Thirty Years Ago Today

She-Ra, Princess of Power premiered.

And who, what, was She-Ra? A syndicated cartoon series from Filmation, a studio that had been around (in 1985) for almost a quarter of a century. ...

It's a factoid lost in the Mists of Time, but Filmation was on a huge roll in 1985. The studio was then the largest animation company in L.A., having pivoted away from making Saturday morning animated fare for broadcast networks, and jumped into the syndicated marketplace. It was amongh the first studios to make large numbers of cartoons with big toy tie-ins.

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, was the first, and the show was immensely successful. She-Ra was the second, and less successful. But for a brief span of time, those syndicated shows made Filmation a power-house cartoon studio. It produced large numbers of shows year-round and got into the making of animated features. Its first offering, Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night, died a quick, silent death at the box office. The studio itself perished thee-and-a-half years later when the French conglomerate L'Oreal bought the company and immediately closed it, right on the cusp of the Great Animation Renaissance.

H/t Tom Sito.