SuperHeroBooks - Mastering the Universe: He-Man and the Rise and Fall of a Billion-Dollar Idea
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Manufacturer: Emmis Books
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 688.72
EAN: 9781578602230
ISBN: 1578602238
Label: Emmis Books
Manufacturer: Emmis Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 240
Publication Date: 2005-07-11
Publisher: Emmis Books
Studio: Emmis Books
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Could have been better
Comment: I've finished the book and it's a mostly bland written essay on the state of the toy industry at the time. Roger Sweet - whom is generally credited with creating He-Man - tells us about the hierarchy at Mattel and all the politcal bs that went on. It made for a semi-interesting, but kind of misleading read simply because the book is more about Mattel as a company and the toy industry rather than just the He-Man line. It's short, but can get boring simply because the writing is uninspired. Would I recommend it? If you're a toy nerd like probably anybody reading this, it wouldn't be a terrible choice for a quick two day read. If you want more in depth He-Man information and to even read the Filmation series bible (which is really long, but really cool), just head over to He-Man.org. That site is your one stop shop for everything MOTU.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Bitter, Smug, and inaccurate
Comment: Sometime last year when I was shopping around for He-Man busts on Amazon.com I stumbled upon a book that looked pretty interesting, Mastering the Universe: He-Man and the Rise and Fall of a Billion Dollar Idea by Roger Sweet and David Wecker. The blurb on the back of the book said that the book deals with the conception of the character and figure, including the office politics that influenced the development of the Masters of the Universe toy line, as well as the downfall of the line. Cool. I'd never really had the curtain pulled back on a toy line before. I put it on my wish list and promptly forgot it was there until my parents picked it up for me on my birthday.
I just finished it and I'm not sure what I think. Mainly Roger Sweet, a designer who put in 19 years at Mattel through the 70's and 80's mostly, and who claims to have created He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, wrote it. I say "claims" because the entire book reads like a deposition in a court case where the creative rights to He-Man are in dispute. And they aren't, which made reading this book very painful and the facts presented suspect when I don't even doubt that he created the toy line. See the book is written in a very deceptive manner where the idea that there is a dispute as to whether or not Sweet is He-Man's creator is taken for granted. It's not on either cover, and in the forward there is a brief bit that might foreshadow the dispute, but it's certainly not clear. In fact it's not until the epilogue that Sweet makes this clear (well there is the preceding 200 pages of "he said, she said" that makes it abundantly clear, though it's the why am I reading this that I am waiting for) where he states, "As I look back on the Masters of the Universe, and my relation to all of it, one point strikes me: No one at Mattel ever thanked me for originating the concept..." This needed to be the fist line in the book, hands down, bar none, and all those other clichéd phrases of emphasis.
Underneath all of the bitterness derived from that one idea, that he wasn't thanked, there is a good story here, one that would make a great article, but not a great book, which is my other major beef with Mastering the Universe. It's a fairly short read that manages both omit a lot of what should be in the book like pictures, sketches and other people's points of view (quotes, etc.) and yet be filled with a ton of redundant or off topic information. For instance Sweet makes it a point to describe the physique of almost everyone he mentions in the book, including height, weight and build. I mean does it matter if a woman working in his design group is 5'5" with a slender build? He also repeats the description every single occurrence in this book at least once but sometimes two or three times. I think he mentions the fact that in 1986 the MOTU toy line brought in 400 million dollars and then only 7 million the flowing year like four or five times and each time it's written like it was the first. The entire first chapter, which deals with Sweet mocking up three He-Man prototypes for a presentation, is almost repeated verbatim in chapter four. At the end of the day the book feels like it was padded a bit too much.
As far as Sweet's physical descriptions go, it's actually one of the more revealing things in the book. Both his co-author, David Wecker (Sweet's nephew) and Sweet himself make it a point to illustrate how important a strong and healthy physique was to Sweet growing up. He was a scrawny boy who was picked on by other boys and girls alike which prompted him to start a rigorous exercise routine that's he's kept with to this day. Every time he mentions the development of He-Man, particularly the first three prototypes he goes to great pains to mention that he felt giant muscles and a "ready for action stance" are what were lacking in the field of boy's action toys. It gets to a point where it's pretty clear that Sweet is semi-obsessed with muscles and apparently has little or no respect for weak or frail people.
Another thing that bugs me is how Sweet comes off very smug while arguing his creative rights. Twice in illustrating how successful his designs were to Mattel he quotes the exact amount of a bonus he received for his work. There are also numerous instances where he relates all the praise that was lavished on him by quoting memos or in what he remembers overhearing when others would speak of him. I can completely understand where he's coming from, in particular in an office environment where praise is often given by co-workers but never related to managers prompting that whole defensive "give credit where credit is due" mentality, but this doesn't belong in a book that is only in his voice, it just comes off very smug. He's also fond of self-congratulatory boasts and remarks. Here are two of my favorite examples: "...I came up with an unheard of innovation in model making..." and "In any case, It's my humble opinion that the Dragon Walker is the most creative powered toy vehicle ever created."
Sweet also gets a lot of facts wrong in the book which doesn't help support his cause all that much. He repeatedly states that the 3.75 inch G.I. Joe figures were already on the market (and influencing his design) when he was developing He-Man, which is off by about two years with He-Man debuting first. He also sites the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as a factor in the downfall of He-Man during 1987, which is also a year or two off and not a factor in that years drop in profits. The thing that hits home the most is the factual errors in the actual MOTU line. He takes the time to describe a bunch of the figures in detail citing how creative the design was, yet gets a couple wrong. He describes Webstor as having a string going through his head and coming out his hind quarters when he simply had a back pack with a string running through it, while he describes Kobra Kahn as having a detachable head that you filled with water that would act as a squirt gun, when in fact you filled his body with water and the head only detached to allow the body to be filled. I know these are minor "fanboy" quibbles, but when he's trying to win over an audience of readers to the facts that his designs were so clever he should probably get them right. It also doesn't help that he dedicates an entire chapter to the very "crib notes" version of the development of boys figural toys over the last two hundred years, that in the end just makes him seem like he's trying to be more knowledgeable on a subject than he really is.
I also found that as a whole the entire book was very manipulative in the way it described events. In one paragraph Sweet would mention how during the first year He-Man was in production is was projected to make only 7 million dollars in profit, but ended up making 38 million and it seems that he is attributing this success to himself and his initial creative design. Then in another paragraph he mentions how he wasn't involved past the initial inception of the design, that another team took over the work on the first year run (which he repetitively says was uninspired) and that, that first year's profits (the same 38 million mind you) was pretty darn weak. This goes on all throughout the book. In one paragraph he talks about how uninspired the first wave was, then in the next he's talking about how creative it was to repaint a basic He-Man figure blue and orange, slap on Skeletor's armor, and then to call the figure a robot. That is pretty darn lame and isn't creative at all (though it is genius from a corporate "get `em to buy the same figure twice" standpoint.)
He also pretty much lambastes the Filmation cartoon, going so far as to site them for creating new characters for the show, then charging Mattel a licensing fees to make action figures of them (when they are paying licensing fees in the beginning to make the cartoon at all.) He states how he detests the concept of "Prince Adam", that it demeans the character of He-Man (though he goes to pains to make sure that everyone knows that before the cartoon came out he originated the idea of a character magically transforming from scrawny to muscled hero in a numbered internal Mattel document.) He also gives the show little credit for monumentally affecting the profits of the toys after it began airing. Well, he does mention it, though he makes sure to state that it's was his designs that made the toys so profitable, when it's clearly the show being broadcast into millions of homes on a daily basis that makes more sense.
The last nail in the coffin for me is that in the epilogue he repeatedly states that though He-Man was a "wild roller coaster ride", it's certainly not the most satisfying or memorable moment is his career or life (those honors go to working on both the Boeing 747 cabin and Downey fabric softener bottle designs), yet he put forth the effort to write this bitter memoir dedicated to making sure everyone knows who created He-Man.
I think it might be safer next time if I refrain from pulling back the curtain on a beloved childhood memory.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Mastering The Universe
Comment: As many young adults nowadays I grew up in the world He-man and The Masters of the Universe. I would follow He-man and his friends' heroic adventures through Eternia on television or by making my own adventures with the action figures. I had always known how He-man had come to be as a fictional charater but never as a non-ficional toy and this book does just that. Mastering the Universe is not just the story of how Roger Sweet came to create He-man and he rest of the Masters but how the franchise quickly rose to be one of the most popular children's toy-line in history to it's almost as quick demise in the hands of poor business dealings and office politics in Mattel. This book is not only for the He-man Fans but also to anyone involved in the business world of creativity, imagination and invention. Mastering the Universe is a fun read loaded with great stories from the creator and author himself, Roger Sweet.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The rise and fall of the 'He-Man and Masters of Universe' toy line is revealed by the creator himself
Comment: If you're an industry outsider who believes the children's toy industry must be a satisfying place to work, take a look at the office politics and conflicts revealed behind the scenes in Mastering The Universe: He-Man And The Rise And Fall Of A Billion-Dollar Idea. The rise and fall of the 'He-Man and Masters of Universe' toy line is revealed by the creator himself, Roger Sweet, who tells how the idea and concept translated to the toy market. Any involved in the toy industry or its marketing, or in inventing new products, will be fascinated by the history and drama of Mastering The Universe.
Customer Rating:
Summary: This book has very little to do with He-Man the toy, and nothing to do with the TV series
Comment: Just be fair warned - this book is not what it is sold as. It's a psudo-memoir of the rough career of a guy who worked for Mattel. He worked on He-Man, and puts forth that he "created" him, but there is so little to actually do with the He-Man franchise. The title is EXTREMELY misleading - it should be called "The Partial Rise and Sort-of Fall of a Seemingly Bitter Work-For-Hire Designer".
Much of the book is simply recollections of office politics from a couple of decades ago, and reads like the rantings of someone who is so focused on their past they are unable to look at it objectively. Imagine if you wrote a book about some trauma you experienced in Junior High - twenty-five years later, recounting the story gives you perspective on the situation because you realize how small it is in the scheme of life, and how silly some things are years later when you grow into a mature person. This author seems unable to do this, and has no perspective other than wanting desperately to convince us that someone backstabbed him in minor office politics a few decades ago. He takes it very seriously, like he's talking about world events as opposed to the sculpting of a toy, and he repeats it over, and over, and over.
The book has no concept of why He-Man is still popular nor does it offer any insight into the creation of the toys or anything else of interest besides how this guy was "wronged". There are literally only a few sentences in the entire book that have to do with the cartoon series, only enough for the author to dismiss it. For example, he calls Prince Adam a "sissy", and doesn't understand that the cartoon *IS* He-Man to most people, not the toys. He seems to be under the very false impression that the series was an afterthought to the phenomena, not the core of why people are still interested in He-Man today (regardless of which came first).
The next problem is the dual authorship. I've never read a singular narrative by two authors where it was more obvious who wrote what, down to individual lines. Sweet will go on for PAGES about how he got shafted at some staff meeting 25-years ago because someone didn't like him (reading the book, it doesn't seem as if ANYONE likes him, at least from his perspective), then all of a sudden a "But no use crying over spilled milk!" will be inserted after all the whining in a very poor attempt to make it sound like he hasn't just been going on about being a victim for several hundred words.
There is so much more bad about this book I could spend all day, but it's really not worth the time. I'm only writing this to save the time of those who, like me, were looking for a great history of He-Man only to recieve a poorly written cry-fest from some guy who seems to think that by repeating the same few sales figures a dozen times will suddenly convince us that...well, that's the problem. He doesn't have a point to convince us to, or a true story to tell; this book is simply a guy who has obsessed over a poor work experience for decades and wants us to justify his obsession.
It's just a bad book that has really NOTHING to do with He-Man. There is a tiny appendix at the end of the book where he lists a few comments about a few figures, and the most insightful thing we get is, "He featured a twisting torso", which you could tell by looking at a picture of the thing. If you want to read a book about bitterness and people who like to paint themselves like victims against the most boring of backdrops (not even the corporate stuff is interesting), then this is your book. Otherwise, skip it, and use your money to buy those great new He-Man DVDS!
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Editorial Reviews:
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Mastering the Universe illuminates the creation, rise, and fall of one of the top-selling product lines in what is arguably the world’s most competitive industry, toys—and it does so from the perspective of Roger Sweet, the man who originated He-Man for Mattel. He-Man and the product line that grew out of it, Masters of the Universe (MOTU), created a fantasy world for boys that, at its height in 1986, reached $400 million in U.S. sales, only to plummet to $7 million the following year. During its six-year run, the MOTU line sold $1.2 billion worldwide and spawned a syndicated cartoon series and a major motion picture—a feat not even the venerable Barbie can claim. Mastering the Universe explores the phenomenon of He-Man’s popularity, as well as the shocking reasons behind the toy’s rapid decline.
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