Plundor

Gleedil tells it plainly: "Once Trannis was a beautiful green world. But that was before Plundor took over." Plundor is the villain of Paul Dini's "Quest for He-Man," first aired October 5, 1983, a purple, rabbit-eared strongman in a red vest who has made himself master of the planet Trannis and turned it into a factory. His machines cut down the forests and spoil the rivers, the animals die out or move away, and the sky has gone a sick green. He introduces himself with a title he has earned: "Me, Plundor, the Spoiler."

What he wants is money, and the episode never pretends otherwise. In his dungeon he shows off a container holding "the life force of this planet," which he has turned into a magic liquid "which I can sell for millions," and when he is asked whether he would destroy a whole world for wealth, his answer is "I'd do anything for that." He has no master and no grand cause. Skeletor is busy elsewhere in the episode; Plundor is a businessman with robot guards and a skull-shaped rock over his front door.

"Quest for He-Man" strands He-Man on Trannis with his memory gone, and that is what makes Plundor useful to the story. He watches the stranger on his viewscreen walking with Gleedil, the bird-headed woman who looks after what is left of the animals, and decides that "such a creature might be of great use to me." His robots put the two of them to sleep with smoke and carry them to his dungeon, where Plundor makes his pitch: "How'd you like to help me become the richest man in the universe?"

Plundor is the test the episode sets for He-Man, a fortune offered to a man with no idea who he is or what he is supposed to stand for. He-Man's answer comes without the backstory: "I may not remember where I came from, or even what my name is, but I know what you are doing to this world is wrong." Plundor sends him to the dungeon for good, Orko, Ram Man and Cringer arrive through the Time Corridor, and Orko talks He-Man's memory back. Plundor, losing, tries to make sure "nobody will have" the liquid, but He-Man ends up riding the rocket with Plundor clinging to it, and Trannis turns green again. John Erwin voices him, as well as He-Man.^[1]

The last look at Plundor is a punishment that fits. Gleedil thanks He-Man for a world that is "pure and clean again," and He-Man adds that the factory still has to come down and that he has "an unwilling volunteer" on the job: Plundor, in prison stripes, swinging a sledgehammer at his own walls while the Shminavits watch.^[2]

Clipped from our own copy of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Quest for He-Man (1983), 10:03 to 10:50, 47 seconds. Nothing is added and nothing is sped up. Copyright Mattel.

Plundor never returns in Filmation's He-Man or in She-Ra, and no later series or film brings back the planet Trannis. His second life is in plastic. In 2013 Mattel's Masters of the Universe Classics line made him a subscription figure, sculpted as he looks on screen, rabbit ears, red vest and boots included, with a blaster and an axe. The Classics figure is retired and no Plundor is on sale new at BigBadToyStore. His one episode still does the job Dini wrote him for: he is the offer He-Man turns down before he even remembers his own name.