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Back in the fall of 1981 a new cartoon premiered on CBS Saturday morning. This was Blackstar. John Blackstar is an astronaut who is sucked through a black hole and ends up on the planet Sagar. After arriving he meets the trobbits,which are pink hobbit like creatures that live in a tree. Blackstar ends up fighting off the evil Overlord. During this battle Overlord's weapon,the Powersword,splits into two parts. Blackstar ends up with one half and Overlord has the other half. The rest of the series is mainly about Overlord trying to get back the half of the Powersword that Blackstar has.
When I was a young kid this was my favorite cartoon. But sadly it only lasted one season. Blackstar was done by Filmation. And if you watch it you can see how lots of the plots and ideas from this cartoon were used later on in Filmation's Masters of the Universe cartoon. I can remember when I first saw the Masters of the Universe cartoon a few years later I was mad that it had ripped off Blackstar so much.
Now I never remember seeing this show ever in reruns or syndication. But from 1983 through 1985 the Galoob toy company produced a bunch of action figures. Each of the good guy figures came packages with a PVC figure of one of the Trobbits. Also I remember having one that had a flint sparker in the figure that made a symbol on the chest light up.
By the mid 2000's I had pretty much forgotten about this cartoon. Then BCI put out a DVD set that all 13 episodes. Some of which even have commentaries. I quickly bought it and sat down to watch it. Surprisingly it holds up as good if not better than Masters of the Universe. This DVD set is out of print now. But isn't that expensive.
After doing some research I found out that over in France there was a short lived comic book based on the cartoon. I would love to find some copies,even though I can't read french. It seems weird that neither DC or Marvel did a comic book based on Blackstar. But that might be cause it only had the one short season.
With all the various 80's cartoon series coming back and getting comic books,I would love to see more Blackstar stories. Sadly this cartoon is mostly forgotten. Even among people of my age group most of them have no idea what I am talking about when I mention Blackstar. The Blackstar cartoon and DVD set get a solid B+.
