Nostalgia - "I Have the POOOWWERRRRRR!"

Way back in the day when I was knee-high to a motorcycle I lived across the street from Palmer Video. Every week I found myself in there renting and re-renting VHS classics like Adventures of Captain Marvel, Super Powers, and of course He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Palmer Video had a handful of episodes from the '80s cartoon and the characters looked nothing like the action figures I was getting from KB Toys in the Staten Island Mall (I found out later the toys were from the early '90s reboot).

Recently I was fumbling around on Netflix and found the old show and the crossover special He-Man and She-Ra: Secret of the Sword. I remember renting this about twenty years ago and realized that this was probably one of the first times I was introduced to the idea of expanded continuity. He-Man travels to a parallel universe and discovers he has a sister who also has powers. This was also cool because even though this is a kid show, it is played straight. There is not much tongue-and-cheek humor and the characters never talk down to the audience.

Even now, watching Prince Adam transform into He-Man gives me goosebumps. The music really swells up and something about it just feels awe-inspiring. It is kind of funny how they used the exact same sequence each and every time he transformed. Plus, it is weird to think that Prince Adam was worried about keeping a secret identity even though his face and body looked exactly the same. Somehow changing your clothes in Eternia completely throws off everyone. Go figure. Either way this cartoon played a huge part in my childhood and it was fun to look back at it now and see that it still held up pretty well.