The animated show only consists of two seasons, but it did have a toy line as well.

The hope was to recruit more girls into the audience as He-Man was achieving with boys. She-Ra: Princess of Power is a spinoff of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. The microphone gives all the kids power as if they are encompassing the mountain! All of the parts can easily be stored inside the castle when it is time to pack up! If you ask anyone they will agree that the best part of this castle is clearly the echo microphone! I’m not sure how my mom and dad didn’t throw this out the window for the amount of times I would speak into it. The demon face is creepy enough, but the mouth can also move thanks to a mechanism on the inside.The swivel snake head is also great when charters try to enter the front gate. If you can make it past the demon’s face there is the ladder trap door you can drop characters from. He-Man and his mighty warriors HAD to take it to Skeletor meaning this is a must to have. Why? Well, with Castle Grayskull a success, would kids really be able to only have one playset? I mean come on, Skeletor and his evil warriors would always have to go to He-Man’s turf to fight. Mattel is smart for rolling out a secondary playset. For $20-30 Skeletor’s Snake Mountain came our way during the third toy wave for the franchise in 1984. While many kids probably had Castle Grayskull, the most remembered of the Masters of the Universe playsets is Snake Mountain. This can keep someone busy for hours. In 1981 how much does this set a person back? Between $20-$30! He-Man’s arch nemesis needs his own badass castle, and due to Castle Grayskull’s success, he gets it. There is also the trap door in the throne room, an elevator and numerous weapons. There are so many amazing features such as the drawbridge door I would always post He-Man up in. Most castles are close to 25 inches tall and 18 inches wide! What I love is that when my mom told me to clean up, I could shove so many toys into the castle, fold it up and snap the clasp to put away. (The Crystal Castle was my sister’s so back off.) These Masters of the Universe castle playsets are truly epic.

I actually still have three of the four castles mentioned in this article. This bad boy’s release date is with the first wave of toys from 1981. We will discuss the GI Joe Air Craft Carrier in a future column!) Most other playsets for various franchises would find release around the year the final Master’s of the Universe playset was released (1986). If these castle playsets were not successful then we would not have GI Joe, Thundercats, Ghostbusters and TMNT playsets that we all love! (I am not considering vehicles to be in the playset category. Finding success with this concept, Mattel would release Castle Grasyskull, Snake Mountain, Crystal Castle and Eternia, and other toy lines would follow suit. They already had their foot in the door with their Barbie playsets. Kenner Toys released a multilevel Deathstar playset in 1977, but Mattel would go on to build the way for other toy lines to follow suit with the concept.

The figures are incredible, but to be specific let’s open up our old Sears Catalog, flip to the toy section and check out the highlight of the toyline: the Masters of the Universe epic castle playsets for He-Man and Shera! It may have only had two seasons, and while many are fans of the show there is something even better that came before the cartoon: the Mattel toys! They are big, bulky and everyone is ridiculously jacked and ripped (steroids of the 80s). He-Man and the Masters of the Universe came on in many of our living rooms when it hit in 1983. Welcome back to another week of Retro-Specs where we are holding strong looking at 1980-1984.

Castle playsets toys