The Final Episode #109: The New Adventures of He-Man (1990)

 

Two things I want to point out before I go into this show. The first one is well actually it's a question. Has there EVER been an actually good TV show with NEW ADVENTURES in the title? Like I racked my brain going over and over wondering if I could find one. It seems that AT BEST I can think of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. I mean That's the only one I can remember people ever talking about positively. So that's why I ask the readers of this fine blog if there are any others that anyone has ever mentioned positively. The second point is when this show flopped, Mattel didn't put out more money for another He-Man series. They realized it's time in the sun had come and gone and let it stay gone for a while. They actually realized that absence makes the heart grow fonder or some Shakespeare shit. Don't look at me for cultured seriousness. I watch things like Surf Nazis Must Die. I have zero culture within my body and I've made peace with that.

Anyway, a while back on my failed YouTube channel I wanted to do a series where I talked about every TV show YTV ever showed. I know they showed He-Man and She-Ra because that's where I watched reruns of that show. They also showed this show which I do not remember at all. I mean okay fine I was five years old at the time but I still remember other things from that age. I remember playing Mega Man 2 A LOT for my NES during that time. It was around my younger sister was being born. Me and my old man just hung out a lot while my mother was in the hospital. It was a wild time for all of us. I just find it interesting that they picked this up. I dunno. I just needed a pointless filler paragraph so shut up.

So The New Adventures of He-Man was Mattel's last attempt at making He-Man a thing again. Between 1982 and 1985 the shit sold like fucking hotcakes (I've never had a hotcake and I don't know if I want too because if I didn't like it I would never know peace again because I wouldn't be able to use that dumb saying anymore) and like all kinds of toy lines and cartoon series and just about everything else, It's time in the sun just went. By 1990 all the kids wanted Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Ghostbusters. At least that's what I wanted!  As you can tell by how much discussion there has been on The New Adventures of He-Man that it was a flop. Flopping harder than Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie. Yes it was that bad of a flop.

So you might be asking yourself "What is that beautiful house?" and I'll tell you that this is a blog post and not a Talking Heads song. Okay with that terrible terrible joke out of the way it's time to talk about Jetlag Productions the American offshoot of some French animation company created by DAMIEN'S HERO JEAN CHALOPIN. That's right bitches! The original head of DIC Animation! Before Andy Heyward took over the company! Jetlag did New Adventures of He-Man and a lot of terrible animated movies that Good Times Productions put out. If you watch the YouTuber Phelous you've seen or probably will see some of their movies on his show. Jetlag didn't do much to be honest and their most famous thing is probably this show. Which seeing as no one talks about it, that's not very good at all.

The only positive I can think of for this show is that everyone on the voice cast seemed to end up working on the Canadian dub of Dragon Ball Z. which cause of CanCon laws meant it was at least enough Canadian content that it could be shown over and over again. Yes I think I've mentioned it before but Canada's government MAKES people make Canadian content like TV shows. They just don't give them enough money so very rarely do you get something that's not hot ass from Canada. Anyway that dub had a lot of talented people like Scott McNeil on it. In fact it seems the only person who didn't do something for Dragon Ball Z was Garry Chaulk but he voiced Optimus Primal from Beast Wars and I just HAD to mention him. Sadly they don't be seem to be giving this their all like they did for other series.

Anyway this show is just really generic and seriously feels like they jammed He-Man in there at the last minute. I'll tell you about the First Epiosde too because I really really do not plan to come back and talk about this show again. Yes, There are things I plan to talk about more than once on this blog. We spend most of the episode with boring boring characters. Just seriously thrown together at the last second on A Friday before the big meeting on Monday. Just blah. This wouldn't be the worst thing in the world but it's supposed to be a  sequel series to He-Man where all of the characters were at least charming or goofy enough to be fun. This is just a sci fi show where He-Man (and Skeletor) are brought to the future. They literally have two characters just bring them both back because they can't tell which one of them is good. Oh and He-Man beats the Mutants back in like 15 seconds. Way to make us give a shit about these bad guys! Oh and one of the mutants is called Slushhead. I remember Portnoyd going off about some characters that weren't supposed to ever be used again in a Teen Titans issue because they had lazy names but they decided to go with SLUSHHEAD for 65 episodes. They were clearly not bringing their A-Game to this material and I can't really blame them.

The animation from this show is fine. Nothing amazing but fine. I felt like I had to mention that here because I will not be talking about this show ever again hopefully. (Unless I do a Bottom 10 Final Episodes Ever List) The character designs for the new characters are fine I guess. They don't beat any of the fun designs from Filmation. Oh and I don't know why they didn't stop in 1987 with the Masters of the Universe movie that was a flop so big it literally took down Cannon Films (along with Superman IV: The Quest for Peace). I mean I like that movie quite a bit but it does not change the fact that it was a flop and clear evidence that the kids had moved on from He-Man. I guess they felt like they had to give it another go just to make sure. It's sure great to be the head of a giant corporation that can just flush tons of money down a fucking toilet.

Oh, The Final Episode is it seems a two parter, or picks up off a cliffhanger from another episode or whatever. I usually review both episodes in this case but I'm not wasting any more of my precious God given time on this. No one except the animatiors were giving it anything above a C-Grade Attempt so why the hell should I give anything more? Nope, not this time, buckaroos! Anyway the Final Episode is called "The Final Invasion" and it was a five part ending. Ain't no way I'm doing that. So you know in Cartoons and Movies and other tv shows where they have a big tournament and all kinds of characters compete to fight. Yeah it's like that but sci-fi-y. He-Man and his boring new friends that suck ass won the day but oh no the alien guys lied and are keeping them in their Intergalactic Zoo (another concept done more enjoyably in many other places! Wow!) 

He-Man realizes that the SUPER CRYSTALS or whatever shit that are powering their guns (which  don't work against the lazer wall keeping them in the jail cell) and shoves them in the place where they are given food and shoots it with his sword which you think they bad guy alien idiots would have taken away from him! They then see the ship is in tatters but its just them making them think that! He-Man's magic powers make the ship look fine. The bad guy aliens then say they keep people here because they are lonely! Yeah. He-Man is like why don't you guys try to be nice and make friends and they are like We will let you leave to save Primus, not something like Neo-Eterina or something but Primus, alright. whatever. The Mutants get there before the Galactic Guardians (they do not deserve a name that cool)

The Female Mutant Lady actually comes off as kinda scary but He-Man and the good guys show up and Skeletor disappears for some reason. They literally stop the main mutants so fucking quickly I didn't even know what happened for a second! They then get them to agree to a treaty and stop fighting. This is when Skeletor shows up and the Female Mutant Lady joins him and since there's like 3 minutes left to the show and they still have to do the credits He-Man and The Random Lady fight and win easily. They trap Skeletor and Female Mutant Lady into a space ship and send them into space. They talk about how Skeletor won't be able to stop the WAY OF THE MAGIC or some bullshit. The Female Mutant Lady asks Skeletor if they will just float in space forever and Skeletor vows that he will find a way to get back and destroy He-Man once and for all! Just like the 1987 movie and frankly I want to see what they would have done in a sequel for THAT way more than this crap.

FINAL VERDICT: If I can give this show one thing is that there's at least an ending. This was Final. This wasn't another adventure of the week episode. No they ended things. It sure as fuck wasn't satisfying but it WAS an ending. No one really cared enough about this product and it shows. Everyone was like paycheck time! Yeah I know just about all animation and hollywood and movies and all that shit is made to get a paycheck but at least sometimes people care! They didn't care at Mattel. They didn't care in the voice over booths. The people writing the scripts didn't care and probably wished to be on any other piece of entertainment over this. I'll show you how bad this show is. Toy collectors barely if ever seem to talk about this show and if you can't get those rascals to care then I do not think anyone could. This is probably the worst fucking Final Episode I've ever discussed and I want to forget about The New Adventures of He-Man.