Love For New Adventures of He-Man
Spotlight on Mattel’s New Adventures of HeMan Masterverse figures. These are absolutely fantastic and I hope fans will go out of their ways to grab them. A very very under appreciated era that doesn’t get enough love. These look great on display! Glad we finally got such great representations of these designs! Mattel has been killing it with the Masterverse line lately and including many eras and different interpretations of HeMan is certainly a big reason why. It’s nice to have a variety of universes and characters to pull from, especially when it’s less than popular characters. Fans like me, while it may be a smaller minority, usually always gravitate towards those kind of offerings.
While the NA era was never beloved or even respected as any other era of He-Man, there were still a lot of positives to come out of the toy line and cartoon. While He-Man looking like a pro wrestler left a sour taste in most fans mouths, I think that’s a plus. Admittedly, the ponytail still takes some getting used to but it was cool to see He-Man evolve and get a fresh look. I always thought his sword and shield were really cool. Especially if you remember the weird commercial from 1990:
Skeletor on the other hand has much more of a comic book-Jack Kirby influence look to him and was even given a Jack Nicholson Joker inspired personality in the cartoon. Now obviously it was a big deviation from the Skeletor we all knew and loved but it’s still a fun attempt to try something new with Ol’ Bonehead!
New Adventures may very well be the black sheep of the MOTU universe but despite not being a fan as a kid when it first came out, I’ve softened on my stance in the last 20 years or so. I feel like the toys could’ve been better but still offer something fun and different and the cartoon was certainly more entertaining than it’s given credit for. The story is pretty good, the voice acting is provided by some major names in cartoons(Scott McNeill, Grry Chalke, the late great Campbell Lane, just to name a few and the Mutant designs are a lot of fun. So if you’ve got 30 minutes to kill, may I suggest you selecting an episode to watch? You may enjoy it more than you think you would!
-Chad
