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Of Baked Goods and Brawn

Who knew that I’d be writing about He-Man again so soon. But this particular page from the salvaged Colouring/Activity Book was just too good not to post.

It is the last page of a three page comic feature where you got to fill in the blanks in the story. I have left them blank so as to preserve the mystery and wonder of the unaltered version. (But feel free to print this off and write in lines as you see fit.)

Why do Teela and Skeletor look like they were sharing canapés and polite conversation until He-Man came roaring up in his Attak-Trak and interrupted?

And did He-Man really just say ‘Torte’? Oh yes. Yes he did.

Behold He-Man’s cake hurling prowess and sleep safely and soundly in your beds citizens of Eternia!

Skeletor’s nefarious dessert-based schemes will trouble you no more.

‘night all.

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So what shall we call his powerful sword?

(Image courtesy of an ace colouring-in book I found in a shed at my mother’s house.)

There is something I find oddly compelling about He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Sure, the cartoons were on when I was just the right age, and I had many of toys so it has a pretty serious nostalgia kick. But it’s not just that.

Looking over the line of toys and the accompanying television series (the other way around you might think? Not so..) even now I am struck by how the creators just came right out with it. There was no beating around the bush here, no time for subtlety or nuance. It was all absolutes.

I like to imagine two hard-drinking guys over at Mattel circa 1980 just sat down one night on a deadline and wrote the whole thing out on bar napkins. Then went out and bare-knuckle-boxed a grizzly bear just for kicks. Their thought process would have gone something like this…

Who are these guys? Are they important? Are they powerful?

Well they are the MASTERS of the fucking UNIVERSE so you do the math!
Looking for nice, strong, masculine name for your leading man? Well go no further than HE-MAN. That’s right, you heard me, HE-MAN. (Because just calling him MAN isn’t enough and MALE-GUY-BLOKE-MAN just doesn’t have the same ring to it…)

And it didn’t stop there, either.

A big beast-looking guy? BEAST-MAN. A guy who like ramming things? RAM-MAN. A cat he rides in to battle with? BATTLE-CAT. Bad guy who looks like a skeleton? SKELETOR. (Which was stepping up the creativity a notch. I bet their first idea was SKULL-MAN. Or maybe just BAD-GUY.)

An evil female character? Well, I like to think that at this point one of them just kept mumbling the name of his ex-wife. But just LYN by itself doesn’t do the job. So EVIL-LYN it is! Any ambiguity as to who’s side she is going to be on? Not goddam likely!

And where do they all live?

That’s right, ETERNIA! The place is going to be around until the END OF TIME, way after all us Earth-dwelling pansies are gone!

And so on, and so on.

You have to admire their chutzpah, really.

And now, in case you begin to think there was a kind of noble logic to their approach, here’s a photo of Castle Grayskull,

Which was, of course, green.

N.B Apologies if you found my over-use of profanity and exclamation marks in this post distracting or offensive, but I dusted myself down in He-Man talcum-powder before I began writing and the stuff had a pronounced effect on my tone.

No really, I did.

(Shakespeare mini-bust included for scale. And for its cultural cache.)