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I was a bit surprised when I learned that He-Man was a franchise that apparently never reached nor was dubbed in Japan with the exception of the '87 movie and recent stuff like Dreamworks She-Ra and Revelation. I mean you look at the franchise and Tv popular there at the time and you'd think they'd love it. I know Super7 in 2019 released special He-Man and Skeletor in '80s Japanese-esqe packaging complete with awesome art, but still. I mean you look at Skeletor, Mer man and Beast Man and be like "Yeah those look like they would be Tokusatsu villains in cheap costumes".
If they never planned to dub the Filmation toon because let's face it, it animation quality wise was DEFINITELY NOT up to their anime standards at the time, they probably would've done what they did with infamously with Spider-Man and make it a live-action tokusatsu with MAJOR creative liberties but maybe at least kept more of the source material. Again, Skelly and his gang straight up look like these types of villains. Also I'm guessing the '87 film was dubbed because when you think about it, it kinda resembles basically an unintentional American take on the genre.
Found this image online (reddit) implying maybe at some point they planned to bring the toyline over there, but I dunno if it's legit.
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Wanna know. Why do you think Masters of the Universe never came to Japan in the 80s when it seemed right up their alley?
I think that I read an article on Toyark that stated Mattel did, in fact, intend to distribute MOTU in Pacific Asian markets. The Super 7 packaging is based on the unused concepts by the Mattel design team back in the early 80s.
That print ad could be a leftover remnant of what could have been included with each figure or back of box cross sell images.
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@ornclown Is there any info on why it didn't go through? My speculation is that Japan thought Filmation looked too cheap for their standards especially when companies like Marvel productions were collaborating with Toei for G1 Transformers and GI Joe for not the best (animation errors galore in G1 Season 3) but better quality animation. From what I heard, Lou Schiemer didn't believe in importing animation out to other countries at the time when everyone else but them at Filmation was doing it. Literally watched Secret of the Sword for the first time the other day and it was good, but I kept imagining "Darn wouldn't this have looked amazing and more theatrical worthy if it had three or four times more the animation budget like TF '86?"
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Then again Japan made "Chargeman Ken". If you dunno what it is I recommend a YT video by Kenny Lauderdale on it.