She-Ra

SHE-RA
Made by: Mattel
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1985

Witnessing the unbelievable success of their product spin-off, He-Man, Mattel launched a new range of toys aimed at girls and a cartoon to accompany it. The series mythology had Angella as Queen of Brightmoon, and her daughter Glimmer, the princess, as the leader of a Great Rebellion. Then along came Adora of Etheria, who was also He-Man’s sister, who had the ability to transform into She-Ra, self-confessed “Princess of Power!”. Move aside Glimmer, here was a real heroine! She-Ra wore a gold head-dress studded with a big red jewel, and she rode into the breach on Swift Wind, a unicorn.

With a whole world of marketing possibilities in front of them, the animators created a range of dynamic support characters, mostly with crap names. There was Frosta, who lived in Castle Chill, in the Kingdom of Snows; Peek-a-Blue, who had a set of eyes in her tail (!) which allowed her to see the future; Double-Trouble, a double-agent (her name was a bit of give-away though, wasn’t it?) who literally had two faces; Mermistra, a mermaid who could turn into a human; and Castaspella, a magician from Mystacor; Sweet-Bea, who just dressed like a bee (possibly related to Buzz-Off, from He-Man.)

Then, there was Flutterina, a weird owl/koala hybrid with butterfly wings, who She-Ra and pals found in a cocoon and, frankly, should have left there.

Naturally, there were some villains to be defeated: there was Catra and her lion called Clawdeen, who had a bright pink perm (the lion, that is); Entrapta, who just sounds untrustworthy; and Hordak, from Horde World.

You probably don’t need to be told that She-Ra was laughably bad, and that each episode was basically the same, but it achieved what it set out to do - it sold a lot of action figures and accessories (Double-Trouble was the best because you could flip between her two faces in a very amusing way) to lot of little girls who thought He-Man was too rough and boyish. Actually, I did prefer He-Man, and used to have a plastic sword which I kept down the back of my jumper in case of an emergency - and I looked better with a blond bobbed haircut as well.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 1/10