I was hurt when She-Ra ended after 93 episodes due to the toys not selling well. I wish the toy sales had sold better and we had seen a total of 130 episodes of She-Ra like He-Man had.
sharePlease sign this petition to keep the imdb message boards!
https://www.change.org/p/imdb-stop-imdb-from-disabling-the-message-boards
That's too bad. I loved my She Ra dolls and toys when I was a kid. The cartoon was amazing too.
shareI've never seen this cartoon, but I am assuming that the reason that it ended (with 93 episodes)was because by 1985 the early 80s sword, and sorcery craze was winding down. He-man started around 1980, and She-ra came out in 1985. Five years is an eturnity in regards to a toyline. She-ra simply came out a little too late.
sharePretty much, along with the rising popularity of shows such as Thundercats and Transformers and their toy lines. The She-Ra toy line didn't sell as well as hoped (sales to girls were less than expected, and whilst there were sales to boys they were nowhere near enough to offset the deficit). Meanwhile He-Man pretty much collapsed under its own weight. MOTU toy sales were huge at their peak and Mattel began to struggle to supply the numbers promised, often shipping short-orders. The resulting backlog only got bigger. Also, Mattel were demanding the creation of more new characters for the franchise, causing some writers and artists at Filmation to leave the studio due to what they saw as a 'watering down' of the mythology they'd worked so hard to build. On top of all that the 1987 Dolph Lundgren live-action movie bombed.
The animated Dungeons & Dragons show had a similar lifespan to He-Man, running from 1983 to 1985 (She-Ra's own run was from 1985 to 1987). Interestingly, the animated Conan the Adventurer ran from 1992 to 1993, and its follow-up Conan and the Young Warriors aired in 1994, but as far as I know neither of those was pushing/reliant on a toy line.
Incidentally, according to the 2005 book Mastering the Universe: He-Man and the Rise and Fall of a Billion-Dollar Idea, the MOTU toy line profits went from a peak of $400 million in United States sales alone in 1986 to just $7 million the following year.
shareIt crashed that much?! 400 million to 7 million is a 98.25% loss of revenue! I had no idea that the drop off was that steep! That is insane!
I actually really like the Dolph Lundgren Masters of the Universe movie. Sure it's bad, but it is a lot of fun. I have great memories of seeing it in theaters with my Mom and dad and two of my cousins. My mom kept saying "It was so bad! It was so bad!" and it was! LOL. But for some reason every time it was on when I was a kid and every time it's been on recently, I am happy to watch it (Comet TV use to air it quite a bit).
I actually hold the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon in higher regard than I do the Masters of the Universe cartoon. being a huge fan of movies like Conan the Barbarian, Excalibur, Beastmaster, Dragonslayer, Clash of The Titans and The Sword and The Sorcerer, I latched onto The Masters of the Universe toys as soon as they came out. So, I was well aquatinted with the original Mini comics that came with the original toys. As a result, when the TV series came out, and Skeletor and his henchmen were turned into a bunch of goofs, and He-man was really Prince Adam, I didn't really like it.
I never saw the Conan cartoon from the 1990s. There was no toy line to go along with it? That seems like death in the cartoon world.