25 Days of Christmas: ‘He-Man & She-Ra: A Christmas Special’

Day 17

Yep.  This is happening.  The classic Masters of the Universe cartoon had a Christmas special.  And it is just as ridiculous, bizarre, and just plain dumb as you would expect it to be.  It is also incredibly awesome.  Like the cartoon itself, the He-Man & She-Ra: A Christmas Special enters that special category, which I like to label as being “awesomely bad”.  You watch it, you know it is stupid, yet you cannot help but like it.

The story to this special is all over the place.  Orko (who is a wizard or something) messes with this spaceship and accidentally brings two Earth children to Eternia.  Because they are filled with the Christmas spirit, the evil Horde Prime wants them destroyed and tasks Skeletor and Hordak to bring him the kids.  It is up to He-Man and She-Ra to save the day.  While this is the main thrust of the story, there is a lot of set-up to get viewers to this point.  Some of it really felt like padding, but the cool thing is that none of it is ever boring.

The kids are completely unfazed by any of the crazy stuff going on on Eternia.  They give no second thoughts to a flying wizard creature and are completely comfortable hanging around with Skeletor.  They also never really seem to miss their parents (nor do their parents seem to have missed them).  I also dig how, after one day of being aware of the holiday from two small children, everyone on Eternia completely takes to  Christmas.

I absolutely love how cool He-Man plays everything as if the eternal battle between good and evil is just another dull day at the office.  Give Jim from The Office a broadsword, and you have He-Man.  She-Ra is incredibly generic, but she displays a very bizarre flirtation with He-Man, her brother.  I hope all of that was unintentional, but it is very disturbing at times (just try to tell me the image above isn’t suggestive).  Skeletor, of course, completely steals the special.  This guy is so completely incompetent as a villain, that I cannot help but love the knucklehead.

Nothing in the He-Man & She-Ra: A Christmas Special makes any real sense.  But, you know what?  It does not have to.  Its greatest strength is that it clearly does not care and is just embracing the nuttiness of it all.  It is bad, but bad in the best way.  Go check it out, especially if you grew up watching the cartoon like I did.

~N