Toy Masters Episode 4 : The Hail Mary Film (that didn’t work)

(music) Previously on Toy Masters, the TV show saw great success, toy sales increased, but what happened after that? From the Boys Adventure Club, this is Toy Masters. (music) Here is preliminary designer Roger Sweet and then Mark De Camillo and Tall Paul Cleveland who are in marketing at Mattel. And the line the first year 1982 did 38 million and 1983 it did 80, 1984. It did 111, 1985 it did 250 and in 1986 it did 400 million. These are domestic sales. He man of the Masters Universe was obviously became a very powerful worldwide brand. When he man was launched, when Masters Universe was launched, it was launched as a US brand and Mattel eventually grew it over the course of several years to become an international brand. (music) John Ammerman who later became president of Mattel. He was ahead of international. He had the luxury of looking at what we were marketing the first year in the US. And if it was successful, he could take that and market it as a beginning in Europe. If it was a failure, he'd pass it by. So when we would finish manufacturing about 150,000 units of a character, we'd do the 150,000 and we manufacture some more for international. And we'd just warehouse it until they were ready to take it because it was cheaper to warehouse it than to start up manufacturing all over again for an old character. One year some of our executives weren't making their bonuses and they said, "Well, we've got a lot of orders on the books for he-man." (music) Yeah, but it's the overage that the retailers were ordering that they knew they weren't going to get. And we've got a lot of he-man characters in the warehouse. Yeah, but they're last years. We know they're not going to move through a retail, ship them. So we shipped millions of millions of dollars worth of he-man characters into the retail market. They got on the pigs and stopped. They got dusty. Basically, as a marketer manufacturer of products, you sell it into retail. Retailers expect you to get it off of their shelves. One way or the other. So either you're going to get it off their shelves because you're doing TV advertising and you're getting the people excited about the product they're coming into the store to buy it. Or if it's not coming off the shelf, you know, they're going to have to market down to get it off the shelf and then you have make goods to give them credits for whatever they had to mark down and get it off the shelf. We sent our 1700 retail merchandise ladies out there after we made more new ones. Take them off and put the new ones on. So we sort of repaired it the first time. But the second time we did it, it didn't work. Let me further explain what tall Paul is saying here. Now, when he-man was hot, a particular store would want say 20 figures of a certain character. And Mattel would come back and say, "We just don't have enough. We'll give you 10." So in order to get the 20 that they wanted, that they figured that they could sell, the store started ordering 30 hoping that they would get Mattel to go. We can't do 30. We'll give you 20. And that was the practice. And everyone on both sides were aware. But for whatever reason, when it looked like the big wigs weren't going to get their bonuses for the year over at Mattel, and these bonuses were based in sales, they thought, "How do we make it look like more toys were sold?" So knowing that the toy stores didn't actually want the 30 figures, they shipped them anyway knowing full well that they weren't going to be sold. All that mattered was that it looked like Mattel had fulfilled the orders from the stores. The most amazing thing about interviewing Mattel execs was how no one ever took responsibility or admitted any wrongdoing or anything. Everything can be explained away. There's always a justification. No failure. Just a minor understandable misstep. Listen to Joe Morrison, who should have been a lawyer, justify Mattel's decision. We probably shipped a much product. Balance that by the fact that Mattel was having some severe financial problems at the time. And needed those shipments. There was one study that we did. Between 1982 and 1987, he met an accountant for 94% of all profit growth of Mattel. Mattel electronics kind of imploded in 1983, which is the same year that the Filmation TV series came out. And it was very fortunate for Mattel because Mattel was about, you know, this close to filing bankruptcy. And if it hadn't been for the Masters of the Universe toy line taking off, they definitely would have had to shutter the place. So Mattel really shot itself in the foot with him, man. Really what it was was shipping old characters into the market to try to make numbers so key executives could make their bonuses. I have a bone to pick with them on that too. Because the second and third year, I was, I was, by now, promoted from entry level, 33 year old entry level marketing guy. I'm now senior vice president of the marketing worldwide for all Mattel toys except Barbie and large dolls. Blue the doors off with him and just blue the like exceeded my goals, my bonus goals and stuff like three times. And I get my bonus check and it's like 85% of what I should be getting. And I go into Tom Kalinsky who's the president said, Tom, what is this? I blew the doors off. I said, yeah, I know, but I'd like to leave you something to shoot for. I'm going, what? What do I have to do to get 100% of my bonus? A thousand times what my goals are? Here to encapsulate everything beautifully, artist of the original Masters of the Universe line and Mattel employee Mark Taylor. I had, I worked for a, um, a lady at, um, Mattel and she gave me one piece of real wise advice. And she said, Mark, never underestimate greed when it comes to making decisions in the toy industry. Mattel was flailing, but they still had one card up their sleeve. So they decided to try to save the toy line by making a he-man movie. Here is director Gary Goddard. The fact that most people don't know is that when we started this picture, I didn't know it, but I found out very quickly. We had a studio that was going out of business. We had a toy company that had just lost $400 million on the he-man toy line and we didn't know that either. And so we had two very desperate entities hoping that this picture was going to solve all of their problems. And I had a direct this picture under the most extreme circumstances you could imagine. Every day was a crisis of some kind. And some of those crisis were even, we're shutting you down today. This movie's over. And I kept saying it's not over. We're going to keep going. Somehow we're going to get through this and we did. From a distant galaxy, they have come to earth. Dolph Lundgren as he-man. Frank Langella as Skellator. Only Jay have the powers to be. Masters of the Universe live the adventure. In 1986 we started to develop a live action movie. My group, me, and executive by the name of John Weems, went around and talked to a bunch of studios. Universal studios was interested. And then Canon came to us and made an offer in the deal that we felt was the right thing to do at the right time. Here is William Stout, an incredible artist with a long, amazing career, who ended up being the production designer for the Masters of the Universe film. A bill is one of my favorite people, period. If for no other reason, then he illustrated an incredible poster for Renere Beer featuring Sasquatch in the '70s. Look it up. That just- just look him up. He's amazing. And he's funny. He's entertaining. Incredibly accommodating and honorable, which you will see here. And Canon worked out this deal with Mattel. The deal was that Canon would put up half the money and Mattel would put up half the money. And Canon told Mattel, "Okay, you put up the first half." So Mattel put up the first half. And we very quickly burned through that money. And so Mattel said, "Okay, you know, time for you to kick in the second half and kiss it." So Mattel had to pony up the rest of the money if they wanted to see their film made. And they were desperate to have it made because they were hanging their next year's toy line on the success of that film and generating publicity for their toy line. In the end, I think Mattel released them from like a payment that we released them from so that they could finish the film. Mattel had heavy say. They had approvals over everything, over costumes, over the script, everything. We had veto rights more than approval rights. If something was not appropriate for him and we could say that. And Mattel is now listen, you know, he man can't kill anybody. He man can't really hurt anyone, not really. That's like, "Okay guys, we're making an action movie with an action hero." This is live action film, not cartoon. So, you know, so one of the reasons we created these generic, you know, everyone said, "Oh, they copied Star Wars." No, we created generic robot warriors so that he man could smash and fight and blast them because he couldn't actually do that to anyone living. Because that would have been a no-no. At the start of production, he man was at his peak. By the time we were about halfway through the movie, the decline in Star in a toy sale, big time. It just suddenly dropped. And I'll never forget, I'm not going to tell you the executive name. but I got this call and I had said in an earlier conversation with guys, you know, go see what action movies are right now. You know, you want to do an action movie, he man's got to kick some ass, he's got to really be up there, we've got to see him battling, blasting guys, you know, and so I got a call with them and they said, "We have to meet with you right away." They came down the set and they pulled me in the room and they go, "Toy sales are down, everything's on this movie." I said, "Well, we're doing the best we can, we can, you know, but you know, we're also trying to obey all these rules and put them in goes, "We don't care what you do, we don't care what you do, haven't killed people, haven't blood, got score sex, do whatever you have to just make sure this movie's a hit." Here is Visual Effects Master Richard Edland from Boss Studios, who worked on Star Wars and Ghostbusters among many others. Side Story, when we were in his office surrounded by his many Oscars, his receptionist found something on the floor that she gave to him, it was a tiny piece of celluloid. He examined it for a second and offhandedly said, "That's Alderon, I wondered where that went." Alderon, of course, his lay is planted from Star Wars that was blown away by the Death Star. And it was just there, this historic piece of special effects, just under his desk in the carpet next to some stray paper clips and dustbodies. I just love that. It was a low-ball budget for us, so we had, we didn't have that much money to work with. We had gone on a location scout, it was up in Idaho, this awful lava pit, extra terrestrial looking place, with all kinds of caves and lava rock formations and everything. They ran out of money, so we wound up shooting at Vazquez Rocks. Everybody knows the location so well because they've seen it in so many movies. In the middle of making Masses the Universe, the Mattel people came through the offices and they were looking at all the designs and the walls and they started going, "Yeah, we'll do that one and we'll do that one." "That'll be a great toy, that'll be great." And they said, "We need to get copies of all your designs for our new toy line." And I said, "Can't do that." I said, "Well, I'm hired to design the film, I wasn't hired to design your next year's toy line. If you want your next year's toy line, you need to pay me for that." And you need to pay these other designers who are working on the film. And they were just horrified. They thought they were going to get all this stuff for free. And so they complained to Canon and Canon threatened to shut down the film. They actually threatened to shut down the film eight times. And I never stopped working. I was doing my job. But they thought we would cave in and we didn't cave in and we ended up getting a percentage of the toy royalties and return for allowing them to use those designs. [Gunshot] Enough. Where is your strength? Are you ready to deal now? Proud warrior. I saw it out in Franklin, Jellie to play Skeletor. I knew there was going to be an act of behind a mask. I wanted an actor of enough power and stature that his performance would come through that mask. I put a lot of emphasis on Skeletor. Once I had Franklin, Jellie in the role, I wanted him to carry the picture. I was accepting of the fact that Dolph came with the picture. I was concerned that Dolph would be able to carry the scenes. He was brand new. He'd only done the Rocky movie. I wanted my best to restructure the story almost through the eyes of Skeletor so that the backbone and spine of the project was carried by Skeletor. Which was fine anyway because he's pulling all the strings anyway. Franklin, Jellie is a consummate performer. When we all heard that he was going to be playing Skeletor, it was like there isn't anybody else in the world that is going to do the job that Franklin will do. That's why I really don't think anybody objected to all the input he put into it because what he pulled in, he was going to give back out again. And he did. In creating Skeletor, I took photographs of Franklin, Jellie. We had already cast Franklin Skeletor and started working over his face, designing the makeup that was going to that. Frank was very particular about what he thought would work, what he thought wouldn't work. His ideas were always right on. He was very conscientious about the cloak for example. It had to move just right. We kept designing and building different cloaks until he got one that just moved perfectly. It was really Franklin Jellor who made that character come to life. I also was aware, I hate to say this on camera, but I was aware that Dolph was the second picture. I wanted to surround him with a good company of actors that would keep the screen alive and would also help him to bring his performance up too. I saw the rough cuts. I listened to Dolph along Rungren's voice and I just about had a heart attack. Now why are you so important to Skeletor? I wanted him to re-dub his voice, get someone else to speak for him. In his contract he had the right to do it two or three more times and he finally got it to where it wasn't too bad. I said it's okay if he has a little bit of an accent but you gotta be able to understand him. Right. I was concerned with the picture that I wanted to make the picture best it could be. We actually brought in a few actors and did loop as a test to show the studio. One of them was flawless. To this day I wish we'd have done it. But Manahan was like nope, I'm gonna stick with Dolph. I'm gonna go with him. It's ultimately their call. Hey man, if I kill him I make him a martyr, a saint. No, I want him broken. One of the reviewers pointed out that the villains meaning Magnen and Frank. To some degree we're more compelling characters that you're more interested in than the heroes. And to some degree it's true because they both gave great performances and we gave them some great lines. We gave them some great scenes. And Kevin you're right. He's bleeding. What happened? The other interesting casting choice was we were looking for the lead girl and we got introduced to Courtney Cox and Courtney Cox had just done the Springsteen video. In fact that was how she was, this is the girl who's in the Springsteen video. That's how it was so. This is the girl in the Springsteen video. She got to see her. She was good but I just didn't feel she fit the part because she had actually done what a lot of actors did. She put on a lot of makeup. She wanted to look very sexy. But this role was more of an All American girl and my casting director actually was the one who said I want to bring her back in one more time. I want you to look at her one more time. So I have to give credit to her as well. Vicki Thomas. So Vicki said let me bring her back in and she called Courtney and said, ditch the makeup. Come in and Jeans. Just be yourself. When we came in the next day in Jeans no makeup as herself we got along great. She had such a great personality and she was beautiful. She just nailed it that day and I knew right then okay she's the one. Told Vicki said you're right and glad you brought her in again. She was a fine but she had great natural ability and she I think she did a great job. Frank did a great job. Very happy with the cast overall. It was an extraordinary time to be working for Canon. You have to understand that at this point in time the most films that any of the major studios had in production was Warner Brothers and they had six films in production. Canon had 84 films in production. There were three times during the making of the film where literally the payroll didn't arrive that day and the crew was all going to walk and I had to get them all together and say, let's you're here. Let's finish the day and if at the end of the day there's no money understand but meanwhile Elliot, Elliot, check our producer, he's going to go get the money. So I can't promise you but I can tell you everything we can I think we'll have your money within the day. So you know you don't hear all these stories making a movie. What you have to do as a director to keep things going and the guys said okay well you're right we're here let's do it. Let's do the day. So we'd get through the day and somehow or other Elliot would get to Canon and somehow they would find the money and they would get their payroll and we kept going. So Canon was really pressuring Gary and they decided to pull the plug they didn't want to do the huge battle sequence at the end of the set. Yeah they shut me down on the set in the middle of the battle and I mean literally with someone picking up a card and putting it in front of the camera and saying you're done. I mean the middle of a shot so that was kind of crazy and I said you know we don't have the end. There's no I mean we don't have the final conference. We have the setup we did the clash we had the moment where a P-man is going to clash with the sword right and on the set that day I had an idea which was because I knew we were running short in time and I knew they might do this to me. So I had them do that clash once and I told the DP I want you to I want you to pull you know basically kill the lights in the sounds and just let them fade the darkness because if I'm not able to finish this battle then I'm going to do a thing. I thought through that when they go the power so much that it like saps the power from everything and then we're in this dark void and that's where I can do whatever I got to do to get us to the end. So that night I got them to let me do some random battle footage even though we shut down the set I kept Skeletor and Dolph and the DP and this and I got them to let me shoot some footage of them battling. It wasn't very well choreographed it was a very quick choreographed job we kept the lights out we backlit them which is what you see in the film and we had everything now so I had enough that I get peace together the battle but we did not have the end that moment where he hits the sword it slides he reaches for it grabs it well all that last bit no that was shot I said okay well it's we're done we're done and we're going to come back and get this other stuff. It was a shame because I had really designed that set for sword fighting I made sure that there are ups and downs and overs and under and all kinds of ways it could be used to get the most out of this battle. We came back about three or four months later and we got one day kind of giving me one day at the boss studio and we boarded it very carefully and every single day we had a fight. shot every cut every close up everything you see there was all done in one day and we got it and we were able to put the ending on the movie. It was very very very touch-and-go. At one point the cannon goes you know go and go with it. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. They'll fight and then we'll just fade out. It's like you can't fade out. We had the world premiere at Man's Chinese and if you were going to take it from the reaction of that audience you thought this was going to be the biggest movie of all time because it was wall-to-wall noise from the moment it started. The problem is Mattel was not going to promote the movie. Cannon had to promote the movie because cannon was having its financial difficulties. They didn't have the muscle to promote the movie so obviously as we all know in the movie business you know a large part of it's the movie but another large part of it is making sure the audience is the where the movie is there and wants to see it so I think that the movie suffered from the fact that it could not be marketed as heavily as it needed to be to define the audience to really become the big picture that we all hoped it could become. It did a reasonable box office the first weekend and then the second weekend instead of dropping off like most films do it made even more money and I was like wow that just doesn't happen and the third weekend it made even more money and then suddenly cannon pulled it from the theaters. By that time cannon was basically almost out of business and they had no real power. The live action movie should have been done a year earlier you know if it had been done in 1986 you know it might have kicked things, kicked things along. Steve Moore was at a concert promoter in Houston called PACE Management and Steve had the idea for the Human Power Tour. The Universe! J3rd through the 7 8 exciting shows at the Pacific Coliseum. Tickets available at BTC, CBO Outless. Special KBOS TV 12 $2 discount coupons available at Richmond Center Mall. Surrey Place Mall. It also premiered this time in Radio City Music Hall. We had a great run of Radio City it was fun I was there. This is Leslie Wadsworth who played Sheera on the Power Tour who is incidentally still married to Jack Wadsworth who played He-Man on the Power Tour followed by Jack. Speaking about the impact of the characters and what they did with that power to help people. This little boy he had to be I don't know five or six and he came back to age with his dad you know and it was one of those things where the dad was kind of pushing him forward and he looked up at Jack you know and it was just like his face was just like and then he peed he just he just peed in his pants but it was so cute and then he what he said was he just looked at Jack and he goes I knew you were real and that's how it continued. I don't think that that anyone really was prepared for the response that these characters generated from the kids. Jack and I started going ahead because there was a need to fill with these kids oh you know he and Sheera there holy cow let's get him into the Make a Wish foundation and I think that was where the responsibility of the characters hit us. It was the impact that we had on the children in the hospitals and those children that asked to meet us as their Make a Wish wish. The children that were terminal or potentially terminal that and so we felt like we had made a difference we just have that endearing memory in our in our spirits about children and so you know it's been a good thing. The traveling show ultimately probably didn't make a whole lot of money I think it probably broke even. At in 1986 it did 400 then in 1987 it dropped to 7 million and it literally put Mattel in some jeopardy of going out of business it is very very difficult when it is that successful and obviously you are shipping that much product into the stores that when it turns that you can engineer a soft landing that lets it continue on at obviously a lower level but a significant level of sales. I believe we started laying people off in 86 and that process continued right on through 1987 and if you talk to Mattel employees today they'll tell you that it's always almost been a continuous process at Mattel but not in the scale that it took place then. We live in a world now where reboots of popular franchises occur all the time. If it worked the first time around it'll work again right? It doesn't matter that the same story is being told in just a slightly different not as cool way with very little time having passed before the last iteration. In this sense he man was once again a trend setter. Here is John Weems followed by Mark De Camillo on the rebirth of He-Man. The one thing you can count on, the toy business, there'll be a new generation of kids. It's obviously the themes and the motivations and the things that appeal to boys are pretty fundamental with He-Man. So I kind of inherited He-Man in 1987 right as the movie was first coming out. We went straight back to how He-Man was launched originally and so we went back to and recreated the original research. The space theme started to kind of bubble to the top. They wanted lightsabers and laser pistols. They didn't want to have metal on metal any long. Highly elaborate large figures cost a lot of money. So the international group wanted to have smaller figures not with features in them that were you know more collectible lower price point and then put the features in the accessories and placets. For one thing they were what a like an inch shorter than the former He-Man figures and far less muscular and they stood at attention with the styling of the outfits was poor. Many of the top retailers didn't even carry the figure assortments. The buyers liked the the the power source because the power source was really new and unique. They said well we'll take that but there was no TV show for the characters so we didn't have the money to advertise them that much and as a result it's kind of self-fulfilling you know that the characters never made it. The toy line wasn't designed to be with a show obviously because we launched it in '89 and the show didn't come out to the fall of the next year of 1990. Only the most powerful man in the universe can protect the people of primus no matter what it takes. They're coming for us. Then we won't disappoint them. Watch the new adventures of He-Man. We stay morning's a 630 on WNFT. Here's Eric Ashymer of Filmation who did the first animated show followed by Alan Oppenheimer voice actor. We contacted Mattel about doing a new a new show and they sort of like humored him. It was it was really disgusting. This is when memory loss is good and they sort of you oh you know we'll get back to meanwhile they made this deal with the studio that was literally across the street from our office. They didn't want to use any of us. The first place it would have cost him too much money. It flopped you know. I watched one episode and I just was not impressed. I didn't like what they had done to Skeletor. He's laughing at his own jokes and you know he was very ineffectual. You know if you compare it with the original He-Man it was a lot sillier loaded with gags and stunts and tongue and cheek and all that kind of stuff. They thought they knew how to do He-Man. And oh they didn't need him. So they thought they really knew how to do He-Man. And they just butchered it. We would write a scene where the characters who spoke with the ones on the screen notes would be sent back. Please add this character and this character and this character to stand around basically mute in the scene so that we could focus on these toys. Out of all the notes we would get which were pretty idiotic for the show that was that was number one on the list. Put somebody in the scene who doesn't have anything to do but stand there. As the line of failure yeah I wouldn't say it was a huge success for Mattel. Would we have done anything different and you know sure in hindsight you could have done something different and He-Man never really did you know within the 1990s recapture any of its past glory. So there it is. The toy line struggled and they tried to pull out all the stops at Mattel and that ultimately didn't work either. But there is more to the story. He-Man wasn't done yet and neither was preliminary designer Roger Sweet but that is for next time. Next time on Toy Masters. My impression is when I left Mattel and couldn't get a job in the industry and fighting of having one of the best track records in the history of the industry there had to be some major figures talking against me. So I ended up going to work for Home Depot. I knew Roger for what he was. I'm not about to read his book. Would I read a book from a phone? Set out a read an entire book with 500 pages of Roger's rambling. Thanks for listening to Toy Masters. Be sure to like, subscribe and review. It helps a lot. Toy Masters is a boys adventure club production and was edited by me, Corey Landis, with help from Roger, Layjou here. Special thanks to Robert Burnett. Until we meet again. Good journey.