I don't remember this well enough to rate it.

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, in syndication
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This ran from 1983-85. I don't remember it that well, but it was good. Maybe someday I'll get the DVDs, and write a more in depth review. Anyway, so the backstory, as I recall, was that there was this female astronaut from Earth, named Marlena, who crash-landed on this weird planet called Eternia, that was sort of part medieval, maybe even earlier, and had plenty of magic but also a bit of high technology. And she married King Randor and became a queen. Their son, Prince Adam, had this sword that would turn him into this super-strong guy called He-Man, who was like a superhero or whatever. It also turned his scaredy-cat Cringer into Battle Lion. And there was this evil guy called Skeletor who had a bunch of minions and they always made trouble and stuff. And there was a castle called Grayskull, which was rather important. I think like this Sorceress lived there or something, and I guess she's the one who gave Prince Adam his magic sword. And Skeletor was always trying to take the place over or whatever. I dunno.

Well, there were plenty of other characters, good and bad. On He-Man's side was Man-At-Arms (aka Duncan), and his daughter Teela, the weird little wizard Orko, Ram-Man, Roboto, etc. Skeletor's minions included the witch Evil-Lyn, Tri-Klops, Beastman, Trap-Jaw, Mer-Man, etc. Oh, and Skeletor also had a cool purple panther named Panthor, sort of an evil counterpart to Battle Cat. Anyway, there were of course lots of toys based on the series (or maybe the series was based on the toys). I used to have some of them.

There was a related series called She-Ra: Princess of Power, which I think was set in another dimension or something, but I never got a chance to see any of it. I'd like to, someday. There was also a new He-Man series on Cartoon Network in 2002, but I didn't watch much of it. It was okay I guess, but I didn't think it seemed as good as the original, and I didn't really see the point. I'd really rather they had just aired reruns of the old series instead of wasting their time and money making the new show.


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