every toy featured in the above ad was a major player in my childhood.

family is important. that can’t be denied. but, if you looked at the amount of time i spent with family as a child versus the amount of time i spent with my toys, my toys and i have a bond that goes deeper than mere genetics. sure, my family provided the toys, just as a cow provides its meat. so these toys were not like family to me…

they were like toys to me.

my he-man action figure was accompanying me on a long car ride to some insignificant place. there were childhood friends with me in the back of the dusty blue dodge caravan, along with he-man, although the friends were also insignificant… until the unthinkable was thought of.

one “friend” grabbed he-man’s mighty plastic heft and hoisted him toward the chasm of the cracked-open back window, and with a quick pull, ripped he-man’s squishy rubber head off and tossed it like so many john bobbitt penises out the window to the side of the road.

if such an atrocious and pitiful demise could befall even the great he-man, surely none of us are safe from the icy claws of decapitation and/or general death. he-man is the master of the goddamn universe! perhaps we are all a master of some universe out there… but i’ll tell you the truth that i learned on that fateful day:

not one of us, not even he-man, is the master of this universe. this universe will always be the master of us.

RIP, headless he-man corpse… RIP.