I'm in the electronics department when someone--I don't know who, just someone--tells me he's buying the DVD box set of The Muppet Show for his wife. "Cool," I say. "I'm looking for the new box set of He-Man that just came out."

And he says, "He-Man? Isn't that the cartoon that totally defied the laws of physics?" He then launches into this whole spiel about magic stones that make people invisible if they look at them, and I have no idea what in the hell he's talking about. The last time I saw He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, I was five years old and didn't know enough about physics to pour milk into a glass. The things I do remember have no connection to each other--He-Man shouting, "I have the power!" Skeletor's nasal cackle, my own fear that neither of them wore underwear. For years I've wanted to stitch these memories together, to truly understand the cartoon that, as a little girl, I had only loved. And thanks to BCI Eclipse's release of a 6-DVD box set containing He-Man's first 33 episodes, I'm able to to do just that.

The planet Eternia's Prince Adam is a ne'er-do-well. He's always late, he'd rather play with his green-and-orange striped tiger Cringer than learn about royal affairs, and whenever danger strikes, he's nowhere to be seen. That's because Adam has a secret identity: whenever he holds up his magic sword and says, "By the power of Grayskull!" he turns into He-Man, the strongest man in the universe. But He-Man can't stop evil alone; he and Battle Cat protect Castle Grayskull from Skeletor and his minions with the help of friends like Man-At-Arms and Captain Teela, the sorceress and my favorite, Orko the faceless magician.

As soon as I pop the first disc in, I realize that the guy at Wal-Mart was right: He-Man is too great to be bound by the forces of natural law. He can throw boulders, bend steel, and deflect blasts of magic with his sword. Yes, a lot of He-Man's talents are absurd, in a so-kids-won't-imitate-this sort of way (who can create a canyon with his bare hands?), but that absurdity is what makes him so much fun. There's an intimacy in He-Man's battles that infects the audience and makes them like him. When he's punching giant snake robots and throwing them into each other, the danger is more pressing--more real--than if he'd just blasted them all with a plasma gun. He-Man isn't just a hero. He's a man, and he's not afraid to get his hands dirty. Besides, who needs realism when you're fighting a giant purple rabbit and a skeleton with a six-pack?

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe came about when the Matell toy company asked Filmation Studios to create a cartoon around their new line of action figures. But to say that He-Man was just a marketing scheme is like calling "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" just a gimmick invented by Montgomerey Ward. He-Man certainly sold a lot of toys--if my own He-Man collection is any indication--but it also spoke to kids about what was happening in their own lives. Each episode ended with an Aesop-like moral, and it's clear that these space aliens dealt with the same issues that affected us here on Earth: friendship, the unconditional preciousness of life, ecology, what family means. When Captain Teela searches for her birth mother in "Teela's Quest," she not only finds a new family member (at least until her memory is erased, because it's not in her destiny to know who her mother is just yet). She finds that the love she seeks has been hers all along--from Man-At-Arms, the man she calls "Father." There's even an episode ("A Friend in Need") where an evil wizard gives Teela's friend a "magic potion" to make her brave and strong. She starts needing more and more of the potion to feel normal, and eventually learns a lesson that would've made Nancy Reagan very happy, indeed.

Watching a cartoon I haven't seen since kindergarten has been surreal. He-Man's didactic morals, which were fonts of wisdom to me twenty years ago, are campy now--the kind of campy that warms the pit of your stomach even as you roll your eyes. And the folks at BCI have really gone out of their way to give nostalgic 20- and 30-somethings a piece of their childhoods. He-Man and the Masters of the Universe is, unequivocally, the most impressive DVD collection I've ever seen. The images are as crisp, as clear, and as abjectly '80s as I remember, and the Dolby Digital audio track is perfectly audible, with no static or volume control problems whatsoever.

BCI could've stopped there--I would've been thrilled just to see He-Man again--but they also packed this box set with enough goodies for even the most rabid Masters of the Universe fan to enjoy. There are two never-before-seen documentaries. One traces the universe's strongest man from a Matell action figure to the star of his very own show, in first-run syndication. (He-Man was the first animated program with this schedule. While other cartoons ran on Saturday morning, He-Man was on five days a week, with 65 episodes in its first season alone). In the other documentary, writers and directors talk to us about the stories they've helped create: they don't talk for long, but they remind us that cartoons are an art form, founded in artistic vision and--gasp!--writing.

More visually-oriented fans can can view a full-length animated storyboard for episode 30 ("The Taking of Grayskull"), and those of us with DVD-Rom drives in our PCs or Macs can read five complete scripts in .pdf format. There are even chapter stops for all the episodes, and you can find episode trivia ("Orko's Fun Facts") in the scene selections.

You'd think all this He-Manly goodness would be more than enough--but we're not through yet. The six DVDs come in a folding box, and each fold has its own artwork. There are even two collectible cards, drawn by comic book artists Alex Ross and Bill Sienkiewiez.

BCI's edition of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe is as definitive as you can get. I don't know if it'll bring the Masters a new generation of fans, but it's certainly led this lost sheep back home to Eternia.

He-Man fans can follow news, events, and even the release of Season One, Volume Two (on Valentine's Day, 2006, as of this writing) at He-Man.org