Well, here's my long winded rant on WHY He-Man's attire should stick as CLOSE AS POSSIBLE to his Original Look:
I can accept removing the furry loincloths and boots to all the other Human characters. (MAA can work without the loincloth and furry boots, so can Tri-Klops, Mekaneck, Fisto, Clamp Champ, etc.) but He-Man NEEDS to have those items. The Power of Grayskull is supposed to be ancient, raw power from a Distant past. Having He-Man's basic appearance reflecting the Ancient look of Grayskull's era CEMENTS the notion that he is "Grayskull reborn" in the Modern Eternia. He is so powerful that he runs around in a Loincloth and a chest harness to hold his secondary weapon (sword or ax) on his back while he's in battle; when his allies run around armored up. That way when he resorts to his Battle Armored Look, you know that things are getting real intense. If you have a heavily armored He-Man from the beginning, the upgrade to Battle Armor becomes Useless.
Some people may argue that He-Man is not a Barbarian character but thanks to Filmation he's a Paladin who looks like a Barbarian. This new approach that Mattel is doing is to make sure that He truly looks like the Paladin he's become...
I find that incredibly stupid because they whine about cartoon characters that are wearing barbarian-like clothes and can grapple in a few scenes. (As seen in the pic on the right) but they have ABSOLUTELY NO ISSUE WHATSOEVER with the same kind of moves with occasional Tea Bagging and LITERAL BROWN NOSING that happens on Pro-Wrestling... Sweaty and oiled up muscular scantily clad men rolling around and rubbing their bodies on a giant bed-looking stage is totally A-OK and has no homoerotic elements to it... But He-Man? that's totally gay!
Don't tell me that Wrestling doesn't have any erotic elements at all, because no matter how much the WWE tries to sanitize their history, Bra and Panties Matches existed.
That excuse is pure crap! It almost feels like Mattel is ashamed of He-Man's Barbaric Origins (stylewise) which is what makes him DIFFERENT from most superheroes. The moment He-Man loses his Barbarian look, that's the moment he becomes Generic...
Remember the Ponytail and Skinny Jeans look of the (late 80s to early) 90s? How well did that work?
But that's not He-Man's most controversial element:✠
The Cross Insignia on his Armor. It's a cross pattée in red. This symbol is controversial because a few controversial groups have used similar symbols. (The Nazis with the Iron Cross and the Crusaders)To be fair, this symbol has been used as a symbol of courage, bravery, power... It makes sense for the
Most Powerful Man in the Universe to have a symbol of courage and bravery on his chest...
Now, to be fair, there have been many uses of the cross as a symbol. St. George, Christ, etc.
In their haste to stop backlash from certain groups (and mid production) Mattel changed the Cross insignia on He-Man to the Deformed H or Asterisk of King Grayskull for the 2002 Toyline and cartoon. Then again seems that some issues might have arisen since the 80s because they used a Stylized H for the Thunderpunch and Flying fist variants. On the DC Comics, they abandoned the Cross for the H (now a Symbol of Zoar, which reeks of the same bull crap about S= Hope)
Personally, I don't think they should abandon the Cross. It's the Classic Symbol. But if they should, they should use a modified version of the King Grayskull Asterisk. As you can see on the crude drawing I made, I used a Stylized Version of King Grayskull's asterisk and added two red gems to complete the Traditional Cross look WITHOUT IT BEING The Traditional Cross. That way Traditional fans KINDA Win since from afar, the design will look similar to the Traditional He-Cross, but it's not.
Sadly, this rant will be in vain since the powers that Be DO NOT UNDERSTAND HE-MAN...
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