Boys Are Attracted To Strength, Fierceness, and Superhuman Powers
May 7, 2015 7:37 PM   Subscribe

 
... And nude, muscular thighs.
posted by Zalzidrax at 7:42 PM on May 7, 2015 [5 favorites]




News at 11.
posted by clarknova at 7:49 PM on May 7, 2015


Oh man, those take me back. Also: Fisto. Ser Fisto.
posted by turbid dahlia at 7:53 PM on May 7, 2015


Masters of the Universe: Tom of Finland for kids!
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:55 PM on May 7, 2015 [15 favorites]


I really feel like I walked in on something dirty from this cover in the article...
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 8:22 PM on May 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


Funny, I've always found the superhuman powers off-putting. Unless they tend to be more of a curse than a blessing, a la the Incredible Hulk.

Fierceness, bravery, and relentlessness/determination ARE pretty likeable, though! The thing is, usually it's the Bad Guy who's fiercer and more relentless, and since you know he's bound to lose, ime he often ends up coming off as braver, too.

Thinking about what the link said about boys pretending to be or favoring the "Good Guy" -- is that just boys, or is that true of people in general? That's not my tendency. Which is why, when it came to Frances Hodgson Burnett characters, as a child, I loved sour Mary Lennox (The Secret Garden), and despised sweet Sara Crew (The Little Princess).
posted by rue72 at 8:26 PM on May 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


There's a big cult around MOTU toys now and custom versions and stuff, though half of it seems to be around Skelator. I'v seen some originals going for stupid prices, and the aesthetic is all over art toys and toy blogs.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 8:29 PM on May 7, 2015


The middle piece here... paging Dr Freud to the Compensation Ward.
posted by GuyZero at 8:56 PM on May 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


I rooted for skeletor from day one. He man was way too smug. And he seemed to be a celebration of privilege (tho I didn't use that word back then) and skeletor was the real bad ass. Plus, snake mountain? Come on, that place was amazing. Waaaay cooler than castle grey skull.

My only beef with skeletor was...dude, you got it going on period. You don't need to mess with those hapless rubes. Just be your awesome self. In my mind Skeletor already won! He was just too greedy and wanted more. Like a Don Draper from Eternia.
posted by ian1977 at 9:02 PM on May 7, 2015 [17 favorites]


The only He-Man character I liked was the cat.

And She-Ra.
posted by unmake at 9:06 PM on May 7, 2015 [2 favorites]


Ian, Skeletor just needs to stay motivated and inspired.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 9:19 PM on May 7, 2015 [7 favorites]


My favorite take has always been The Skeletor Show.
posted by JHarris at 9:23 PM on May 7, 2015


It's the rare example of men doing the boobs (pecs?) n' butt pose!

I'm not linking it but hoo boy, is there a LOT of Skeletor/He-Man slash out there.
posted by emjaybee at 9:38 PM on May 7, 2015 [2 favorites]


pecs or gtfo.
posted by um at 9:42 PM on May 7, 2015


Tom Kalinske, inspiration for He Man's kind, heroic blond hair.
posted by cotton dress sock at 10:47 PM on May 7, 2015


...and fake skunk smell.

(Which really didn't smell bad enough! You won't fool me again, Mattel!)
posted by pseudocode at 12:11 AM on May 8, 2015


Boys Are Attracted To Strength, Fierceness, and Superhuman Powers

Elsa has all these, of course, and is much preferred by every little girl I know to her more feminine/goody-goody sister, Anya. (In the Disney movie FROZEN, in case that's not obvious...)
posted by alasdair at 1:09 AM on May 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


I assumed these characters were designed without any thought at all. Now I have to imagine teams of earnest media guys workshopping the details of every character's back-story and like, what Skeletor's hood tells us about his endlessly problematic relationship with his mother and her Virgin Mary complex.
posted by Segundus at 1:50 AM on May 8, 2015 [2 favorites]


So in the next-to-last image, the painting that says 'The Sunbird Legacy', the Muscular Hero and the Muscular Villain appear to be... um... RUBBING on each other. In a way that kind of makes me feel funny. Can they DO that?
posted by Sing Or Swim at 2:22 AM on May 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


He-Man was very much a part of my childhood. I had He-Man toys and watched the cartoon.
It only now occurs to me that I never, never not once identified with He-Man (or even Adam) or wanted to put myself in the role of He-Man. I didn't realise I was supposed to.
Although the sorceress was interesting. She seemed to wield more power than He-Man (after all, she controls and dispenses the power of grayskull).

She-Ra was a far more interesting proposition all-round though. Whereas He-Man was fighting to maintain an unelected an unrepresentative ruling class She-Ra was an establishment enforcer gone rogue and turned terrorist.

Also the Thundercats were basically feline Nazi's.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 2:47 AM on May 8, 2015 [3 favorites]


What I never understood from He-Man; they live in what's apparently an arid wasteland. Where's the infrastructure to support the industrial manufacturing that Man-At-Arms uses to produce the weaponry? There's no agriculture to speak of, and there's hardly any people. Doesn't make sense.

I had the same problem with those Jesus movies as a kid. Jesus and company always appear to live in hovels surrounded by dust. Why are people living there, and why isn't everyone starving to death?
posted by leotrotsky at 3:26 AM on May 8, 2015 [5 favorites]


Here's a video trailer for the book, narrated by your buddy Skeletor, with more images and details.

We had some of the He-Man toys, and my dad thought that they were interesting enough that he even helped us repaint a lot of them, even Castle Greyskull, so that they looked extra cool. But then Golden Girl and the Guardians of the Gemstone came out and I got ALL of them; they were fierce-looking lady warriors that were the same size as He-Man and had stylable hair, spectacular outfits, and they each had different weapons. I'm sorry those didn't catch on. I loved them in a different way from Barbies.

(I also loved Thundarr the Barbarian and credit all these sword & sorcery cartoons and toys with turning me into the D&D nerd that I am today. So I guess I am saying that girls, too, can be attracted to strength and fierceness and supernatural powers.)
posted by heatvision at 4:33 AM on May 8, 2015 [2 favorites]


Most speculative literature falls apart like that if you look closely enough at it, leotrotsky.

How'd the Fremen, on a planet with poor metal, manage to build and maintain the technology to make stillsuits? Not a place that seems capable of large-scale manufacturing. (The matter is glossed over, as if it were a simple matter, by The Stillsuit page on the Dune wiki. BTW, it mentions that Stillsuits not only reclaim moisture from sweat but also urine and feces, which are processed in thigh pads. That's right, Fremen pants are full of dehydrated, concentrated poop!) (And actually, I'm sure that someone will explain how it's possible; I'm kind of hoping someone does, really.)

And Thundarr beat He-Man cold. He actually seemed to be of barbarian upbringing, instead of being a vague goody two-shoes in red furry underpants. I'm sure Conan would carouse and go on raids with Thundarr, but he wouldn't even go so far as to invite He-Man over for tea. Barbarian tea.
posted by JHarris at 4:47 AM on May 8, 2015 [5 favorites]


Yeah, but given I was wondering this at *6* indicates to me some pretty piss-poor world building on behalf of the He-folk
posted by leotrotsky at 5:25 AM on May 8, 2015 [2 favorites]


Yeah, but given I was wondering this at *6* indicates to me some pretty piss-poor world building on behalf of the He-folk

Or that you were precociously interested in economics and demographics...
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:34 AM on May 8, 2015 [2 favorites]


I don't know. I was like any other ordinary kid: trading Famous Economists and Demographers cards at recess, reenacting the 1720 collapse of the South Sea Company with my GI Joes, normal kid stuff.
posted by leotrotsky at 6:05 AM on May 8, 2015 [15 favorites]


The Masters of the Universe came out just as I became the age of the target demographic. I was into the toys, but they did raise a lot of questions from the beginning and even now as I look back on them. The world they inhabited seemed birthed from a troubled mind, or maybe just a bunch of mercenary executives mashing together every hot trend they could. The cartoon really toned shit down and tried to file off the edges of the world the toys vaguely established, which could be flat out weird and troubling.

Why all the death symbolism for the good guys, like Castle Greyskull? This did not look like a hero's lair. It's like something a pedophile lich (who is even shunned from the Lawful Evil mixers) would live in. A lot of the ostensibly heroic characters were just as offputting and weird as the bestial villains.

The world seemed beyond post-apocalyptic, almost like it's in Jack Vance's Dying Earth where there's layer upon layer of failed civilisations, aliens and weird technological remnants just co-existing on an exhausted planet. I mean, Man-At-Arms, the brilliant inventor is wearing FUR BRIEFS over his amazing techno-armour. Things are very wrong here.

Growing up as a kid in the 80s, there were a lot of things aimed at me that seemed to want to put me in a state of unease, like the Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation was even seeping relentlessly into little boys' dumb power fantasies. Master of the Universe contributed to this.

And I mean the main character is called He-Man. HE-MAN. They couldn't come up with some shitty mangling of Conan, like Thundarr? He-Man? That's like naming him, Beefcake, or Hunk, or Meathead, or Super Stud.
posted by picea at 6:20 AM on May 8, 2015 [9 favorites]


The only He-Man character I liked was the cat.

Battle Cat or Panthor?

(Same mold at the toy factory, one just got sprayed with purple flocking.)
posted by radwolf76 at 6:21 AM on May 8, 2015


What I never understood from He-Man; they live in what's apparently an arid wasteland. Where's the infrastructure to support the industrial manufacturing that Man-At-Arms uses to produce the weaponry? There's no agriculture to speak of, and there's hardly any people. Doesn't make sense.

The TV show was used to sell kids toys. It didn't need to make sense - it just needed to be a 30 minute commercial.
posted by theorique at 6:23 AM on May 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


Not He-Man, but related in genre and aesthetic: Thundercats Outtakes

"What the fuck is a somoflange??"
posted by a fiendish thingy at 6:28 AM on May 8, 2015 [3 favorites]


picea: "The Masters of the Universe came out just as I became the age of the target demographic. I was into the toys, but they did raise a lot of questions from the beginning and even now as I look back on them. The world they inhabited seemed birthed from a troubled mind, or maybe just a bunch of mercenary executives mashing together every hot trend they could. The cartoon really toned shit down and tried to file off the edges of the world the toys vaguely established, which could be flat out weird and troubling.

Why all the death symbolism for the good guys, like Castle Greyskull? This did not look like a hero's lair. It's like something a pedophile lich (who is even shunned from the Lawful Evil mixers) would live in. A lot of the ostensibly heroic characters were just as offputting and weird as the bestial villains.

The world seemed beyond post-apocalyptic, almost like it's in Jack Vance's Dying Earth where there's layer upon layer of failed civilisations, aliens and weird technological remnants just co-existing on an exhausted planet. I mean, Man-At-Arms, the brilliant inventor is wearing FUR BRIEFS over his amazing techno-armour. Things are very wrong here.

Growing up as a kid in the 80s, there were a lot of things aimed at me that seemed to want to put me in a state of unease, like the Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation was even seeping relentlessly into little boys' dumb power fantasies. Master of the Universe contributed to this.

And I mean the main character is called He-Man. HE-MAN. They couldn't come up with some shitty mangling of Conan, like Thundarr? He-Man? That's like naming him, Beefcake, or Hunk, or Meathead, or Super Stud.
"

The answer to your entire post can be summed up in one word.

Lawyers.
posted by Sphinx at 6:28 AM on May 8, 2015


I always assumed, given the extreme amount of animation cycle re-use in every episode, that He-Man lived in a barren wasteland due to cost. Barren wastelands are cheap to draw, and they all look alike, so you can reuse them endlessly and easily mix n' match.

But they did improve it with She-Ra. She had forests and green places and occasional villagers. Also her sword could transform into things like rope when needed. Also she was originally in the employ of the bad guys--she had a backstory, in other words.

They retconned backstory into He-Man; his mom was from Earth, he was She-Ra's brother, and Teela was the daughter of the Sorceress (who zapped her memory as soon as she figured this out). But they never did much interesting with these bits of info. It was just Monster of the Week every time.

I thought about all of this way too much. But it was the 80s and I was a kid, I had lots of free time.
posted by emjaybee at 6:40 AM on May 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


I have excellent posture. I credit this entirely to the years from 1983 – 1986, during which I walked everywhere with a plastic sword strapped to my back with red suspenders crisscrossed like He-Man’s getup. I removed the sword for sleeping and for holding it aloft and declaiming (at the playground, the grocery store, etc.) “I have the power.”
posted by reclusive_thousandaire at 7:42 AM on May 8, 2015 [5 favorites]


What, no love for MUMMMMM-RAHHHHH?
posted by Ik ben afgesneden at 8:25 AM on May 8, 2015


Also the Thundercats were basically feline Nazi's.

whaaaaaaaaaaaat
posted by psoas at 9:51 AM on May 8, 2015


What, no love for MUMMMMM-RAHHHHH?

He's nothing but a Mummy's boy.
posted by leotrotsky at 10:09 AM on May 8, 2015 [2 favorites]


Also the Thundercats were basically feline Nazi's.

whaaaaaaaaaaaat


Be careful when searching Google with the search terms "Thundercats" and "nazi." The first link has an article that presents an argument. However, it's apparently part of an Aryanism website, and the article is interpreting it with those ideals in mind, with all the crap talking points you'd expect to come from an Aryan interpretation about a cartoon about cat people in space to market toys.

So yeah, I think that click probably got me on some tracking list now.
posted by chambers at 10:19 AM on May 8, 2015


I mean, Man-At-Arms, the brilliant inventor is wearing FUR BRIEFS over his amazing techno-armour. Things are very wrong here.

But they feel oh-so-right.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:15 AM on May 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


pseudocode: ...and fake skunk smell.

(Which really didn't smell bad enough! You won't fool me again, Mattel!)


Apparently it was patchouli?
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:21 AM on May 8, 2015


Every MOTU figure, ranked.

I never got into the show as a kid - I think I was born too late for that. I'm just seeing how much love it's getting from the weird art toy crowd.

I picked up Ssssqueeze and Mosquitor.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 7:47 PM on May 8, 2015




Every MOTU figure, ranked.

I'm not feeling the love for Stratos in that list.

I know I am not the only one who was fascinated with the story that was presented in the mini-comics, intrigued by the wider world hinted at, and then pissed off when the cartoon (and movie) squandered that mysterious mix of magic, history and technology with fucking Prince Adam, Cringer and Orko.

Even as a wee kid I know something wasn't right with that. Little did I know that the real horror, the He-Man & She-Ra Christmas Special was just around the corner.
posted by Mezentian at 12:26 AM on May 9, 2015 [2 favorites]


« Older Because what Texas really needs is a thousand...   |   I Would Draw Her Likeness Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments