“Know, O Prince, that between the years when the oceans drank the Valley of Gnarl and the founding of Eternos, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars. Hither came Vikor, the He-Man of the North, black-haired, sullen-eyed, axe in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of Eternia beneath his booted feet…”

–Tu-Tor, Royal Scholar

“Stop filling my little boy’s head with all that nonsense, Tu-Tor. He-Man’s just a myth.”

–King Randor

There’s a persistent, but untrue, legend that Masters of the Universe (MOTU) was originally developed as a toyline for the movie Conan the Barbarian starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, which came out in May 1982. This much is true: Mattel entered a licensing agreement with Conan Properties, Inc. (CPI) in July 1981 to produce toys based on the film, and in January 1982, Mattel backed out of the deal.* A month later, Mattel debuted their company-owned Masters of the Universe toyline at Toy Fair. CPI then sued Mattel for copyright infringement and, for reasons I’ll discuss in a later post, lost the case. (more…)

As a kid, I loved the Buzz-Off action figure. The colors were bright and appealing, the articulated wings were a unique feature (and looked a lot more flight-worthy than Stratos’s arm-feathers), and the claws were cool…to a kid. But I’ll admit that the 200X Buzz-Off was possibly the best redesign of the entire line, pushing the insectile aspects to the limit. MOTUC is meant to invoke the original line, not 200X, so I’m going to review Buzz-Off compared to his MOTUC brethren and the general concept of the line.

As much as I like Buzz-Off, he’s one of the MOTU characters whose name I see as a potential stumbling block to getting a movie taken seriously. As “codenames,” this sort of thing works in G.I. Joe; it works in Transformers because the Autobots are ostensibly replacing their Cybertronian names with Earth names that fit their character in some way. But I really can’t come up with an even remotely feasible fannish explanation for names like Buzz-Off, Two-Bad or Clawful. I suppose Mattel may be trying to get around that by using the “real names” on the bios, but if so, they’re not trying all that hard, since–well, see for yourself. (more…)