By the Power of Grayskull!! I have the Power!!

There comes a tide in the affairs of men [or women] when one has to 'fess up to the questionable tastes of one's childhood. In my case that would be looking you straight in the eye and admitting to being -- oh so briefly, my 20-something self hastens to add --mesmerized by the tales of "He-man and the masters of the universe." [Yuk, could I have really liked such an overtly sexist cartoon with its not-so-bright dialogue?]. But, I did. I was 7 years-old. Do I hear calls for a public beheadment?

But Sam Anderson has a similar mea culpa in Slate.

Sadly, I can no longer watch He-Man through 6-year-old eyes. The show, it turns out, is not quite the singular artistic triumph I once thought it was. Its creators seem to have spared every expense. It's a badly animated, low-budget scramble of every sci-fi and fantasy franchise that preceded it—Conan the Barbarian, Star Wars, Star Trek, Superman, even The Jetsons. ... Plots usually adhere to the Bond formula: Villains take short breaks from marathon sessions of maniacal laughter to hatch the most transparent evil schemes, which He-Man foils while tossing off bons mots like a drunk uncle ("I guess they just don't make energy bows like they used to," he quips to a flustered Trap-Jaw; "Boy, the things people leave lying around," he says wryly while tossing two stunned Fishmen off-screen). The dialogue is tediously expository, written apparently for viewers who have slept through most of the episode: "Sorceress, you used the space portal to bring us here. Thanks!" or "Hurray! The power of Grayskull brought your memory back!"

But, as Anderson notes, He-man wasn't designed to be a great cartoon (like The Family Guy, The Simpsons, South Park, or Bugs Bunny). It was designed to get us (little kiddies) to harangue our parents into buying us poorly manufactured plastic toys. I remember getting Castle Grayskull on my Navjote and being taken to Asiatic and allowed to choose a toy (under 50 Rupees or about one US Dollar) on another occasion.

I could criticize He-Man all day for its aesthetic shortcomings, but there's really no point. It wasn't designed to be a good show, just to trigger the collecting impulses of young kids without blatantly offending their parents. It was basically a long-form, serialized Mattel commercial, the first cartoon ever to be conceived and produced only for the purpose of selling an action figure—a mythology preceded by its own icons (plastic ones, with swiveling torsos and "power punch action"). In retrospect, it's pretty clear that my love for the show—my quasi-religious immersion—was just a Pavlovian response to aggressive cross-marketing.