Clearly, the braniacs at Mattel had a lot of fun making up these kooky heroes and monsters. Kids had even more fun playing with them or tuning into its Ronald Reagan-abetted weekday cartoon with its totally square messages of safety and friendship intended as a wholesome antidote to the series' punching and villain tossing.
The Masters of the Universe were outrageous and ridiculous but beautifully designed, and a genuinely impressive team of artists were lurking behind the muscles and mossy flocking. Ted Mayer, a set designer who'd worked on Star Wars, concocted the Masters' sci-fi vehicles. Donald Glut, who wrote the novelization of The Empire Strikes Back and hung out with Monkee Mike Nesmith, wrote some of those mini-comics ingeniously included with the figures to give the characters some backstory. Bruce Timm, who'd create the acclaimed Batman: The Animated Series, illustrated some of them. Even the toys' package art bore a level of true artistry unseen in any other toy line.
The Masters of the Universe's visual pop makes Simon Beecroft's new book, cleverly titled The Masters of the Universe Book, a non-stop treat and an instant nostalgia booster shot for fans of the toys, comics, and cartoons in both their classic and current iterations (there's also plenty of space devoted to He-Man's sister, She-ra). Beecroft assembles and annotates images of all those wonderful toys, minicomics, and animation stills, while also making room for odder items, such as MotU puffy stickers, Viewmasters, colorforms, bubblebath bottles, record players, and brown paper lunch bags, which brought up some traumatic memories of having to figure out ways to hide their images of He-Man when my mom bought them for my school lunches after I was way too old for that kind of shit. Way to go, Mom!
