Masters of the Universe

Masters of the Universe is the collective name of the original Mattel toy series, featuring characters such as He-Man and Skeletor. It led to numerous spin-offs, including four animated series and a major motion picture.

Trivia

• Due to the budget-constraints by Filmation, the He-man cartoon only featured a voice-cast of four to five people (after Erika Scheimer joined the cast). Linda Gary single-handidly provided voices for nearly all female characters, but the bulk of the characters were voiced by the show's executive producer Lou Scheimer who in the earliest episodes went under the name Erik Gunden. He-man and Beastman were voiced by John Erwin and Skeletor by Alan Oppenheimer.
• In the 1980s cartoon Adam's mother, Queen Marlena, is in fact an astronaut from the planet Earth called Marlena Glenn (perhaps named for John Glenn), stranded on Eternia at some point following a mission failure. As such, Adam and Adora are half Terran, half Eternian. Marlena is presumably from our future, as the glimpses of her ship and equipment shown were more technologically advanced than current space technology.
• The character of Zodac was originally presented in the toy line as an "Evil Cosmic Enforcer" as per the blurb on his figure card. However in most of his appearances in the mini-comics and the cartoon he was clearly a "good guy" character where he was depicted as sort of an "interstellar policeman". The 2002 version of He-Man presented a Zodac who was neither evil, nor clearly good but somewhere comfortably in between with his own system of ethics and justice. The only occasions when he has been portrayed as evil were in an early DC Comics issue and in a 1986 Ladybird Book entitled He-Man and the Asteroid of Doom.
• Mattel created He-Man when they attempted to make an action-figure line based on the popular comic-book character Conan the Barbarian. However, the sexual and violent imagery of the comic was likely to give the toy-line the wrong image and so the main-character's hair was changed to blonde and he was given a new name.
• What's interesting to see is that He-Man did manage to "recycle" some of Conan's bad guys. The original Thulsa Doom (not based on the movie) was a skull-faced sorcerer based on the Kull and Conan series seems to be the template of Skeletor and Snake Mountain interestingly would look like a place in Conan the Barbarian. Also King Hiss of He-Man resembles Thoth-Amon and the snake men resembe the servants of Set in Conan the Barbarian in the comics. Also in 2002 the summoning of Serpos could be compared to Conan the Adventurer when Wrath-Amon (based on Thoth-Amon) releases Set.
• Early promotional literature from Mattel referred to Skeletor and his followers as the "Masters of the Universe" and an early version of the opening title sequence for the 1980s incarnation also uses this description (and was accidentally used on the final cut of an episode). However later literature and spin-offs use the term "Masters of the Universe" for He-Man and his allies.
• The original He-Man cartoon series and toy lines were exported to a number of European countries, and translated into German and French. In German, He-Man is still He-Man, but in French he becomes Musclor. The series was also dubbed to Spanish and known to be broacasted in some Spanish speaking countries like Panamá, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico and México where it was very popular.