I mean, that audience that watched

that, I mean, they were adults. They came up

to the stand. They were so thrilled by the fact

that there was somebody there who had touched

their hearts earlier. The new release of She

-Ra is... I was surprised. I was surprised that

after all these years, there's still a fan base

out there, but there is, because I hear from

them. I get emails about the shows and stuff,

and that's great. We've certainly put our heart

and soul into it, and the fact that it's been

recognized is very, very nice. I'm really surprised

that the fans have been that loyal to the series

these years. It hasn't been out in syndication,

hasn't been out on video. But the fans still

remember the show and still love it, which to

me is just great. They enjoyed it enough to keep

it going. And I'm glad that this boxed set of

DVDs, we get a chance to relive those shows again.

Because there were some really nice episodes.

They were fun, they were entertaining, they were

very pro everything. And you know, before Xena,

there was She -Ra. So I'm glad the fans have

kept it alive. I really want to thank the people

who watched the show. for making my life better

in many, many ways, but mostly emotionally and

with the feeling that I've done something that's

helped somebody someplace. I hope that the children

of the people who buy these, and because I'm

sure that most of these people who buy these

will have been fans of the show or grown up seeing

the show or having it touch their lives someplace,

I hope their children enjoy it as much as their

parents did. For all the little girls out there,

I'm just really glad to have been part of She

-Ra and to have them see that they can be whoever

they want to be, that they don't have to be delegated

to some sort of female role. And that's sort

of been a very important aspect of my life, period,

is to break the moles of what a female should

be able to do. I was raised to be able to do

anything, and so... I think she was part of that

kind of feeling, that kind of thing for little

girls. So I champion any of the stories that

let little girls be bigger than they think they

can be and be better than they think they can

be. So that's where my heart lies. Somewhere

out there someone needs me I don't know how or

where but believe me I walk the universe to find

her For better or for worse beside And that's

it, we're gonna, well I guess we can go to the

final memories really quick before we get into

the actual closing. For me, overall, outside

the fact that my father back in 1986 was a dumb

bastard for throwing out all my toys, He -Man

was probably one of my number one favorite shows.

Secret of the Sword is right up there for me

with Transformers the movie, 86 version. uh...

you know those were the two vhs is that i had

my mom rent over and over and over again to the

point where i think i actually broke both of

them i i i i know i know i broke the uh... the

secret of the sort of one from not not being

able to play anymore i'm not sure what the transformers

one but you know he manages something so super

cool if i ever have kids they will be watching

it uh... or at least i will try to get them into

watching it it's uh... again you know he's just

you can't say super awesome super cool you know

we call uh... outrageous whatever uh... enough

when talking about this the series between him

and and shira And I think what gets it for me

the most is what it meant for everything else

that came after it. I mean, I know I've mentioned

it a couple times. You know, it's what started

it all. It was the first toy I think I ever had

as far as action figures go. It was one of the

first cartoons that I got big into. And it just,

it meant so much. There is no, all these other

shows that we're talking about in Tooncast, or

not all of them, but a lot of them without He

-Man being successful. Something else would have

had to come along and been just as successful

as He -Man to break that mold and who knows what

that would have been or how long it would have

taken. Oh yes, very, very much so. I actually,

just going still on the final thoughts here,

I did not actually know that Paul Dini started

out at Filmation, at He -Man, as a staff writer.

I thought he started out with Tiny Toons and

then obviously he went into Animaniacs and then

obviously Batman, Superman. So you have all that

stuff that this guy got his experience in He

-Man. You got the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

with the guy getting experience at He -Man. Alright,

so that is all for this episode of Tooncast.

Please join us next time when we will possibly

be discussing Chippendale's Rescue Rangers. If

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name there is GCR and Tooncast. Kevin's Twitter

is BossKDog. Mine is TFG1Podcast. Thank you.

Well, I haven't fixed script for... No, I just

thank you for remembering my Twitter name. When

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.com. For now, I am TFG1Mike with... Kevin, BossKDog.

Thank you for listening. Until next time.