How HE-MAN Saved Mattel From Collapse and Became an ’80s Pop Culture Phenomenon
Masters of the Universe is remembered as one of the biggest toy franchises of the 1980s. He-Man, Skeletor, Castle Grayskull, and that unforgettable battle cry of “I Have the Power!” became part of pop culture history.
What many fans don't realize is that He-Man wasn't just a hit toy line. According to the people who were there, He-Man may have literally saved Mattel. Masters of the Universe arrived at exactly the right moment for a company that desperately needed a win.
Heading into the early 1980s, Mattel wasn't exactly dominating the boys action figure market. Hasbro had GI Joe, Kenner had Star Wars, and Mattel was searching for something that could compete.
“We had licensed some properties but, you know, nothing really outstanding,” recalled Joe Morrison, who served as a Mattel executive during the development of He-Man.
The company knew it needed something bigger than a licensed property. It needed its own franchise. Something that could become a complete universe.
According to Tom Kalinske, the President and CEO of Mattel at the time, that realization became impossible to ignore after watching competitors take over the market.
“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.”
Mattel launched an extensive research effort to figure out what boys actually wanted. The company tested all kinds of concepts before eventually landing on a fantasy-themed action figure line that would become He-Man.
What happened next caught even Mattel by surprise. “When we got the go-ahead from management to do the original toy line, we put in an estimate of, like, $12 million in sales. Well, we didn't even release the toy until May of that year and we wound up doing $32 million. These were significant numbers in 1982,” Morrison explained.
That was an explosion of success! The toys were flying off shelves, kids, like myself, were obsessed, and retailers couldn't get enough of the product. Kalinske remembered the phenomenon taking off almost immediately, saying: “The toy became very successful, very quickly.”
The popularity of He-Man grew so intense that promotional appearances around the country turned into full-scale events.
“To promote the line, we would have these in-store appearances of the characters. And I remember one day, we got a call from a police department in Florida. Tampa, I think. And the police called to tell us that the highway was all blocked off because there were so many kids trying to get there. And that went on around the country.”
Imagine being a police officer explaining that traffic had been brought to a standstill because thousands of kids wanted to see He-Man. That’s bonkers. That was the level of popularity Mattel was dealing with. But the company wasn't content to simply sell toys.
One of the smartest moves Mattel ever made was realizing that kids wanted more than action figures. They wanted stories.
“I think that the storytelling element was the most important part of it all,” Kalinske said. “We needed to create a series of great stories, as well as a place where kids could imagining those stories happening.”
The challenge was getting television executives to agree. “We took the idea out to a few networks. But they weren't really into it. A TV show based on an action figure? No, it was supposed to be the other way around,” Morrison recalled.
Most companies probably would've stopped there. Mattel didn't. Instead, they partnered with Filmation and helped launch what would become one of the most influential cartoons in television history.
“The networks weren't interested in this thing. Fine. So we went out and met with different animated producers. And Lou Scheimer, over at Filmation, he was interested in working with us.
“So we made a deal with them to create 65 episodes. Mattel was gonna put up $3.5 million and Westinghouse [who had acquired Filmation in 1981] would also put up $3.5 million,” Kalinske explained.
It was a gamble, a very expensive gamble, but it paid off in a massive way. “The TV ratings went through the roof. Absolutely through the roof. All these kids went nuts over it. It was a phenomenon. It changed kids television,” Morrison said.
The impact wasn't limited to television. The cartoon supercharged the toy line. “Sales on the He-Man product line were going through the roof and thank god they did. Because other than He-Man, the company was going through a really tough time. Our Electronics Department [Mattel's videogame division] was going down the tubes, so we were hoisting everything on our shoulders.”
Then Morrison delivered the statement that perfectly sums up how important He-Man became to Mattel's survival.
“If not for He-Man, Mattel might have gone under. There's no question about it. No question. He-Man was doing, at that time, $400 million. If you took that piece out of the equation, there would be no Mattel. So it was kind of, you know, us against the world. It was a good time. It was a good time.”
At the same time He-Man was carrying the company, Mattel's electronics business was collapsing. The toy line wasn't simply adding revenue. It was helping offset major losses elsewhere.
The success became so massive that, according to Tim Kilpin, Mattel marketing executive, the franchise eventually grew larger than even Mattel's most famous brand. “At the time I joined Mattel, the Masters business was bigger than Barbie.”
The franchise had become a machine that generated toys, cartoons, comics, live shows, and endless merchandise. It also helped create a blueprint that virtually every toy company would eventually follow.
“Everybody else figured out what we were doing with syndication and then all of the sudden here comes GI Joe. And here comes Thundercats. Here comes Voltron, and all the rest of them. Once He-Man showed you how to do it, everyone dialed in,” explained Mattel Executive, John Weems.
The toy-driven television model that became commonplace throughout the 1980s owes a huge debt to Masters of the Universe. Of course, no phenomenon lasts forever.
By the mid-1980s, retailers began carrying too much inventory. Competitors flooded the market. New toy lines appeared. The magic eventually faded.
“We had had a phenomenal run. From '82 to '87, it was a huge chunk of Mattel's business. But eventually things slowed down and the retailers started to get stuck with it,” Morrison explained.
Even so, the impact He-Man had on Mattel was enormous. Looking back, it's hard not to appreciate how incredible the franchise's rise really was.
A toy company searching for answers created a fantasy hero with a sword, a skull-faced villain, a ton of wild characters, and some awesome playsets like Castle Grayskull.
A few years later, that same toy line was generating hundreds of millions of dollars, revolutionizing children's television, clogging highways with excited fans, and quite possibly keeping one of the biggest toy companies in the world alive.