How Did This Get Made Masters Of The Universe An Oral History

How Did This Get Made: Masters Of The Universe (An Oral History)

By Blake Harris/Oct. 2, 2015 8:01 am EST

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Nobody sets out to make a bad movie. But the truth is, it happens all the time. And every time it does, there’s a fun misadventure and cautionary tale lurking somewhere behind the scenes. This is that story for the 1987 live-action He-Man movie Masters of the Universe.

Masters of the Universe movie poster art by Drew sSruzan

Masters of the Universe movie poster art by Drew sSruzan

Tagline: A Battle Fought In The Stars…Now Comes To Earth

To capitalize on the pandemonium (and also to keep driving it along), Mattel soon brought this intellectual property out into other mediums. There was a TV show, a pair of animated movies, a traveling live-action show and a line of comics published by DC. All of these things helped build the brand and increase sales. Given this track record, there were high hopes when a live-action movie adaption called Masters of the Universe was released in August 1987. Unfortunately, however, the film did not perform as expected—earning only $10 million at the box-office—and, after three weeks, Masters of the Universe was pulled from theaters nationwide.

How could this have possibly happened? How could a film based on such a hot property—and starring such a hot young actor—resulted in such an unfortunate fate? Was it really such a bad movie? Or, looking back, were there other factors at play?

Here’s what happened, as told by those who made it happen…

Featuring:

PROLOGUETom Kalinske: Did I ever tell you the whole story with Star Wars? This one really is bizarre. It takes place some time in the 70s, back when I was at Mattel. It must have been a year or so before the first film came out, and we were presented with the concept of Star Wars.At the time, George Lucas was seeking an upfront fee of $750,000 for the rights to manufacture toys based on the film. Tom Kalinske: The decision, ultimately, came down to Ray Wagner, who was the president of Mattel. And Ray, he was one of the reasons why I joined the company in the first place. Dynamic and smart, he was a very impressive guy. Really hammered into us that you need to think about every aspect of a toy. Not just the design, but the packaging, the advertising and everything else. Anyway, so we have this meeting with George Lucas’ agent, and we all come away impressed by what we’ve seen. Even Ray, he liked what he saw. But in terms of Mattel doing the toys, here’s what he said: “Movies never work. Get me a good TV show instead. Television shows are seen weekly—they impact over and over—versus a movie that just comes out one time.” And so, in the end, Ray passed on licensing Star Wars.CUT TO: 5 YEARS LATERPart 1: Rise of the He-MenTom Kalinske: Going into the 80s, Star Wars had taken off and GI Joe—over at Hasbro—had come back with a bang. Meanwhile at Mattel, we didn’t have a strong male entity at the time.Joe Morrison: Mattel was looking for new concepts in Boys. We had licensed some properties but, you know, nothing really outstanding.Tom Kalinske: We had done a character called Big Jim, which was mildly successful in the early 70s, but it didn’t last long. What we really needed to do was build a brand from scratch.Joe Morrison: Towards the end of 1980, I took over as VP of Marketing for the Boys Division at Mattel. And, at the time, there was big research project going on that Ray Wagner had been pushing.Tom Kalinske: We were trying to come up with something that could do for boys what Barbie did for girls. So we tested all sorts of things. Police characters, space characters, monsters, you name it. Until eventually we narrowed it down to a few concepts.Joe Morrison: One was an army theme, a la GI Joe. One was a futuristic space theme, a la Star Wars. And the third was what we were calling a “Barbarian theme.“The original prototypes for the trio of toys that would eventually become He-Man were created by a talented Mattel designer named Roger Sweet. He presented his work to the company’s executives at a product conference in December 1980. According to Sweet’s memoir, Mastering The Universe, this was the third such conference that year dedicated to finding a male action figure line. “With the conference ending,” Sweet describes, “…[Ray Wagner] pointed at the He-Man Trio. ‘Those have the power,’ Wagner said.“Joe Morrison: As the product line developed, He-Man was always just the test name—it was “Star Wars 2,” “GI Joe 2” and “He-Man”—but nobody in management wanted He-Man as a name. So it was just this placeholder that nobody wanted. But I did, I knew it was right. And when I was a little boy, my uncles used to call me He-Man all the time so I just yessed everybody to death—yes, we’ll make a change, yes, it’ll be revised eventually, don’t worry!—knowing full well that I didn’t want to change anything. Nope, this is going out as He-Man.Over the next several months, the concept evolved a great deal. Additional heroes were created—like Teela, Stratos and Man-at-Arms—evildoing foes were developed—like Skeletor, Beast Man and Mer-Man—and cosmetic changes were continually made to Mattel’s chiseled master of the universe—like changing He-Man’s hair color from brown to blonde to more closely resemble Tom Kalinske. (And to exude, like Kalinske, a kinder, breezier attitude.) Developing a likeable, I-want-to-be-him type of hero was pivotal to crafting the kind of story that could entice kids to enter Mattel’s unique new universe.Tom Kalinske: I think that the storytelling element was the most important part of it all. We needed to create a series of great stories—as well as a place where kids could imagining those stories happening—and we were fortunate to have some great writers involved in it. Joe Morrison himself was a very good writer, so that helped a lot too.Joe Morrison: I also felt that we needed to do something that was distinctly different in terms of pricing and size. I mean, when you’re dealing with young kids, that perception of feeling—the look, the texture, the overall impact—is very important. So I felt we would be making a big mistake if we tried to do everything the same size as what was in the marketplace for GI and Star Wars. Three inches, I think. So we needed to do something bigger, something different.Tom Kalinske: With Masters of the Universe, it was all about doing things differently. That was our only chance, really. And with the final Star Wars film coming out in ‘83, we thought the timing was right.Joe Morrison: Then probably the next most important thing we did was the commercial. We had a father walk into the living room and see his son playing with action figures on the floor. Then something catches the father’s eye and he says, “Hey, who’s the big guy with the muscles?” And it had a couple of messages: