Do you, as Thundarr fans, think the He-Man series is a cheap rip-off?
Be honest.
"There is no escape, John!"
Honestly, no. Although there a some similarities like a muscle bound guy wielding a sword, I believe that is where it ends between these two shows. Thundarr owes its popularity to the marriage of the Mad Max type movies to Star Wars. He-Man dealt more with a central character that had a secret identity, much like Superman, and a arch foe with a rouge gallery of henchmen.
shareNot really. There are some similarities, but I don't think that He-Man copied Thundarr on any significant level. Both have characters seemingly derived, in one way or another, from Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian and both involve a world combining a mixture of high and low technology with a sword and sorcery environment, but the comparisons seem pretty superficial.
In Thundarr, Earth's civilizations have been destroyed and new societies emerge from the wreckage; ones in which a select few have achieving advancements in technology and most are left to the low technology derived from living in the relics of a previous world. In He-Man, Eternia is a world in which there is technology beyond that of our own planet, but most are content to live as those in the medieval era lived.
If there is to be any comparison, I think that Blackstar might have borrowed freely from Thundarr and that He-Man would have borrowed such concepts from Blackstar; such as the muscular hero with a powerful sword and the aid of a sorceress.
I would say 'Masters of the Universe' owes more to the success of 'Conan the Barbarian' from the year before it's release ['82] than 'Thundarr'. And of course 'He-Man' was made by the same team as 'Blackstar' [Filmation/Lou Scheimer] and it's obvious they re-used some basic concepts. I think 'Blackstar' was Filmation's answer to 'Thundarr' and 'Masters of the Universe' their answer to 'Conan the Barbarian'.
’Cause there’s thunder in your heart... Every move is like lightning!
Blackstar was fairly enjoyable, but it paled in comparison to Thundarr.
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I think Blackstar might have gotten the ideal for the sorceress sidekick/potential love interest from Thundarr. In any event, the two are very diverse shows.
share But where do the Herculoids fit in all this? Aside from being another hackneyed,formulaic Hanna-Barbara cheesefest
Give me immortality,or give me death.
The Herculoids are just plain weird. I love them. If the creators weren't on drugs, they should have been.
I disagree with you, but I'm pretty sure you're not Hitler.
- Jon Stewart
But where do the Herculoids fit in all this?
The Herculoids were created by Alex Toth, who also did designs for Thundarr the Barbarian. Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, who worked as writers on The Herculoids, were the executive producers of Thundarr. share