- by Owen Morton
I really have to apologise for the sad lack of website articles this year. I mean, we’re almost one quarter of the way through 2003, and this is only the ninth article that’s been written. The only excuse I can offer is that I’ve been very busy ever since I got back to uni and so things like this website have very sadly been forced down into a low-priority zone. The sadder part of it is that when I do have time to write an article, I find it very hard to think of a fresh topic. Still, it’s now the Easter holidays, so I’ve got plenty of time, and instead of thrashing about for a new topic, I’ve decided to settle for one of the tried and tested favourites: He-Man!
In my defence, it has actually been over three months since I last wrote an article about He-Man, so we are probably well overdue for this. I have at several points in the term considered watching one of the three He-Man episodes available to me at my house in York – ‘The Cat and the Spider’, ‘Search for a Son’ and ‘The Toymaker’, for those of you who are really interested – and then reviewing it, but somehow I don’t feel I can bear the twenty-minute-long recital of gibberish that this would entail. Still, the latter two of those three episodes actually belong to Seb, and since he won’t be at uni with us after June, I won’t have the opportunity to do those episodes after that time, so I’ll be doing them before them, fear not. In the meantime, I present to you a discussion about He-Man’s most useless allies, an article that, I suspect, will soon be followed by a discussion about Skeletor’s most useless allies, though let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
We have actually touched on this topic before, in our rather sarcastic article about Moss-Man last April, and in the rant about Man-E-Faces in October, as well as potentially in any number of other articles. I seem to recall being particularly critical of Man-at-Arms’ ability to do anything, in pretty much any article I’ve written about He-Man, but in this instance I’m talking about the bizarre ideas the Powers That Be had for interesting characters, not characters who were actually quite boring but just happened to be uniquely capable of buggering everything up.
So, putting aside Moss-Man and Man-E-Faces, because we’ve already talked about them, let’s start considering, in no particular order, the weird yet heroic personages that Eternia is populated with.
Fisto:
Okay, at first glance, Fisto’s a relatively normal fellow, if you set aside the defect that all male He-Man characters had in that they had impossibly tiny waists, grossly exaggerated arm and leg muscles, hideously oversized chests (not that I’m jealous of their impressive physiques or anything), and of course the mental deficiency that inspires pretty much all of them to run round wearing furry underpants and little else. Besides all that, which is common to almost all the male Eternians, Fisto doesn’t have much to distinguish him except that he has a very, very large fist, which appears to be made of metal. One presumes this enables him to hit people very hard and not do very much else. This would perhaps be a useful ability if there was no one else in the series capable of hitting people very hard, but as we will all recall from any He-Man episode we’ve ever seen, the title character himself is rather prone to hitting the baddies very hard and sending them scurrying – or more often flying – back to Snake Mountain. Therefore, what benefit does Fisto bring, if his only ability is one that He-Man can do with just as much ease – or indeed more, because when He-Man does it, he doesn’t have to contend with the weight of the massive metal thing on the end of his wrist? The answer to this question is, of course, none.
It is interesting to note that Fisto was originally a baddy, but in the episode ‘Fisto’s Forest’ – which I may review at some indeterminate point in the future – he is converted to the forces of good, and thereafter seems to spend his time wandering through the forest punching trees and making stupid jokes about the size of his fist. Personally, I’d have remained evil.
Anyway. Next …
Buzz-Off:
I’m not sure, but I think that in my review of Disappearing Dragons, I may have discussed Buzz-Off. I certainly recall discussing Mechaneck, the interesting individual who was hanging around with him all that episode. But anyway, even if I have done Buzz-Off before, I’m now going to talk about him again. Basically, Buzz-Off is a large bee, though he only has four limbs instead of six, presumably because a six-limbed character would be too difficult to animate in the poor quality cartoon-fest that was He-Man, and because it would also be too difficult to make an action figure of. But on the plus side, he did have wings, though sadly, these did not enable the action figure to fly.
Still, Buzz-Off was supposed to be “the spy in the sky” (I don’t know where I read that – probably the He-Man and She-Ra Episode Review Website), so presumably his task was to fly about and tell He-Man what the baddies were doing. As I recall, he was also supposed to be in charge of managing the food supplies for Eternia. We’ll deal with this second point first, and we’ll do it with one simple question: if you were King Randor, would you entrust the food supply of your entire kingdom to a giant bee? Actually, we’ll follow this up with a second question: if you were King Randor, you would rule over a kingdom full of the most amazingly deformed and insane humanoids you’d ever seen, and so wouldn’t you consider checking yourself into the nearest mental hospital?
As to the first aspect of Buzz-Off’s job, being the spy in the sky, I might first state that surely this should be Stratos’ job. If you don’t remember Stratos, he’s He-Man’s other flying friend. My point is, Buzz-Off appears to have two jobs, whereas very few other people in Eternia actually have even one. So why is it fair that Buzz-Off gets two? Next up, a spy is supposed to be innocuous. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t call a giant bee innocuous. Skeletor’s minions might be seriously moronic, but I don’t think even they could miss Buzz-Off if he was skulking about Snake Mountain. And lastly, of course, I can’t remember any incident in which Buzz-Off actually brought any worthwhile information to He-Man, since He-Man always seemed to know everything already, so his role as spy in the sky was pretty useless.
Snout Spout:
Now, Snout Spout is the real definition of a useless ally for He-Man. I don’t believe this interesting fellow ever appeared on the cartoon (which is a bit of a shame, since the cartoon did usually feel obliged to explain the origins of characters as weird as this, and I would have loved to know where Snout Spout came from), but the existence of the action figure was enough to make me include him in this collection of inanity. Snout Spout was a humanoid figure dressed entirely in red, apart from the silver metal underpants (I really don’t know if shiny metal underpants is an improvement over furry ones – I’m guessing not – but it really wouldn’t have been an issue in the first place if Snout Spout adhered to tradition in wearing his underpants under his trousers and not on top of them), and who had an elephant’s head, the trunk of which extended – as I recall – all the way down to his knee level. In some attempt at justifying Snout Spout’s existence, the box of the figure claimed that he was Eternia’s fire fighter, but personally, I’d rather burn than let some half-man, half-elephant creature blow water all over me, and anyway, when did we ever see a fire on Eternia? Or at least one that wasn’t put out by He-Man and not Snout Spout? I can’t remember one. Therefore, I presume Snout Spout’s role was to accompany He-Man on the occasional jaunt to fight Skeletor, and ably assist by blowing water at them. Utterly useless.
Okay, that’s enough of that for now. I’ll probably be continuing this series, analysing more of He-Man’s friends and enemies in articles like this one. Next time, I’ll do three of Skeletor’s most stupid and useless friends!