HAPPY 40TH! Celebrating the Anniversary of Filmation’s ”He-Man and the Masters of the Universe”

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It all started with Ronald Reagan….

When the 40th President of the United States Ronald Reagan entered the White House in 1981, his administration made a lot of changes in regards to kids television. One of those changes was pulling back on regulatory controls.

Before Ronald Reagan was elected, there was a real clampdown on not just violence, but on advertising airing during children’s television shows. These strict FCC/NAB regulations not only lead to restrictions on the amount of commercials allowed in childrens’ broadcasting, but they even declared that a popular Hot Wheels cartoon on the ABC Network was nothing more than a half-hour toy commercial, and forced it be cancelled after two seasons.

But when incoming President Ronald Reagan made his new appointments to the FCC commission, his administration took a more hands-off approach. He felt the strict rules in place, including how much advertising can air during a kids show, was a violation of everyone’s First Amendment rights (including the broadcasters and advertisers.) Reagan’s administration felt that it should be mostly up to the public, the parents, and the “free market” to decide what television shows were quality or not.

Agree or disagree with the President’s policy decisions, this without a doubt opened the door for the 1983 Filmation series “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” (which previously would have been considered a half-hour-long toy advertisement and subsequently restricted from the airwaves.)

Now by 1987, 80% percent of all toys sold were licensed products from either TV shows or movies, but the 1983 Filmation “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” series was truly the trendsetter. That’s because after an amazing proof of concept in the form of an animated short for a Mattel commercial, Filmation made history when they produced a whopping 65 episode season (versus the traditional 13 episode season model for Saturday cartoons.)

And He-Man was the first cartoon to launch in a Monday through Friday syndication. This resulted in five new episodes, every week, for thirteen weeks! Wow!

And what a show this was! Debuting in many countries back in September of 1983, “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” proved everyone who prematurely dismissed the show as garbage wrong. This was not some frivolous cash grab, easily hand waived as a vehicle designed just to sell action figures.

No, thanks to passion of Filmation founder Lou Shiemer, a tremendous amount of effort was put into this He-Man animated series. A world bible was established by the legendary Michael Halperin for the series, focusing on world-building and establishing a robust lore for a toyline that hardly had a mythology to speak of. An amazing group of writers were hired like Paul Dini, Joseph Michael Straczynski and Larry DiTillio that would give the series so much heart.

And often Lou allowed the writers to introduce new characters and even new villians, omitting Skeletor from episodes entirely, resulting in so many baddies that have yet to be realized in plastic to this day (proving the series was interested in so much more than selling toys.)

Add the iconic voice acting of actors like John Erwin, Alan Oppenheimer and Linda Gary, the amazing animation models that often rivaled the figures they were inspired by, and a memorable soundtrack and it’s no wonder so many loved that show.

And now 40 years later, in September 2023, we haven’t stopped loving this landmark show… a series that arguably tremendously helped “Masters of the Universe” become the iconic brand it remains today.

That’s why, beginning tomorrow, 40 years exactly from the first day “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” premiered in the UK, we plan to start our month long celebration of this amazing cartoon series.

So join us in Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” 1983 Filmation cartoon series all September long on ForEternia.com and on our social media pages TWITTER, FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM and YOUTUBE. It should be fun!

We’ll see you next time!

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