Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Blog #18: He-Man & Me


Anyone who knew me back in the 80's knew I was the biggest fan of He-Man there was. A few years back the entire cartoon series of He-Man and She-Ra from the 80's was released on DVD and of course I bought it. My kids loved watching them and I loved re-watching them. In my part of Canada we got He-Man on TV a few years after it's release in the US. In 1984-85-86 I got up every Saturday morning for 7 am and tuned into He-Man on channel 12 CFRN , and watched his adventures battling the evil Skeletor and his minions. Not only did I watch the show but I had almost all the action figures and toy sets. My Mom and Dad spoiled me as a kid and almost every time going to town I picked up the latest action figure. I remember shopping at the Medicine Bottle in Barrhead and Mom buying "Castle Greyskull" for me. My Aunt Margaret also bought me He-Man toys and usually had a new one for me almost every time I would visit her and Granny. I pretty much had most of the toy line at one time. The snake hand puppet you guys made reference to in the podcast actually was part of the Hordak swamp set, even though Hordak was never in a swamp on She-Ra. It really is weird they didn't continue the He-Man cartoon and ended it when they did. From what I remember it ended at the height of it's popularity. 



In 1987 a live action show called "Masters of the Universe Power Tour" came to Edmonton to Northlands Coliseum. It was a stage production that featured actors playing He-Man and She-Ra and a bunch of other characters. My Mom and Dad took me, my sister Brianna and cousin Lenny to the show. I was so excited. Lenny and I got our own He-Man swords, which were plastic of course. We even got sworn in as honorary members of the "Masters of the Universe" which was very exciting for us. Brianna cried when the show was over because she didn't want She-Ra to leave. I remember we got to go through a McDonalds drive-thru for the first time and I ate my one and only fillet-of-fish burger. 



In 1987 the real life action "He-Man" movie hit theatres featuring Dolph Lundgren. They made a lot of changes to the He-man story for the movie but the movie was cool for the time. It also featured a young Courtney Cox, "Monica" from the TV show "Friends", in her feature film debut. It has not stood the test of time and is very dated if you watch it now but back in 1987 it was awesome. 



I never liked the 'New Adventures', but I loved the 2002 series and the new toys being released are awesome. I'm actually re-collecting all the lost He-Man toys of my youth and collecting the new stuff. Most of my original collection was either sold by me in my teens at a Garage sale, or was destroyed by my Cousin Tyler and his BB-Gun. My favourite toys were Hordak, Man-E-Faces, Stratos. There was also a Horde solider who had a tire on his stomach, which allowed him to travel like a motorbike-robot. Can't remember what he was called but he was awesome.


 
More He-Man discussion to come in the not too distant future...


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