The Fall of a Toy Empire: A He-Man and The Masters of the Universe Retrospective | Part 3
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- Опубликовано: 13 янв 2022
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When Kevin Smith’s Masters of the Universe Revelation crashed and burned upon release, it was in some sense history repeating itself, because the He-Man franchise has crashed and burned before.
The most spectacular example of this was in the mid 1980s. In what felt like it happened overnight, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, and She-Ra along with them, went from being the biggest toyfranchise in the world, to simply disappearing. While it didn’t literally happen overnight, the air did go out of the ballon, and it happened unbelievable fast, as the Masters of the Universe line went from grossing 400 million in 1986, to a mere seven in 1987.
A collapse like that doesn’t just happen on its own!
We have already explored He-man’s origin and meteoric rise to fame, as well as the introduction of She-Ra, Princess of Power.
In this video, we will explore the days before the fall, as we go through the commissioning of the live action feature film, the real meaning of the Christmas Special, and finally, THE FALL. What caused it, and lessons that can be learned from it.
Part One:
• Barbarian Beginnings: ...
Part Two:
• She-Ra, and the Rise o...
Part Four:
• The Movie that Ended a...
All things He-Man and Conan Playlist:
• Conan, Red Sonja and o...
Additional He-Man & She-Ra artwork at 10:41, 13:09 and 13:28
by David Walch aka Zentron
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I’m 42, He-man was my favorite part of living and I never understood what happened... until now. I was so devastated and confused as a child. Thank you for explaining what happened to my childhood. Maybe now I can finally heal and move on with my life.
It's not what happened dork
Business Executive: They'll come for He-Man, but they'll stay for She-Ra.
Kids: I'm about to end this man's entire career.
Also in 1985, the Nintendo Entertainment System was released. If anything lead up to the downfall in 86, it was this. I was there and let me tell you, toys in general started to take a hit.
Yep, action figure sales peaked around 1984-early 1986, then video games really started to eat into the market. Also, older boys in particular favored video games, so cartoons and toys started targeting a slightly younger demographic whereas action figures and such used to be heavily marketed to 9-12 year old boys. Over the last 30 years or so toy makers have targeted primarily the 5-8 year old demographic. That's why GI Joe in 1982-1985 often had subdued colors, while GI Joe in the early 90's had gaudy colors
I'm surprised this wasn't mentioned at all in the video. Just looking at NES sales over time, it was obvious that video games were overtaking toy sales by a wide margin.
The last ten years has really been a masterclass of what not to do with a franchise whose core audience is your supporting pillar... And now we have a legacy example showing that times don't change and core audience is king.
Discovery and Warner media need to read your comment.
@Jose.A. LOL. Huh?
Agreed
Agreed x a million
@Jose.A. how is he a " disney lover " ?
Its insane that so many brand managers today wish to repeat this failure.
>Expand boys' toys line to focus on girls
>Boys leave
>IP dies as a result
Boys thank god no one ever repeated this after spending billions to acquire such an IP.
I'll always remember being pissed off as a kid that the MOTU motion picture took place on Earth.
"Our product line of creative toys is a huge success!"
"Great! Let's cancel the commercial and take them off store shelves."
..."Oh, no! Where did the money go?"
As a 12 year old girl in 1986, I remember liking She-Ra because she was pretty, smart, and strong, but I enjoyed the stories and action of the He-Man show more. I also didn't like the She-Ra toys because they were too "girly" and didn't look anything like the She-Ra that was on TV. Since the She-Ra show and the toys and didn't match up for me, I kind of lost interest. I think something that toy manufacturers, content creators, and society in general needs to remember is that people have many aspects to their personalities. I loved Barbie and My Little Pony, but I also loved my Star Wars action figures. I would have loved to have bought She-Ra action figures, but instead Mattel gave me another Barbie doll with their She-Ra toys. They didn't think that I, as a girl, would have wanted something different. Mattel should have thought about diversifying their girls line with toys that were for a different type of girl instead of just giving them more of the same.
I think that many of these companies, then and now, misunderstand girls the most. The immediately think that because you're a girl you must want girlish looking things. It doesn't occur to them that many girls also like very masculine things because it reminds of them of a powerful man in their lives, such as a father or uncle. Maybe if they spent more time analyzing their audience and not making assumptions they can see that.
@@cmbjive Yes, exactly.
too much Princess, too little Power.
@@cmbjive there was another toyline from galoob, practically another shera named goldengirl. And it failed to sale cause it was too barbaric and masculin for the girls. I think shera was ok as toyline, they just should have adapt it to the cartoon which they didnt. Toys and cartoon didnt match. I dont know why they gave her hordak as villain and not only catra. Probably cause they wanted the boys to like it as well.
@@motulifelikefigures1987 I think they should have integrated the toys more; She-Ra toys should have looked more like their He-Man cousins. Splitting your base and turning off your core audience never ends well for all involved.
So funny, in Germany He-Man was still really popular in the late 80‘s due to a stand alone audio drama series with its own continuity.
I consider it the best thing produced under the Master brand name, actually.
Yep, and that is why we have Anti-Eternia- He Man.
Wow Benjamin, das hätte ich gerne mal früher gewusst, interessant
And Mathe-Man, we also got Mathe-Man :D
Loved those europa hörspiele! Much better than the cartoon. I hated filmation. It made the masters silly. He-man was the most original with the first wave and the story of the minicomics. Never liked what came later and also not this identity thing with adam turn into he-man which was so stolen from superman.
I was about to go searching and I realized I wouldn't understand it!
I've said it for years. Kids don't buy toys, they buy characters. If they just shovel out characters without thought, the line fails. Happened to Transformers, Ninja Turtles, and more.
Not quite, they will buy GOOD toys. I loved the latter heman snake guy with the squirtgun head and the thing with the grappling hook that they would climb. I don't recall ever watching them on a show, but those toys were super cool. I also loved the insect hand puppet toys from Sectuars and never watched a single show for that, those toys were AMAZING.
I have to agree with you on that. I remember when I was a kid there was G.I. Joe. Every year you had about eight new main characters, and they were the focus of the cartoon. The next year you get another eight new characters and the cartoon would refocus on those new characters. I think that’s why the line lasted for as long as it did.
@@timothyjacob1167 Plus they kept re-releasing Snake Eyes- a smart decision!
@@Alluvian567 I'd say it's a mix of both. I had quite a few popular characters, but some of my more played with ones were the unknowns.
Not only that... remember that you got a figure and they never showed them on the show or if it was on the show, you could never find it! LMAO...
As a 10 year old boy in 1986, I distinctly remember this time. The She Ra show felt different than the He Man show. It felt like watching a girl’s show about feelings rather than a boys show about action. The same was true for the She Ra toys. Their “real” hair and brush accessories rather than weapons, not to mention they were sold on the girls aisle in stores, made them pretty much anti-boy by their very nature. I actually tried watching the She Ra show, but I just couldn’t get into it.
I watched it every morning before school and it was an action show.
yep, I went to the She-Ra movie and the one positive later that I had was gee if the He man movie was animated it woulda been better for it
yeah that's why I never could get into the She-ra toy line. Felt too much like Barbie, which as a girl I just NEVER could get into. They creeped me out. Never could play with human dolls either. My favorites were battle cat, the Popples, MLP and any animal based character. We had horses and I still would not buy She-Ra's horse companion because of the barbie like appearance.
Same here. She Ra felt like a girls show. Not only all the girls or feelings in the show, but the she ra orko thing was creepy and the color's used was very much what I would call "gay" today, but I didn't exactly know what to call it then. The only reason I even saw some episodes or pieces was my sister would watch it sometimes.
That's really common. One either do a full blown barbie or He Man. She Ra was a half way line which isolates both markets.
You hit the nail on the head. For me, I remember it being a combination of no new episodes and a lack of interesting characters in the toy isles. I would let She-Ra play in the background with no real interest except for the few episodes He-Man made guest appearances. I kept waiting for him to be a regular but that never happened of course. When the last wave came out Scareglow sparked my interest and my parents bought him for me. The rest of the line was uninspired: Sorceress, Randor, Clam Champ, Ninjor? So yeah, interesting figures would've kept the line alive for me even without the new episodes. After a few years without He-Man I got super excited when I discovered the New Adventures on toy isles but with no real push it was quickly forgotten.
As a 7 year old kid at the time I remember wondering why Jem was on the He-Man show. I didn't even give She-Ra a chance because my sisters liked Jem so much. I just walked away and waited like Seymour did for Fry...
I was a fan of a bunch of shows, Transformers, He Man, GI Joe, Thundercats, C.O.P.S. [an animated show, I'll include the show's intro], Bionic Six and a few others, most were short lived all were tied to toy lines and that was the problem with kids shows, none were in it to entertain, all were in it to profit even the successful shows and when the toy lines died so did the shows sadly, so many just awesome shows killed like COPS cus the real meal ticket failed.....if they had ran the shows for 2 seasons first and generated buzz maybe the merch woulda sold?? but also you have to figure not every family was rich, I had 4 lines going and it dwindled to 1.....Star Wars, He Man, Transformers & Gi Joe and I had 1 action figure for 3 or 4 other things too the one that won was GI Joe, even when the turtles hit I had Mikey, Leo, Raph & donnie....and that's it i think I had a Casey jones but that's it lol loved the original show, was head over heels for the 2000's show and fell out completely with bayturtles and the nickelodeon shows ugh
ruclips.net/video/Dy4YFDSDW4w/видео.html
Come on, if She-Ra was like Jem, the ladies would be sporting war-paint. :V
Too soon man...too soon
Good boy, Seymour, good boy.
@@darthXreven Oh man, you just listed my entire childhood in that first line... Man... I feel old.
The graphic you used for the collapse of MOTU is utterly priceless.
wish could take credit for it
@@MidnightsEdgeAfterDark Who did it?
@@NebLleb Its from a show called "Toys that Made Us".
@@grogc6942 Okay, thanks!
This is fascinating. I was a Transformers/GI Joe kid as far as toy preference, but I do remember MotU practically vanishing from toy stores very quickly. Kinda like what's happening to Star Wars right now lol.
right there with you but i did have many of he-man stuff and even want to get into thundercats but my allowance could only go so far. i mostly had gijoe aand transformer smaller toys but smaller price tags so i had many of them.
yes, it did die out quickly with kids hardly even acknowledging its existence post-1987. Looking back it does seem very strange. I mean, I can still find Disney Frozen and Moana merchandise in stores, and those movie came out 9+ years ago
HAHAHAHA Star Wars is far from fading out. Seriously Star Wars has been in production for 50 years and people still buy it. The top sales drop off as the movies fall back in time, but it still sells left and right when new stuff comes out.
Star wars sequel trilogy lingered collecting dust exposing no fingerprints on the boxes. Until they're mercifully put to landfills.
Star what?
If Andre voiced Audible audio books Books, I'd never read again.
As the world's foremost expert on He-Man.. I can tell you this..even though the drugs and women got to him, he was proud that he never skipped a leg day. RIP
This video is 100% accurate. I was a huge He-Man fan as a young boy. My grandma worked at Mattel and I had every single figure and vehicle. Once She-Ra came out, it killed my enthusiasm for Masters of the Universe. My sister took me to see Secret of the Sword in theaters, which was mediocre and with no new He-Man after that, I lost interest. It became a girls toy. The terrible movie was the nail in the coffin.
During He-Man's run, the father of the family that lived next door to worked for Mattel. The son was a year older than me and he even wasn't as interested in He-Man by the time the movie came around.
No disrespect, but if Secret of the Sword was "mediocre", then so were all of the prior He-Man episodes ( I don't think they were, though ). The She-ra story line was the MOST epic family drama in MOTU history: it was straight out of a dark Grimm fairytale, with an evil, bogeyman warlock/warlord abducting the only daughter of the king and queen, fated twins separated and raised apart, a dynamic all the more darkly epic and Shakespearean if the Keldor version of Skeletor is included, in which case Hordak becomes the great nemesis of house Miro, having corrupted the eldest son ( Keldor ), and then using that son to aide in the abduction of Miro's granddaughter, whom he ( Hordak ) then ALSO corrupts into an evil war captain. It's an epic story, and, as I said, Secret of THe Sword was one of the greatest things Filmation ever produced, and is the magnum opus of Filmation era Motu and Pop. It was the first He-Man or motu movie, and He-Man is in more of it than She-ra is ( she only becomes She-ra half way into the movie, He-Man shows up in the first 15 minutes and remains to the end ). It begins like an especially Epic but otherwise standard He-Man episode, with Sorceress of Grayskull sending He-Man on his most personally significant quest, and runs like a He-Man episode right until She-ra transforms, at which point it becomes a He-Man and She-ra feature. ALSO, with over 200 episodes a theatrical movie and a primetime Christmas special, combined Filmation He-Man and She-ra is BY FAR the single largest motu continuity of the ENTIRE original motupop era.
No one would ever make such a massive mistake by alienating it's huge built in audience ever again (cough, cough Star Wars, Doctor Who and Star Trek). Nobody could possibly be that dumb surely?
Marvel, DC, M-SHE-U cough cough
Mattel gets points for sinking their own franchise while it was still in its heyday. But they at least didn't have as many cautionary tales back then as modern rights-holders do.
As well as Marvel and DC comics in print. WB and CW in tv and movies. Disney is doing it right now with a kiddieish Boba Fett streaming show. I almost spit out my drink when the bright colored “Power Rangers” hover bikes with terrible cgi action hit the screen.
Transformers G1 comes to mind.
It's a problem not so simple to solve: there's a bunch of Karen in position of power in these corporations that are pushing their female supremacy agenda, they don't care if their corporation sink, they won't become poor even if it did.
Blows my mind that Mattel thought it was a good idea to make she ra its main cartoon when Heman was such a success. !
Well that He-Man failed in the 1980's was a big mix of reasons but the morale of the story is - "You try selling toy figures for both boys and girls, you will lose both" - Common sence.
Boys and girls are interested in different toys and I personally have never met any girl who liked He-Man, TMNT, Biker Mice tc-etc because they speak to boys. I know girls liked She-ra but never met one on any of my two schools I went to in lower grade school.
Any way, The Real Ghostbusters came with awesome toys in 1986 and TMNT was in 1987 taking over the scene so it was unavoidable to happen.
I have a female cousin who liked TMNT. She also had Barbies and other girl toys but I don't remember her having any She-Ra dolls. Back then it was perfectly acceptable for girls to like things marketed towards boys, but boys would be mocked by their peers for liking things marketed towards girls.
Some people will insist that these gender based toy preferences don't really exist and are imposed on kids by society, but it simply isn't true. There have been studies done with young non-human primates (e.g., chimpanzees) where they give them a bunch of toys to choose from and they'll pick the same kinds of things that human children do. E.g., the males will prefer toy cars and trucks and the females will prefer dolls.
@@KasumiKenshirou - Interesting. Yeah they existed, but was a small minority. Indeed true with the gender part, there have been made so many studies that have shown that boys are attracted to machines or more masuline toys while the girls have tended to more cuddling, sweet and natural toys.
Of course boys have liked to play with some girl toys more so then vice versa BUT they easier get picked on buy the other boys or even adults. That I have personally seen a lot happen.
History repeats itself and nothing is learned, the cycle continues and never ends.
As a child of the 80s I had tons of He-Man toys. I would not say that She-Ra killed it so much as many kids, myself included, moved on to Transformers and GI Joe. Then MASK and Thundercats. Toys were just ultra trendy and had peak marketability for one or two years before declining as kids jumped on the next big thing.
"Toys were just ultra trendy and had peak marketability for one or two years before declining..."
Star Wars: Am I a joke to you? Well, now I am, obviously, but two years? C'mon man...
Nearly the same apart from mask. Add in Ghostbusters, turtles and Batman film toys. Also beetlejuice lol.
He-Man was dead before She-Ra. We moved on to Voltron, GI Joe and Transformers.
It was Star Wars and GI Joe for me, with occasional forays into other toy lines. Transformers were incredible, but too expensive for me to get more than a couple.
@@hereticdude2788 By the mid 80s Star Wars disappeared from toy shelves completely - replaced by the trends I mentioned. They had a good run bolstered by multiple movies. SW toys wouldn't return until they began re-releasing the movies, then the sequels.
It would have been nice if you explained why they ended the He-Man cartoon at the height of popularity.
I appreciate this stroll down memory lane
Alienating your existing, paying audience to appeal to a potential audience. Sounds like it was a lesson learn 30+ years ago that corporations have completely forgotten.
It's tempting to grab that other piece of the pie but as this (and many other) examples show, it's not a wise decision in the long run.
Great video Andre and Tom. It's interesting that these clowns at Netflix didn't learn a thing from the 1980's He-man and it success. In the Kevin Smith remake they used the exact formula that failed in 1987. SMH
I think Lou Scheimer, and Filmation deserve alot of credit for keeping both 'He-Man' & 'She-Ra' part of the same brand more so than Mattel. Who were clearly at odds with each other, and were fighting tooth, and nail for shelf space. The 'She-Ra' team at Mattel really wanted to push 'He-Man' aside so they can dominate the toy shelves, and be 'THE BESTEST TOY LINE EVARR'. If Filmation was given the green light for a third season of 'He-Man', the momentum would've remained intact even with the presence of 'She-Ra'. Looking back on the 'She-Ra' toy line, you can clearly tell that Mattel wanted to make them look more like dolls to scare off the boys when She-Ra was already a unique entity that can stand alongside the boys. That's what sets her apart from Barbie, and a trait that she shares with Wonder Woman.
If Mattel had followed Filmation's lead more closely, I think the line would have lasted longer. Not indefinitely, all lines end: Thundercats, which helped put He-Man and She-ra on the back burner to begin with, also faded after 4 seasons ( put together, He-Man and She-ra, which were basically the same show with a shift in star from brother to sister, also had about 4 seasons ), and Lion-o had no twin sister to blame.
I started college in 1987, and with my job I had money that Christmas and planned to get my He-man crazy cousins some He-man figures. When I asked them what characters they wanted, they told me, "He-man is a girl's toy now". When I got a chance to baby sit some of my old regular clients (three sisters) their She-ra collection had added a ton of He-man toys, including a Grayskull playset. The boy across the street had unloaded his whole He-man collection on them because "He-man was a girl's toy now" (and he'd turned 14 and He-man wasn't "cool" for teenagers). So we spent the evening making up an epic story with this huge army of action figures.
This sounds like bullshit.
I'm a Christian moderate conservative who deplores the man-hating Jezebel culture, but that story you told is still horribly sexist in the worst way. Dumping He-Man because some pretty girls joined the lore?? That seems so g...
Wow I just got to say this whole documentary was amazing so much I didn't know but as a kid growing up with the He-Man cartoon and toys it was an amazing time and when it ended it was very sad.
My biggest complaint about being a lifetime geek(I was one before Star Wars came out). Was watching marketing people constantly chasing a new audience. All at the expense of the old audience.
Which is illustrated very well with MOTU.
Never let marketing people control the creative decisions. They may know their trade, but they _stink_ at integrating that knowledge into the substance of a fantasy universe, or any field of knowledge really.
It's not that marketing people do this on their own - it's that the bean counters in upper management DEMAND it to maintain and increase growth.
Instead of trying to extend and improve on what they have they try and turn it into something else to appeal to a more populous market - in this case girls/women.
Except sometimes girls/women actually like media made for men and changing it to appeal to girls/women specifically ends up talking down to girls/women thereby diminishing their interest and putting off boys/men entirely.
80s kid here, He-Man fan, LOVED this series.
Been watching since Trankgate, this is truly one of the best pop culture channels on RUclips.
Hmm... the big question left unanswered is why they decided to cancel the series. Didn't they want competition between big screen or small screen? Were they concerned that compared to live action, the animation might look cheap and start hurting the brand? Or did they think that they didn't need Filmation anymore? That they had served their purposes and it was time to get rid of them? Was it because Filmation wouldn't play ball anymore with all the half-assed new toys? Or was interest in the show declining? What were the ratings at time?
This is totally a guess, but I bet the original contract with Filmation was for two seasons, and neither side wanted to renew.
I don't know about this show in particular, but it was quite common for cartoons to just stop having new episodes created once they'd reached a certain number of episodes. The minimum number was 65 episodes, but He-Man had two 65 episode seasons. The thinking was that once they had enough episodes, they could just air reruns without the same episodes repeating too frequently. Older kids would outgrow the cartoon and younger kids seeing the reruns for the first time wouldn't care about the episodes not being new.
This 65 episode count is also the reason shows like Robotech and Voltron were each made up of multiple unrelated Japanese cartoons. The original Japanese cartoons had fewer than 65 episodes (and sometimes entire episodes might be eliminated due to censorship) so they needed to combine different shows to get up to the required episode count. (For Voltron, when they found out kids preferred the Lion Voltron to the Vehicle version, World Events actually commissioned new Lion episodes and abandoned their plans for the third Japanese cartoon.)
@@KasumiKenshirou That makes sense. Although it raises another question: If you want to grow your market (which they evidently wanted, as evidenced by She-Ra), why not evolve the show (and the merch, aka the toys)? Instead of more of the same ad nauseam, have the franchise grow up alongside its audience? The longer you keep them hooked, the more money you make.
Maybe it could have become a household staple brand, like Star Wars (at least before KK), where parents pass the fascination on to their kids over multiple generations.
Great retrospective!
I was a kid back in the 80s, and I distinctly remember not being a fan of He Man - mostly because of the incredibly wooden and stocky animation of the series. As someone who was a fan of shows like Duck Tales, Tales Spin, the Care Bears and the Smurfs, which showcase some amazing animation, He Man was just unappealing to watch. I'm sure I'm not the only one who felt that way.
Filmation was one of the last studios to do all their work in America rather than outsourcing to cheaper countries. As a result they took a lot of shortcuts (e.g., reused animation) to keep costs down.
@@KasumiKenshirou Interesting. Well, if that's the result, then long live outsourcing hehe
I am absolutely loving this Retrospective you guys have been putting out. Your providing information on the He-Man Franchise that no else has done before.
The girls toy division ruined the She-Ra toy line.
But the dumbest move was continuing She-Ra without He-Man. He-Man was the main atraction that kept the people coming back, She-Ra was a good expansion of MotU, but it was there to complement it, it could never replace it.
Also i never stop being amazed at how people let rights scape them and making up messes of what used to be simple stuff.
This is Wall Street in a nutshell.
In hindsight its a get woke go broke. Sabotaging the main brand to push an ideology. Get upset when it doesn't pay out.
I was 9 in 1987 and didn't have that sort of light switch moment of giving up on He-Man, as it feels more like I just drifted away with other things to keep me entertained.
He-Man is still big and always will be, the franchise is fascinating, unique and timeless. And don't forget to mention the amazing artwork of the comics and boxes.
Every time Andre says "Dolph Lundgren", an angel gets his wings.
🤣
That's Dr. Dolph, thank you very much!
🤣 I thought I was the only random person who enjoyed that pronunciation so thoroughly lol!
I had no idea he was Norwegian until he said that, and I'm Norwegian. Edit : saw their adress is in the US. What's the story here? He pronounces it as a Norwegian, not a swede, so it doesn't make sense to learn it that way for a foreigner. And he does have a Norwegian tone to his English, just less noticable than with most people
Speaking of stonedar and rokkon, the gobots toyline also had robots that just transformed into rocks around the same time
They where called The Rocklords, I had a few of them as a kid and there was an animated film about them too.
Nothing more exciting than a rock, wow, so many possibilities for adventure
@@RealRoknRollr3108 No joke. StiXnStones was voiced by Peter Cullen and Frank Welker
Yeah you can get the worlds leading thespians to voice a rock, its still just a rock...
Pfft, GoBots and Rock Lords were WAYYY better than those two blockheads Lol 😂
I can’t believe that you somehow got me to tune in for a documentary about He-Man, and I’ve never not once in my life been interested in the brand.
The funny thing is that this exposes the grain of truth in all these cries of “sexism”. The girls would have loved proper action figures as She Ra wasn’t supposed to be a Barbie. Girls were obviously quite happy with the Barbie dolls they had, so it was unnecessary for Mattel to attempt to undermine their own Barbie line.
Hmm... if I recall, the She-Ra dolls had the waist action which both would make her hair flow and also swing her sword depending on a girls preference. Also, the thing about undermining Barbie, as I heard it told, every once and a while, something would come along eating into Barbie market share, so the idea was to push out outside companies doing it and doing it themselves.
@@markriedel7760 Having some amount of action doesn’t change the fact that they were basically Barbie dolls. As @Amy Stahl pointed out in her comment, that was a turnoff for an audience that was interested in He-Man compatible action figures. You point about Mattel seeing Barbie as a potentially commoditized market is an interesting one. There were certainly a lot of knockoffs at the time that were eating into Mattel’s sales. (I had a lot of sisters. 😆) It’s interesting though, because Mattel ended up fighting back with specialized Barbies that were wildly popular. Only Mattel could produce a “Rock and Roll Barbie” with her own rock tape and have it stick in the market. My sisters bought _so many_ Barbies in the late 80s. So they clearly learned from the She-Ra debacle that making their own knock offs wasn’t the path to success.
@@thewiirocks How many multigenerational toy lines are there, really? Transformers became one, Barbie has always been one. Lego, hot wheels. Things not dependent on cartoons as advertisements. Just produce more He-Man eps, don't make crappy figs on the back end of the line (creating a really good idea is hard, actually, the last great idea from comics is Deadpool, you got to go back to the 90s for that, as an example)... I don't know even if more eps are produced if He-Man carries on into the 90s.
@@markriedel7760 Yeah, I don’t disagree that what happened to He-Man is not uncommon. The key thing is to ensure that the businesses learn from their mistakes. If they had executed better, it’s likely they could have gotten another 3-4 years out of He-Man and She-Ra. Certainly replacing the “New Adventures of He-Man” which had literally nothing in common with the original. Though it’s possible He-Man would have been a more effective nostalgia property earlier on. But that’s very debatable given how poorly those properties were handled in the 2000s. The He-Man reboot series was actually one of the better ones.
11:00-11:15 and 14:54-15:21 are- 💯
I was a child during this time and it's actually amazing, looking back, how the MCU, Marvel, DC, Star Wars, and He-man are making the same mistakes. What drew boys in just happened to draw everyone else in. It was the idea of bringing in girls by promoting girl toys as extensions to boys toys (it was their first attempt at gender neutrality) that things started to fall. Being 8-11 during this time, I got bored with He-man re-runs. I think I changed the channel or never paid attention to She-Ra (because I don't remember watching any episodes after the first 5) because we're talking about a time when Thundercats, GI Joe, Transformers, Voltron and more 80's shows than I remember (you can probably find on tubi now) that came on at the same time. I wasn't She-Ra's audience and the stories and toys were not marketed to me. I never wanted a She-Ra action figure and I never knew a boy that actually wanted one either.
But, then they brought He-man back on tv (don't know how many parts this series will have, maybe a discussion in part 5). I'm quite sure it had it's fans, but I wasn't one of them. They moved to space, my favorites were gone and frankly, that He-man did not look like He-man.
That motion picture "film" was trash. I remember going to the movies to watch it and 20 minutes in, I was ready to leave. I wasn't the only one either. It was a group event and I still remember asking "Why? WTH did I just watch? That was probably one of the worst film I've seen in my life (little did I know that other contenders would come along)."
That Christmas special was terrible too, but I vaguely remember not liking it. That motion picture...OMG, that was a terrible. 🤢
Wow! This has been a hell of a series and THIS may be my favorite video ever - great job guys !!
Love these deep dives! This one's personal as I was born at just the right time to hit the He-Man peak. Wore a plastic He-Man costume for my first Halloween. This whole franchise was baked into my unconscious mind as a young child. Fascinating to learn the many layers of stories behind it.
Really enjoying this series of deep dives into a beloved show from my youth.
Well, that explain a lot, and many people dont know about that, they intentionally sideline their core audience and character. And i say, i liked the Masters of The Universe Movie, it was a afternoon session in my country. The dub here was awesome
And yet they didn't learn from this mistake and repeated it with Revelations.
@@vincesierra555 true, but, like hoolywood, they never learn
What was the language the film was dubbed to?
@@Airoch4 I am from brazil it was portuguese. In my channel you can see Skeletor speech in portuguese.
In a sense, this is also kinda what happened with Nintendo, what with going more casual with the Wii, feeling the ramifications of leaving behind the core audience and confusing casuals with the Wii U, and finally hitting their redemption with the Switch.
Really enjoying This series. Eager to see the retrospection on the 2002 series. That was my introduction to He Man.
It going to be a really sad episode to watch.
@@DrLynch2009 🤣🤣🤣
Yet another excellent video from Midnights Edge. Your He-man coverage is some of the best and most informative out there.
Love the fact that the trailer for the He Man motion picture is using the soundtrack from Never Ending Story!
It’s interesting to get clarification and hindsight on something you experienced as a kid, even if you didn’t really realize it as a child. I had most of the early MOTU line, including Castle Grayskull, but then it was like you showed, the figures got really silly and the show went away. Combined that with the fact that GI Joe was hitting it pinnacle at the same time, and that shifted my interest quickly.
I remember the excitement of new He-Man episodes and visiting the toy stores only to have this exact crushing blow of no new He-Man 'toons and the release of She-Ra dolls which was never going to work with my collection of action figures.
I remember the live action movie being very dark and Lundgren was thought of as a villain, coming off Rocky IV. Also, he didn’t look like He-Man.
I remember having watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in '86 when there was IMHO an awesome MOTU float with actors LARP'ing in elaborate costume, and Dolph Lundgren interviewed live to promote the upcoming movie. If the movie had released that Christmas, I'd have been in line to see it. But the months dragged on, I got older and progressively lost interest. When commercials and trailers advertising the movie finally aired, they showed He-Man, Skeletor, and a bunch of characters that I didn't recognize and looked pretty basic, not to mention tooling around on Earth, interacting with teens in denim jackets. "Yeahh, no thanks," was my reaction.
Lol then he was in Universal Soldier as a villian not to long after. It was always weird looking at Lundgren trying to be a good guy
Extendar was actually one of my favorite characters. But actually more because of the mini comics with his origin and the origin of Dragstor. That mini comic and its art was awesome, especially the transformation of Dragstor.
This series is dope Andre. Most MOTU documentaries dance around hard subjects, or just don't cover the later part of the classic franchise in any detail.
Thank you - and that is indeed one of the places where we saw we could add something new to the documentaries already out there.
Why did Mattel feel the need to create a Barbie-killer brand, when they own Barbie? Must have had plenty of idiot juice added to their water at their HQ.
@@HenshinFanatic Because the Feminists cannot let boys have something of their own. It ALWAYS has to have a female counterpart or better yet, be taken over by the female.
@@Slitheringpeanut Or the young boys are already taught to be misogynists by society at large and have powerful negative reactions to "girl toys" while girls will play with whatever and be fine. If a Barbie makes you scared you probably still have some underlying issues lol. The people who actually make things suck are executives trying to squeeze every last nugget of profit out of something.
thundercats, the ghostbusters, the real ghostbusters, GI Joe, transformers, and TMNT may have drawn customer base away not to mention the endless Hanna Barberra catoons.... ;)
Dropping the He-Man series was certainly a bad idea.
Yes, dropping the series was the Kiss of Death. Although you can argue it was the innevitable symptom of bad management that didn't respect their customers enough.
Even back then-- 35 five years ago, forced diversity and needless diversification (let alone abandoning your loyal male fanbase combined uncontrolled greed) could kill a wildly successful franchise practically overnight! And to this day, big companies have still haven't learned the lesson. But we'll gladly teach them again...
It wasn't forced they just realized some girls liked to play with boys toys too mainly because of Teela so they wanted to add some more girls to the roster cause let's face it MotU is a bit of a sausage fest. It's ok when the line only has a few characters but once the dudes out number the chicks 10 to1 it becomes a little much. Hell the reason I like the origins line so much is cause it has like seven female figures released so far (Sure three of them are veriants but still) The problem came when the girls side took over the She-Ra toys out of jealousy that's where it started going wrong. Their are girls who are just not Girly, they'd rather play in the mud with the boys then play dress up much like Teela herself so the She-Ra line to them would have been a huge insult. But despite that sales were initially strong.
But we'll gladly teach them again...
Oh yes we will! Preach it.
Nothing you said is true. MOTU was a GenX toyline; we liked She-Ra. Fucking incels lol
@@OtherDASlike morons
@@Fenris30sure it was forced. She’ra wasn’t popular at all but they had to try and force women or girls into it. Girls then like my little pony, strawberry shortcake and care bear but they didnt like girls being feminine. Nobody gave a fuck about teela lol
I think you nailed it. Great series, sounds like you may have been a fan as a kid, like me!
A lot of franchises tend to failed because they tried to aim for girls while sidelining boy. If they want to succeed, they need to aim solely directly for boys and men then the girls and women will eventually join the fandom.
It wouldn't have hurt to specifically target at the 33% of girls who were already watching MoTU, rather than trying to 'expand the audience' that would have grown organically, without drastically changing things for the sake of it.
Nothing wrong with trying to expand your audience. The problem comes when you drop your existing audience in chasing a new, potential audience.
@@MasonDixonAutistic Those 33% Girls already liked the series as is. Probably had Barbie and didn't want MOTU Barbie, but a few more Female figures for He-Man. But they ditched this 33% as well. they didn't go from 400 mil to 7 mil with that 33%...no they ditched them too.
Sailor Moon succeeded while ostensibly targeting girls, but using boy-appeal elements as well, such as tried-and-true action and shonen tropes.
@@fattiger6957 Absolutely. They should have kept the He-Man line and instead of introducing a additional (but 100% girl) toy line, they should have just added some more female MotU characters. So Boys and girls could have played together. Synergy is the key here, not unneccessary competition.
Let's not forget that the He-Man toys didn't keep up with the competition. Compared to the likes of G.I. Joe (Action Force in the U.K), M.A.S.K and Transformers, the He-Man toys were pretty basic, they felt like Duplo compared to Lego. Then as Mattel just seemed to pull random characters out of their backsides to fill the toy lines and the cartoons stopped it wasn't even a conscious decision to stop playing with the He-Man toys, there were just so many better choices on the market.
She-Ra was definitely another nail in the coffin though. I remember watching the crossover episodes for He-Man, and then after those aired it just felt like a fantasy Barbie series, and so I stopped watching. The live-action movie kinda finished off all hope for me, it was terrible, when I saw the trailers for Smith's 'Revelation' I was hopeful...right up until it became obvious it was the Masters of the Non-Binary Universe: Teela Show. Although, I must say, I loved the original Teela character, and the Sorceress, both great examples of well written female characters.
I don’t agree. Simplicity doesn’t make a toy bad. Is the concept and the character of the action figure that sells. TMOTU had everything a kid would want in a toy. Muscles, weapons, vivid colors, a great cartoon and odf course THE POWER! They ruined it by introducing shera. That’s it.
GI joe was only popular in the US. In the rest of the world he man kept selling until 1989/90.
I managed the toy department in a department store during the time of He-Man, G.I. Joe and Transformers. There was a glut of action figures. One thing I noticed is that with every shipment there was few of the most popular like He-Man and too many less popular figures. By the late 80's Nintendo and Sega took over and boys in particular stopped buying action figures. As for Filmation they were going bankrupt as well as Sunbow who produced G.I. Joe and Transformers. Prior to Cartoon Network a lot of television stations stopped airing cartoons.
As a kid I remember my favorite characters being hard to find.
@@manmadeaids When all the action figures arrived each box had limited popular figures.
@@DarthSideous63 Your comment is spot on and brought back memories of going store to store to find certain characters. Then when I was six and got an NES all I wanted for Xmas and birthdays were nintendo games. I liked She ra the cartoon but no way in hell was I going to play with the toys.
Love the work you are doing on this. Keep it going. We are all, in our hearts, Masters of the Universe.
Wow... history repeated itself HARD, and the rights-holders learned NOTHING.
Also, I hope we'll get to see the 2002 series in this series eventually.
In summary: He-Man failed because Mattel abruptly canceled the cartoon, and boy fans of He-Man felt insulted that She-Ra got new episodes but not He-Man.
No, I remember just not caring anymore. Also the toys got wierd looking and never heard of them. I didn't even know much about SheRa except that it was similar but it didn't like it for various reasons. For me Transformers became much more interesting too.
Not insulted so much as they lost interest. The show that kept excitement high wasn't there anymore.
At that time slot in the L.A. Area, it ran against Voltron in '84 and Thundercats in '85. This meant I was only going to watch He-Man during the commercial breaks.
I was really into MOTU toys and I remember this time well. This is a great video, you really capture the events well.
That all played out pretty much as I remember it playing out.
That Castle Greyskull build I'm making reminds me of my wish I had, well me and my Sister both had as we were fans.
She got She-Ra and Swiftwind, and Teela as i recall but she didn't like the other figures in that line. She thought they looked dumb. Even the headpiece that came with She-Ra looked stupid and Nothing like the cartoon either.
We noticed quite plainly when the Power Hour had only MOTU Reruns and only New She-Ra episodes. What we Wanted were More crossover stories and more MOTU to Coincide with the other show.
They were Twin Siblings, Brother and Sister and That was an aspect to it that actually had my sis and I Playing together even though I was older by 4 years.
But that Overlapping story period was really Short and soon afterward we stopped playing together because we weren't inspired by the cartoon anymore.
The movie looking practically Nothing like the cartoon or the toys didn't help, its story not set in Eternia, so few characters from the show and toys. Some Neat looking characters killed off immediately, dumb dialogue etc We Noticed as kids and it was a turn off.
But around the same time also came other toys that would compete for kids attentions, and 1984 saw the debut of the Transformers toyline, followed by the Marvel 4 issue limited series guest starring the Newly Minted Symbiote Suited Spiderman Fresh out of Secret Wars in the 3rd Issue where he Webs Up and Immobilizes Megatron on the cover.
G.I.Joe followed Transformers soon after as the Toy Market was now Legally Open to use animation to sell toylines from and the Gates MOTU had trailblazed through were left wide open.
M.A.S.K., Visionaries, Thundercats, Silverhawks, Robotech, Voltron...Even Care Bears and Gummie Bears all that stuff began to steal the show from MOTU and She-Ra.
For us kids it was like if Mattel isn't gonna take these things as seriously as we kids do, we'll just go to whichever Other things we liked as kids that WERE Taking their Stories SERIOUSLY as We did.
That type of examination and judgement Criteria we developed for our Tastes in entertainment really also Began with the Rise and Fall of MOTU.
My build is dedicated to That Dream of a Story built Equally around He-Man and She-Ra, not just if it were created for the 1st time today as well as a Mature take, but my headcanon for it is Based upon those Wishes we had as kids.
And Andre you are So Right when you mention that it all comes down to Non Creatives doing All the Mismanagement.
And Because Mattel Never Learned that lesson and have since really only Exacerbated the Problem the Kid in me and the Adult Artist in me Kinda wants to Stick it to Mattel a d the Various Rights Holders by simply showing a piece of Fan Art made from Garbage and Dollar Store Paints that already looks Better than anything Kevin Smith is able to dream up.
The piece is in Homage to MOTU, it's also for FUN, it's a Shits and Giggles project, its Art Therapy, its...what I like to Imagine MOTU's Potential in Live Action Could have been like.
Godspeed and good luck on your project!!
We’d love to see your finished piece. Sounds like what many have been after for a long time
11:58 I had to rewatch that episode of He-Man where he gave up the sword of power because he thought he killed someone accidentally and Teela was the one that actually stepped up to fight Skeletor. That episode of classic He-man is 100x better than whatever crap Kevin Smith put out
This seems to be a common thing over and over again with brands that attempt to "diversify". It's the same mistake over and over.
I lived through the 80's and I can tell you I loved both He-man and She-ra, but my biggest problem with them outside the shows. Was how the Toy lines were completely seperate. How She-ra wasn't an action figure like He-man, like how she just didn't fit with the shared universe that the shows had created. Hordak and all the male horde villains weren't even part of the She-ra line they were part of the He-man line it was confusing as hell.
It's also important to note because also companies keep making this mistake even now. If you introduce a female or diverse character into an already popular line that has a strong male fan base. And then instead of having them share the spotlight (Which you would think would be what equality is all about.) You attempt to make the new character take over or do all the heavy lifting. Then you alienate your already built in audience and they leave.
I get it.. These people want to prove that they can "Do it by themselves." The problem with that notion is that you have to actually do it by themselves. That means that in order for a show like She-ra to hold it on their own one of two things have to happen.
Either it has to been an original creation that had no ties to a much more popular part of an already existing franchise. Or it has to get extremely lucky and like Xena become way more popular than it's parent show. The Xena thing is extremely rare, and I think happened mostly because Lucy Lawless and the stories on Xena were far more interesting than Kevin Sorbo and his show.
And too be fair the main Hercules and Xena series were on the air together signifigantly longer than He-man and She-ra were. Them both sharing 4 seasons of tv together and Xena being on the air only 2 years by herself afterwards.
So there was time for the idea of Xena by herself to be a more tasteful prospect. The show Xena also changed signifigantly after Hercules went off the air, it's storyline going off in it's own direction less reliant on the old shared universe stuff.. Though it still did have that stuff in there.
But it's a rare occurence, the vast majority of the time. An attempt to take over a franchise seems to attempt to keep the core audience while not doing anything to cater to them anymore. It's weird... I don't see why they don't seem to understand that franchises are better if you respect both your old and new fans.
That you can bring in new fans but you don't just abandon your old fans. I feel like She-ra could have been on the air by herself.. But they didn't set it up properly they didn't give She-ra the time she needed to establish herself. And they abandoned He-man far too fast. It has to be a gradual thing not "Welp we have this new shiny toy... Let's just throw out the old ones."
Actually, Hercules was supposed to run longer but Sorbo bowed out to move on to other things, then Xena was extended alone after that. I like both shows, it is really personal preference for one or the other. I really liked the Cleopatra 2525 and Jack of All Trades and was disappointed when those shows were canceled early.
==
And they abandoned He-man far too fast.
++
Yup. You can't quit what drew people in the first place. You don't control the customer, they are there for that product. You can add more product, but getting rid of the old gets rid of the customer base too.
I'd also say that even though Xena had some really great story lines, it was not a different show from Hercules. both had the same cheezy action and magic. Terrific camp.
You fail to realize this was a malicious takeover by women. They wanted to destroy the whole thing. Women hate men and are demolishing and undermining everything we do at every level of society. They don't want equality, they want us destroyed.
Yeah! My man Stinkor! Missed you buddy!
In the 2002 cartoon his stink could melt rocks and was VERY close to beating He-man!
kids in the 1980s also loved going to the arcade, then suddenly overnight nintendo brought the arcade home with the nes, which made all the toy lines suffer tremendously , and since the home gaming experience taking most of the attention away it has never been the same.
There's no excuse for toys not looking exactly like the characters on screen. This general lack of effort lasted well into the 1990s. The 1980s were especially bad for this, but Disney dolls looked wrong all the way up until Frozen.
They had to simplify the designs for animation so that way it'd be easier to draw them, and the designs were altered in toys probably due to a budget situation.
This happened on Japanese toys too. While higher quality than the American ones, the various Super Robots still weren't 1:1 with the cartoon.
The new toys do, the problem is that they cost 300 dollars and more.
at the end of the day the only question I have is that. If mattel decided to focus more on she ra, was she ra making big profits? or was the focus purely an ego internal fight within mattel to prove a point?
The video states that She Ra was doing okay, but the bulk of sales was He-Man.
From what I know is that the Evil Horde figures sold very well. Ironicly they were a part of the MOTU line too.
i'm just wondering whether they had a choice in the matter. the artist that left may have had copyright claims to certain characters. and rather than navigate the legal nonsense around it they just choose to stop making new episodes.
I'm glad to see Midnight's Edge going back to what they do best! These mini-documentaries are fascinating!!!
Honestly, series like this one is why I'm subscribed to this channel.
I couldn't care less about the opinion pieces, but this type of fact-based docs? That's my jam!
Keep them coming, MNE, and I'll on keep watching them.
Snout Spout, Extendar, and Rokkon are all some of my favorite vintage MOTU figures. Extendar especially.
If you liked them, that's all that should matter to you.
For Mattel's revenue stream though, they were all a disaster.
@@MidnightsEdge They're all quite popular in the adult collector MOTU community. But yeah I have no idea how they actually sold back in the day.
But it has been explained to be before that it was less specifically about new characters, and more about the lack of He-man and Skeletor figures, as you also touched on.
Focusing on your core demographic seems like a no brainer. Yet here we are about to get a dc reboot that erases the two arguably most influential characters in the dc universe. The crazy thing is the animated dc movies are great. Why is live action so cursed?
I remember being a huge fan around 1985, and totally forgetting about it by 1987. I had no idea they stopped making new episodes. No wonder I forgot about it! This was before streaming and the internet. When a show was over, it was really over.
It was, and in those days kids moved off of a theme at the drop of a hat. Once the associated cartoons stopped airing, or if kids just got tired of it, they moved on and didn't look back. Whatever they liked when they were 7 years old was lame and stupid by the time they were 10.
@@75aces97 This was the epitome of releasing a film after the fad was over. By the time the movie came out, I’d completely forgotten they were making one! Movies were not promoted back then like today. You’d see TV ads maybe a week out, and possibly a cereal box, but that was about it.
I was a kid, and lived through all of this. My first action figure was skeletor. He was awesome! Masters of the Universe were awesome for about a year when they had unique characters that were well made and creatively defined, like Merman, and Beastman... but before I even entertained getting another Masters of the Universe Character, G.I. Joe 3-inch action figures came along.. and they were the perfect size. They fit right into your pockets, they were awesome because they had loose connections to real military hardware, and finally when we all outgrew the Joes, when we got our first air-rifles, shooting the G.I. Joes was much much more fun and exciting because they made realistic small targets, if you put a bunch of Joes in a tree say, you have your spotter, and yourself with your Crossman 1200, scoped, and knocking off Joes all day was fun and challenging.. Looking back at the Masters of the Universe at that time, there were all of these bizarre characters that made no sense, and they were no fun to shoot because they were too big.
She-Ra was a good show. The toys didn't land for me but a few years ago when Super 7 put out their Filmation line I bought the 7 inch She-Ra because she was an accurate action figure who matched with the rest of the line.
This cautionary tale is applicable to modern mishaps today…
I loved that episode of The Toys That Made Us. Mattel really spun their hay into gold.
When I was a kid in the 80's I wanted a He-Man action figure. I wanted the original, normal one. But as you mentioned, after a couple of years they didn't make it anymore. The only one that was available at the time was the one with the spinning part on the chest to make it look like he took damage. I ended up with that one as a consolation. Watching your video all these years later, now I know why I never got the original He-Man action figure.
Well, as a kid from the 80's, I remember the same sudden death happening to Transformers. Also around the same time as the animated movie. My memory is that I just suddenly lost interest not because they did something wrong necessarily but because I was growing up. I think the movies came out around the time a generation of kids was starting middle school and getting into sports, skateboarding, or baseball cards and Dungeons and Dragons for us nerds. Suddenly, banging toys around on the floor lost its appeal. The NES and Super NES was probably the nail in the coffin.
Yeah ninja turtles died off hard too for my generation. They tried bringing it back but the next batch of kids had other things that were more popular to them. Kids toys didn’t have the longest shelf life back then.
While every cartoon and toyline will have kids outgrow them, Transformers had some other problems as well.
The Transformers: The Movie jumped 20 years into the future and killed off most of the old characters (most notably Autobot leader Optimus Prime). The movie never gives an explanation for why certain robots are considered permanently "dead" while others (e.g., Ultra Magnus, in the same movie) can be blown to bits and then reassembled.
The third season of the cartoon picks up after the movie, which most kids didn't see. They were thus confused and stopped watching. Also the third season debuted with a five part episode that was animated terribly by South Korean studio AKOM. It had so many errors that some scenes ended up being so difficult to follow that fans were only able to decipher them many years later by examining scripts and story boards to see what was intended.
Transformers the movie was great and has become a classic.
Season 3 is much better than people give it credit for.
In hindsight alot of the storylines of season 3 were actually better than season 1 and 2.
A little more mature.
@@alphatrion100 I've seen the movie a few times. Some parts of it are great but there's way too much tonal whiplash from scene to scene. I mean, it starts with a planetary omnicide against humanoid robots, kills the series' main character, somehow shoves a Weird Al scene in there, shows the *survivors* of the omnicide getting eaten by robot piranhas, and ends with Rodimus Prime activating a magical item to the tune of a cheesy power ballad?
Parents sat through that thinking "These assholes just killed off hundreds of dollars' worth of the toys I've bought over the past few years and made my kid cry in a cynical attempt to sell *replacement* toys. I'm done."
@@budwyzer77
Still its a classic and it sells toys to this day. Have you seen haslab unicron? A six hundred dollar toy sold out because of a 35 year old movie.
Very interesting, now i know why it seemed to drop of a cliff back then.
And while the background reason changed (internal competion rather than social politics) it is funny how that is the same sutuation as a lot of modern productions.
Funny how this lesson gets either never learned or so easily forgotten with time/success.
those who learn retired and the young upstarts that took their place were eager to prove them wrong by trying something else: "Oh is that right old man? Well that was then, this is now!" fundamentals are always the target of those who want to make a lasting impact.
Yeah like feminist Ghostbusters, Bond, Terminator, etc...
I have 2 take aways from this. 1. No one seemed to care the lack of the 20 minute super glue sticky toy ad that was the he man cartoon would effect sales. 2. The childish reaction to killing a boy's toy line even if it kills your own.
There is a masterclass in how to attract the girl side in a franchise made for boys. That franchise is from japan and is called "Saint Seiya". Masami Kurumada the mangaka that created Saint Seiya notice that girls bought his manga and he added more emotional moments in his manga that not only elevated the content but complemented really well the manga.
A ancient old story boys/men have something fun.. And then they want it... And then nobody wants it.
Another broken franchise
I guess I was a boy based upon my liking of He-man over She-Ra. I never could get into barbie or She-Ra. it was either Popple's, MLP, He-Man, GI Joe and Transformers. Thankfully my brother was a sharing kinda person at the time and let me play with his until my dad finally allowed me to buy my own transformers and other toys.
My mom was more into He-man than She-ra. And was even mad when she thought She-Ra replaced He-man and straight up refused to watch it until I tried it out.
I never thought I'd be able to blame feminism for almost killing the heman brand, and yet? That's exactly what happened here!
Maybe not in feminisms name but certainly some of its values were what caused this. In competition rather than coorporation it doomed both of them.
Exactly. Modern feminist activism is the effort to sideline, denigrate, and discard masculinity (or if you're looking to be more precise, masculine tendencies), and it ruins everything it touches.
Feminism was at it's height in the 80's flushed off the success of the 'Summer of Love' BS that nearly killed America since, so they wanted their hooks into everything. And like it always has, it could never let boys have something without taking it over, or along side of it.
Doesn't matter, I already left the MOTU Fandom since it's toxic Filmation fanbase won't allow me to enjoy the 2002 and CGI He-Man shows like they're telling I don't have any right to do so.
Like seriously, I can't with that toxic fanbase.
@@kinnikuman-devilman_fan_2002 So? Screw 'em, don't let others dictate what you like. Their opinions are meaningless.
@@Slitheringpeanut Exactly lol.
Oh snap! Can't wait for the next episode, subtitled: How to destroy two franchises on one budget!
Great series Andre, I'm really enjoying it, can't wait for part 4👍
That oldschool "Filmation" opening of yours is awesome!
Yes. But also, as a member of the target audience who lived through this era, Transformers were just way way cooler.
I remember watching He-man in 85, 86 (I don't think kids noticed they weren't making new shows ) and wanting to get beast man or mer-man but the figures i could get were weird ones that weren't even on the show and seemed lame so I think that's why I stopped playing with He-man in 87 it was the product just wasn't available anymore.
Excellent series! Thank you Andre and company.
I don't remember ever seeing a toy line become as uncool as He-Man. My friends and I blew up Castle Grey Skull with fireworks along with all the figures. 💥💥
You blew up alot of money.
Damn, that's cold
There was a cold war going on and Lundgren's "I must break you" line from Rocky was a meme at the time. It probably wasn't the best idea to cast him as He-Man.
I saw it as a kiddie show with kiddie toys like Strawberry Shortcake which was marketed ad nauseum with likes of My Little Pony and the Smurfs. I was more into the more realistic looking Thundercats tbh.
I was fine with Dolph Lundgren being cast, but the movie released at least a year after it'd have found its audience and moreover, looked cheaply made compared to the high-dollar sets, costumes and authentic feel of the Star Wars OT, the original Clash of the Titans, Dune, or even the Indiana Jones series. I remember seeing the Cannon Studios logo at the beginning of the trailer, and thinking, "Uh-oh."
Ya know? This really brings up something a friend of mine told me when we were discussing a certain Disney film from a decade ago that was REALLY popular with boys and how it's sequel fucked everything up and how her SON noticed it and didn't like it at all.
Young kids know when you take something of theirs and repackage it and try to get them to take it anyway. They WILL know even if they're young. This kid was sharp and hated what his hero had been turned into and how the character he was told to like was acting and treating him.
There are ways that worked that can satisfy both girls and boys in toys and shows and what makes the whole He-Man/She-Ra thing so sad is that boys didn't hate She-Ra, but they didn't have anything they felt was for themselves to supplement it so they just went elsewhere when other options opened up for them (coughTURTLES). THIS also connects to the reboot of She-Ra, which everyone calls Nu-Ra but in this case the 'taking away' gets even more meta. In this case, LITTLE GIRLS had a hero taken away from them by grown ass women who turned it into YA drivel that was even less intelligent than Twilight or 50 Shades. Add in how everyone on the team pushed their gender issues on a show meant for LITTLE GIRLS, made it clear how they hated men and their inability to tell action and adventure stories and you have a failure of a reboot that Mattel didn't even give enough care for to make new molds for the series' toys; they were all reused molds of MONSTER HIGH dolls and I think even those were from the botched reboot of that line and not the better original ones (someone can correct me on this).
The lesson to take away is this; when you have one demo, it's great. When you win over both (boys and girls) it's better but trying to win both by pushing out the other only lands you in a state where you don't gain anything since you essentially just pushed one side out for another.
If there is anyone to learn from on how this works, it's HASBRO of all people and the success that was the near decade long span of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic series that is still sort of going on BECAUSE of how much money it brought in. We all know the story of the Bronies but what a lot of people DON'T talk about is how Hasbro DID NOT compromise their target demographic to please them but instead found a way to compliment BOTH in order to please the original demo (girls) and the adult fanbase who treated the series like an anime and brought in the funds for merch of one. Adults were bringing in MORE money than the kids asking their parents for pony merch but Hasbro did not throw them under the bus because they knew that keeping both would bring in more money.
To me it doesn't make much sense to look at the downfall of the original He-Man toyline and say that the same thing is true of the rebooted She-Ra. He-Man was made in an era when most kids' franchises were heavily gendered, even more so than they are today. It was aimed at a core demographic of boys, but somehow they thought they could retain their audience and their huge numbers by dropping the boys' show and toyline and marketing aggressively to girls. That endeavor obviously failed, and they also weren't able to pull in a new audience of girls to replace their original audience (in part because the She-Ra merch was designed more as a series of Barbie knock-offs rather than actual characters from the show, and in part because you can't summon a fanbase that big out of thin air). Basically, Masters of the Universe had a huge, actively engaged audience, and for some inexplicable reason decided to cancel a property that was still hot and push a different show that didn't generate nearly as much interest.
Contrast that with the She-Ra reboot. It was separated by decades from the original She-Ra series (and by over 15 years from the last appearance of the character She-Ra on television). Nothing was canceled in order to make room for the new series - the franchise had been inactive for years and years. Anybody who was a fan of the 80s She-Ra - or even the 2002 version of the character - had aged out of the target demographic. Perhaps this is going out on a limb, but I'd imagine there weren't all that many "little girls" in 2018 who were disappointed by a change in portrayal of characters who were last aired before those little girls were even born. Unlike the '80s She-Ra, the reboot was not intended to retain or grow a pre-existing audience of kids; its primary audience is people new to the franchise. It managed to find and retain an audience in part because both Netflix and Dreamworks ensured that their followers knew about it, and in part because many people found its story, characters, and/or visuals to be compelling.
(By any metric I can think of, it definitely seems to outperform both of Netflix's attempts at a He-Man reboot; it's also more successful on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes than the original She-Ra run. As we see in the video, the pivot to She-Ra in the '80s tanked the fanbase, whereas the reboot drew a healthy audience mostly from a generation too young to have been fans of previous shows in the Masters of the Universe franchise. I can say from personal experience that the reboot seems to have a more active and wide-ranging audience than the original does at this point: several of my dad's middle-school students are fans; my college-aged friends and I enjoy it; my fifty-something-year-old mother loved it; and a family friend, also fifty-something, said she'd been recommended the show by a friend. The only fan of the original show that I can think of is my dad, who's only started watching the original She-Ra in the past few years because of the hype surrounding the reboot. Comparing toy sales doesn't make much sense to me at all, since the original She-Ra's main revenue stream came from toys that spun off from a hyperpopular toy franchise, whereas Dreamworks and Netflix, who produced and distributed the reboot, make their money primarily from subscriptions and royalties, and thus made no serious attempt at encouraging viewers to buy She-Ra action figures.)
The bottom line is, as I see it, that the original She-Ra gutted a pre-existing audience by disappointing kids who were otherwise into the franchise, whereas the She-Ra reboot built a new audience from a demographic that was mostly unfamiliar with the franchise. I think they made the successful bet that they could get a larger audience by appealing to a fresh demo rather than a decades-old fanbase.
@@ct8398 The only problem is was Mattle still wanted YOUNG girls for their reboot which didn't happen. Instead they got teens and adult women, all who only came for the shipping. Kids were essentially pushed out of a series that was originally intended for them which is why the reboot floundered and essentially fizzled out. It didn't bring the sort of 're-emergence' like the 00s He-Man did which was at least successful in getting it's intended audience and brought in extra from the older fans who enjoyed it.
The She-Ra reboot didn't bring in enough of the wanted core demographic and told older fans they weren't welcomed. As a result, it had a floundering base and it's toyline wasn't even it's own; the dolls were all repurposed Monster High dolls and they didn't even make the entire cast.
The reboot feels like it was made to buy time to get the movie I'm the right hands rather than a well thought out reboot of anything.
@@SuperCosmicMutantSquid Why is Mattel relevant here? I can't find anything to suggest that it was "their reboot," nor that anyone (other than presumably Mattel themselves) much cared about what Mattel wanted. After Dreamworks acquired the She-Ra property, a Dreamworks executive who had been a big fan of the show reached out to ND Stevenson to request Stevenson pitch it. Stevenson pitched it to Netflix, and it was then produced by Dreamworks with Stevenson as the showrunner and Netflix as the distributor. Mattel may have gone through the "legal red tape" (17:00) to produce a low-effort line of toys to try to cash in, but that's incidental as far as I can tell.
Also, I'd be quite interested to know what constitutes "floundering" and "fizzling" in your view, and how you came to the conclusion that that's what the She-Ra reboot and its fanbase did.