To quote CNN’s Brian Lowry: “Old toys never die. They just keep coming back in new poses and flexing different muscles as movies and TV shows”.

Masters of the Universe: Revelation — or as the show is sometimes directly misidentified by the name of its muscle-bulging lead, “He-Man” — is the newest flex on ’80s’ children nostalgia commissioned by Netflix, the home for nostalgic-driven franchises that aims squarely at almost middle-aged men such as this writer.

Back in the ’80s, when a barrage of children’s cartoons swamped the airwaves and adequately articulated toys (ahem: action figures) of those shows towered over aisles in toy stores, He-Man was a big thing.

I may have been five (or maybe younger) but I still remember waiting for the show to air on India’s state-run television channel Doordarshan on Sunday mornings (He-Man came to Pakistan years later in the STN era). Even back then, Mattel, the toy manufacturer, had already made its way to India and, years later, the toys were exported to Pakistan.

Kevin Smith’s shepherding of The Masters of the Universe continuation on Netflix sits somewhere between the spectacle of the DC comic books and the nostalgia of the past

The action figures were big, bulky, colourful and their bodies came with a swing-action special move (the mechanics were simple: a black rubber band inside the body part swung and recoiled it back in place after being pulled).

In comparison to the G.I. Joes — which turned out to be a far more profitable franchise, by the way— there was limited articulation in the joints. You could only move the arms up and down from the shoulders, and the legs were awkwardly rotatable. Big play sets of key locations of the good and the bad guys — Castle Grayskull and Snake Mountain — and an assortment of vehicles, with barely as much flexibility in movement, came out yearly.

The concept was simple, as simple as the design: have fun bashing heroes into villains — and boy were the Masters of the Universe toy line robust. You could bash He-Man and his arch-nemesis Skeletor’s heads all day with nary a scratch.

The show, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, was just as popular. The design, big, colourful and the animation just as limited as the toy’s movements, had a synergy with each other. For once, the cheap production from producers Filmation made the toy’s reality believable.

At a time when parents railed against corporates for ruining the youth with violence in cartoons, He-Man — with its ties to swords and sandal fiction — faced less criticism than its counterparts (the franchise was loosely modeled after Conan the Barbarian and Turok, if memory serves). To its credit, every episode ended with an epilogue that had a moral message about doing the right thing.

By the time a Masters of the Universe film was made in 1987 (starring Dolph Lundgren and Courtney Cox), the franchise had already started to lose steam. Cooler toys and better animated series took up the airwaves and seized toy shelves.

The subsequent Masters of the Universe cartoon, now re-titled as The New Adventures of He-Man, gave the characters a redesign, and the story a dramatic overhaul (the story left Eternia, and only He-Man and Skeletor were featured from the old cartoon). The show drove even hardcore fans away.

The franchise was rebooted in 2002, with a better back-story and animation, and recently DC Comics expanded He-Man’s story in a dark, but spectacular comic book series.

Kevin Smith’s shepherding of The Masters of the Universe continuation on Netflix (he is the show runner) sits somewhere between the spectacle of the DC comic books and the nostalgia of the past. According to Smith, the story is an official continuation of the original animated series which, technically, is hard to believe.

The original He-Man show eventually expanded into a spin-off featuring his sister Adora, who took the name She-Ra when she evoked the mystical energies of her power sword (He-Man also had a secret identity; he was secretly the cowardly Prince Adam — cowardice and secret identities were a trope in those days).

The problem is She-Ra can’t be a part of this present continuity. Netflix has already run a She-Ra series in collaboration with DreamWorks Animation that has nothing to do with He-Man. Also, the sudden jump in stories and continuity between the original series and the new one doesn’t match up.

As a standalone series, the five-episode season gets off to a rocky start. The animation is fine but not expensive (even today, the franchise has to contend with adequate production values; go figure) and the spectacle is so-so.

In the first episode, Skeletor (Mark Hamill taking over the voice of the great Alan Oppenheimer) attacks Castle Grayskull with a new agenda, and He-Man (Chris Wood), Moss Man (Oppenheimer) and Skeletor die in the process. Without Castle Grayskull, which Skeletor renders powerless in his final attack, magic in Eternia slowly ebbs away. Since Castle Grayskull and Eternia are the centre of the universe, when magic eventually disappears, the universe will — gasp for dramatic effect — die.

Teela (Sarah Michelle Gellar), He-Man’s best friend and adopted daughter of his secret keeper Duncan (aka Man-At-Arms; one of the key good guys), having left the kingdom, roams the land as a bounty hunter-cum-adventurer. She is soon recruited to find a way to bring back the mystical energies of Castle Grayskull and, perhaps, return He-Man to the land of the living in the process. The voice cast also includes Justin Long, Lena Headey, Kevin Conroy and Alicia Silverstone.

Other than the about-okay first episode, the remaining four episodes slowly reach a legitimate high-point that leads into the second season. However, with only five episodes of the show currently available for viewing, coming to a conclusion about the quality of writing would be a disservice.

Despite giving off an air of deliberate manufacturing, the series is engaging so far, and it works up one’s sense of the nostalgic. But overall, so far the show lacks charisma. Who knows, by the end of the show, I could be a fan again. Not that I stopped being a fan, mind you. By the power of Grayskull!

Masters of the Universe: Revelation streams on Netflix. It’s rated PG-13

Published in Dawn, ICON, August 29th, 2021