I got hooked on He-Man when I was in third or fourth grade. It used to come on television every afternoon at 4:00, which was right about the time I'd be getting home from school. I was only interested in Star Wars and its toys up until that point, but once I got hooked on He-Man, I wanted to play with nothing else.

Much to my dismay, however, when I decided to start collecting the figures, He-Man himself was nowhere to be found. Plenty of other MOTU figures abounded, but there was no He-Man on the pegs. And so my first-ever MOTU figure ended up being Ram-Man, who had to serve as a giant good-guy in the Star Wars universe until I could collect more MOTU figures to play with. I remember my second MOTU figure was Tri-Klops, which my mom bought for me and put in my Easter Basket.

My search for a He-Man figure seemed fruitless until one day I was in a Montgomery Wards and was about to buy Stratos, when the sales lady said, "Are there any figures you couldn't find?" I said, "Yes, He-Man." She disappeared into the back and came out with a Battle-Armor He-Man that someone had put on hold but never picked up. I had wanted an original He-Man more than the Battle-Armor one, but at this point my collection of more than a dozen MOTU figures was in serious need of its title character.

I remember the following Christmas my parents inundated me with He-Man toys. I came downstairs that morning and found Castle Grayskull, Battle Cat, Attack-Track, and more than a dozen of the figures all wrapped individually. I was in heaven. I remember Webstor's hook string broke that day, but it was seriously cool while it lasted. Even my dad thought it was a cool feature. I pretended my Whip-Lash figure was Lizard Man until Whip-Lash himself appeared in the cartoon.

Other fond memories: my dad taking me to the toy store and saying I could buy one MOTU figure as a reward for my good report card, and there on the pegs was Stinkor. He'd never been on the cartoon and I'd never heard of him, but he looked so darn cool I had to have him. I opened him up in the car on the way home and my dad said, "What is that SMELL?!" I also found Two-Bad for the first time in a toy store and the top half of his card was torn off (so his name and the MOTU logo was missing); although I'd never seen him before, I knew he had to be a MOTU figure, and my gramma bought him for me. It was a long time later until I finally found out what his name was! And I remember being elated when Mattel *finally* got around to making an Orko figure (but to my dismay they didn't make the Sorceress or King Randor until after I'd stopped collecting).

I had easily 50+ figures, a dozen vehicles/animals, and the Grayskull playset before I stopped collecting MOTU. By the time the evil Horde and She-Ra came on the scene, my interest was waning. So one day I decided to sell the entire collection through the local thrift shop for about $2.50 a figure. The lady at the store said used figures would never sell for that price, but a woman came in and bought the entire collection for her son the first day. I was so happy to have all that money, but of course today I regret selling off my collection. The sole survivor of my original collection is Orko, which I held onto for sentimental reasons (darn me for not holding onto Ram-Man for the same reason).

Now that my Thundercats collection is nearly complete (a collection that I began buying after selling off my MOTU collection), I may just start frequenting toy shows to start buying back my MOTU collection. Such nostalgia...