We’re getting closer and closer to the start of Mattel’s brand new Thundercats line — September will be here before we know it — and I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m in the middle of readying myself for this new era. If the Masters of the Universe Classics line has shown us anything, it’s that Mattel has it in them to make an expansive, fulfilling line of updated toys based around an older property. I’m looking forward to the prospect of collecting Thundercats figures for years to come.
We’ve all been burned before on Thundercats toys, a fact I’ve gone into previously. We’re already going to be going deeper into the Thundercats property this time around, so I’m much more confident that this line will be going beyond two figures before closing up shop.
In preparation for the line, I finally grabbed all four volumes of the original ’80s series and have been watching three a night over the past couple of weeks. As of right now, I’m halfway through the series. This is something I’ve been intending on doing anyway, as I’ve been running through a ton of complete series editions of old syndicated cartoons in the past few years. The announcement of the Thundercats line gave me the final push to track down the sets. Luckily I managed to get all four volumes for way below the price of a single volume.
The weirdest thing about watching these old cartoons is how much I don’t remember. Thundercats the cartoon debuted in 1985, but I know for sure I didn’t get to see any of them first run. My area got a local Fox affiliate sometime in 1985, but I know they didn’t start showing the Thundercats until at least 1986, which means they were already in reruns by the time I was able to start watching them. Combine that with an iffy signal due to the Fox station (channel 21, deep in the UHF netherland beyond the ABC/NBC/CBS mainstream) running on what must have been battery power, and it’s a wonder I remember anything at all. I’m confident this is the first time I’m watching these without wavy vertical lines slicing up the picture, and finally everyone is the exact color they’re supposed to be. If you’re a younger whippersnapper and don’t know what it means to have a crappy reception, go on Youtube and watch some old show or commercial that’s been transferred from a decades-old VHS recording and you’ll have some idea of what I was watching the cartoon through.
Anyway, the reason I’m sure I never saw these on first broadcast is because of the five part Anointment Trials that Lion-O went through. If you don’t remember those, the basic plot was that due to Thundera tradition, Lion-O would have to prove himself to be capable of being Lord of the Thundercats by defeating the Thundercats themselves one at a time, using their own skills against them. This meant being stronger than Panthro, faster than Cheetara, Wilier than the Thunderkittens, and being mentally stronger than Tygra (who suddenly grew the ability to cause illusions in this storyline that had not been unveiled before), and snarfier than Snarf. Okay, so he didn’t have to fight Snarf, because “Snarf Pudding” wasn’t something they could show on a kid’s cartoon. The trials concluded after Lion-O faced his greatest enemy (the fantastically voice-acted Mumm-Ra, whose howling, braying, and cackling is lozenge-worthy) without the Sword of Omens.
On the discs, the five parts of the Trials are broken up, with different episodes shoved between them. At first I thought this was a mistake on the discs, as I distinctly remembered watching them one a day throughout the course of a week. A little quick googling informed me that they were indeed shown once a week for five weeks when originally broadcast, with filler cartoons inserted between them. That meant anybody watching them originally wouldn’t have known the outcome of the Trials until five weeks had passed! Gadzooks, that would have been agonizing. When rerun, the five parts were shown together. So luckily I never had to wait that long, and I skipped around on the discs to avoid the wait yet again. Screw you, 1985 — the future wins again!
All this means that that upon rekindling my memories, I’ve gained an appreciation for aspects I had forgotten or entire characters that had dropped out of memory (how cool is the Driller? And how soon can we get a Driller? Why had I completely forgotten Driller? Did I mention Driller?), and I am now more eager for characters that I, as a kid, kind of scoffed at — like the Thunderkittens. I was never one of those kids that needed that “character I could relate to,” so Wilykit and Wilykat to me were kind of annoying and never really interested me when they were a focus. I always remember wanting to get back to the actual adults that were doing things, and I don’t remember ever wanting their figures. But now? Now I can’t wait to see how Mattel pulls them off, and I appreciate them more as actual characters than as characters that felt a little pandering to my demographic of the time.
Hell, I’m even cool with Snarf now. Time seems to dull a bit of the indifference I felt towards characters like that, as it did with my shoulder-shrugging indifference to Orko.
I’m going to have to follow my binge-watching of the cartoon by a quick read through of the old Star Comics Thundercats title. And then the slow-countdown until that first shipping notice for Lion-O.
Being done by Mattel on bodies that are compatible to MOTUC, It’s going to be cool to have these two universes cohabitate a little. There’s already a lot of connections that can be made between the two properties, beyond the inevitable “sword versus sword” conflicts. Mumm-Ra versus Nepthu, just for starters. But it also makes completely obvious sense to me also that Plundor was once a mutant from (duh) Plun-darr.
For now, though, I’m knee-deep in the goodness of an ’80s cartoon.
PS: I even need a Berbil or two, because “robot bear” is a thing.