An archive of articles about US television programmes and production.
Classic TV
Weird old title sequences: He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and She-Ra: Princess of Power
Once upon a time, there was a tiny little company called Mattel who made toys. You may have heard of them. Back in the 80s, they wanted to launch a new line of toys based around a barbarian character they’d created called He-Man. Since obviously no one had ever heard of He-Man, to advertise it, they took the radical move of getting US animation house Filmation to develop a cartoon series based on the toys.
Filmation, having been around for a while doing things like Space Sentinels, took their job seriously and really went to town. Although there was already a range of mini-comics that accompanied the toys, Filmation got in proper writers who developed series bibles, rewrote the comics, picked which characters to include in the show and more. Before you knew it, an entire background had been developed for all the characters and the planet on which they lived.
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe was born. Here’s its title sequence: