Category: Milestones

Milestones

Five Years of Battle Ram: A He-Man Blog

Posted on by Adam

It’s just over five years now since I started Battle Ram – A He-Man Blog. It’s something that I had rattling around my brain for many months before it crystallized into a blog. My first post in August of 2015 covered my favorite figure – Mer-Man!

What I wanted to do from the outset was tell the story of each toy, from its early concepts to finished toy to its depictions in stories and artwork. I’ve been lucky enough to be able to expand on some of this information in my interviews with Mark Taylor, Rebecca Taylor, Ted Mayer, Rudy Obrero, Martin Arriola and David Wolfram. I also contributed to the Netflix Toys That Made Us episode on Masters of the Universe, and my blog was referenced in How He-Man Mastered the Universe.

Recently I was honored to be able to contribute to an upcoming book from Dark Horse: The Toys of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. I worked closely with Dan Eardley (aka Pixel Dan) and Val Staples. My contributions include:

  • Interviews with over a dozen former and current Mattel people who worked on He-Man and She-Ra in its various iterations. Some were taken from the blog, and others are exclusive to the book.
  • An expanded MOTU timeline covering key events and dates for vintage MOTU, She-Ra, New Adventures, 200x, etc.
  • Fun factoids about the vintage line.
  • Figure writeups for about half of the Masters of the Universe Classics section.
  • Copy editing the vintage section.

This was Dan and Val’s baby from conception to completion, and it was an honor to be able to assist.

Many thanks to all the wonderful MOTU fans who have helped contribute to the blog – including Jukka Issakainen (who is taking a more active role in publishing articles now!) Øyvind Meisfjord, John Oswald, Dejan Dimitrovski, Dušan Mitrović, and many others! And thanks as always to everyone for reading.

Good journey!

15
Milestones

Three years of Battle Ram: A He-Man Blog

Posted on by Adam
Image source: Andy Youssi

It’s been about three years now since I started Battle Ram – A He-Man Blog. It’s something that I had rattling around my brain for many months before it crystallized into a blog.

What I wanted to do from the outset was tell the story of each toy, from its early concepts to finished toy to its depictions in stories and artwork. Lots of very knowledgeable people have been writing and talking about He-Man for many years, but I didn’t see that complete story being told from any single source.

I’ve been lucky enough to be able to expand on some of this information in my interviews with Mark Taylor, Rebecca Taylor, Ted Mayer, Rudy Obrero, Martin Arriola and David Wolfram. I also contributed to the Netflix Toys That Made Us episode on Masters of the Universe, and my blog was referenced in How He-Man Mastered the Universe.

I’m currently contributing to a couple of other projects that I hope will see the light of day eventually. For that reason I’ve been posting a bit less frequently recently.

Here are a few statistics about the blog on its three-year anniversary:

  • Total views: 518,978
  • Total unique visitors: 133,254
  • Number of posts: 163
  • Total words: 163,043

As always, thanks for reading. I hope the blog continues to be of interest to people who remember this toyline with fondness.

12
Milestones

Two years of Battle Ram: A He-Man Blog

Posted on by Adam

It’s been two years now since I started Battle Ram – A He-Man Blog. It’s something that I had rattling around my brain for many months before it crystallized into a blog.

Most of the information in this blog isn’t new – intrepid MOTU historians have been digging up facts about their beloved toyline for years now. But what I wanted to do from the outset was tell the story of each toy, from its early concepts to finished toy to its depictions in stories and artwork. I didn’t see that complete story being told from any single source.

The bits and pieces of information lived in all kinds of disparate locations: hard-to-find books, forum posts, old podcast interviews, blogs, Facebook pages, fan sites and YouTube videos. As I started putting these sources together, I was also lucky enough to be able to expand on some of this information in my interviews with Mark Taylor, Rebecca Taylor, Ted Mayer, Rudy Obrero and Martin Arriola.

Of course I’ve also branched out from my toy-based features to more focused posts about things like box art, catalogs, commercials and obscure factoids.

I don’t want to get too precious about it. At the end of the day it’s a just a blog, after all. Everyone and their uncle’s barber has a blog. But it’s also kind of an online book, one that keeps getting longer each week, with helpful contributions and corrections by He-Man fans from all walks of life and all parts of the planet.

Here are a few statistics about the blog on its two-year anniversary.

  • Total views: 326,708
  • Total unique visitors: 79,871
  • Number of posts: 116
  • Average posts per month: 4.8
  • Estimated number of hours spent on this thing: 696

As always, thanks for reading. I hope the blog continues to be of interest to people who remember this toyline with fondness.

31