The Power and The Honor Foundation is a fan-funded, non-profit organization that is dedicated to documenting, archiving, preserving, and sharing the rich history of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and She-Ra Princess of Power. Their first product, The Power and The Honor Foundation Catalog Volume One: The Art of Masters of the Universe [...]
I recently had the pleasure of talking first hand with the three-headed weapon-making machine known as Spy Monkey Creations, Inc. Team members Jeremy Sung, Brian Stevenson and Bill Murphy are the minds behind some of the coolest custom-produced weapons and accessory packs for action figure collectors today. And as a fellow collector it’s always a [...]
Masterenglish is the customizer behind my April Fool’s joke this year, a figure of 339/1 in Masters of the Universe Classics style. To find out more about this customizer and his amazing work, I followed up the custom commission with a few questions. Masterenglish Real Name: Jon English Base of Operations: masterenglish.deviantart.com/ History: Born in [...]
PGPoA’s anniversary was December 1, and you know what that means–another interview with the Four Horsemen! As always, I want to thank the fabulous Foursome Horse-some for taking time out of their extremely busy schedule to answer a few questions. In case you haven’t been following it, the Horsemen have been updating their website, FourHorsemen.biz, [...]
A few weeks back, I had the pleasure of being a guest on He-Man.org’s Roast Gooble Dinner podcast alongside one Penny Dreadful, a bewitching horror host based in my own native New England. After a quick consult with my sources in the underworld, I was able to arrange an interview with Ms. Dreadful. Read on! [...]
You can read Part I of this interview, about the history of Onell Design, here. PG: So tell me how Outer Space Men came about. MD: I love toys that go all the way back into the 1920s. Anything that was a toy, I was fascinated. The Outer Space Men came out after Major Matt [...]
Real Name: Matt Doughty Specialty: Toymaker Base of Operations: Onell Design History: Onell Design is a small, family run toy company that strives to create an environment filled with creative potential. Building out just a little bit every year, each person involved in the day to day operations does their work with a passion matched [...]
Earlier this year I did an interview with Professor Henry Jenkins, a professor of communication and media studies who also had a lot to say about toys and their relationship to transmedia. In that interview he mentioned Jonathan Gray, another media studies professor who is even more interested in toys and the points at which [...]
At the beginning of this month, the famous toy design team the Four Horsemen announced their newest venture: a resurrection of the 1960s alien toy property “The Outer Space Men.” (For a detailed history of the Outer Space Men, check out the list of links at the bottom of the article.) I got in touch [...]
One thing I’ve always wanted to do with PGPoA is discuss not just the latest toys or the machinations of various toy companies, but also the nature of of our hobby and, in particular, the way the toys regularly intersect with media since the days of the “half-hour commercials” in the 1980s. And so it’s [...]