Story - Mike Chain, Teleplay - Mike Chain, Larry DiTillio, Francis Moss

Lou Kachivas

Bow, Adora, and Kowl attempt to solve the mystery of why animals are disappearing from the Forest of Freedom. Their investigation will uncover a new airborne Horde villain, a female version of Kowl (!), some wacky robots, and a whole lot of crazy critters!

Bow, Spirit (Swift Wind), Princess Adora (She-Ra), Kowl

Grizzlor, Mantenna, Vultak

Arrow, crimson scrackle bird, Horde soldiers, Kowla, snap gators, various animals (including snufflers, two-headed bird, pink giraffe/flamingo, manticore), zootrons, various zoo patrons

Horde shipping truck, ground buster, glonders (Horde hover bikes)

Where's the best place to begin an episode that deals with themes of personal freedom? Why, the Forest of Freedom, natch! This is where we find Bow, Princess Adora, and Kowl, two of the three of them on horseback, exploring the region in an attempt to discover why its inhabitants have been disappearing. A discussion of the difference between the terms "disappear" and "vanish" prompts Bow to show Kowl a magic trick with a disappearing/reappearing deck of cards. The cards end up in Kowl's possession - a fact which will prove important later in the episode. We also learn that our carping Kowl, busily complaining about their task and their surroundings, does have a short list of favorite things: shelter, food, and good music.

Watching the flight of a rare crimson scrackle bird, the heroes are astonished when a black shadow sweeps by, taking the scrackle bird with it. They don't have time to pursue this mystery further, however, as they're distracted by the approach of a two-truck Horde convoy. The vehicles are occupied respectively by Horde nasties Mantenna and Grizzlor, each with their own Hordesman co-pilot. Grizzlor is amusing himself by riding up onto the back of Mantenna's ground buster; but his fun is interrupted by the reckless intrusion of Bow, who (against Adora's strenuous objections that he's being a moron) has ridden Arrow down into the middle of the road, right in the path of the convoy. Bow's first fired arrow gives the lead truck a flat tire, causing it to collide with a rock and fling Mantenna and his trooper into a mud puddle. But before Bow can fire again, he's disarmed and downed by the lasers of Grizzlor's vehicle.

Luckily for our brazen bowman, She-Ra and Swift Wind now appear on the scene. The golden-haired heroine grabs the back of Grizzlor's transport before he can run down the fallen archer. After Bow has safely cleared the road, She-Ra unexpectedly lets go, sending the revving Horde truck flying. It smashes to bits, leaving its occupants unconscious amid the wreckage of their vehicle and its shipment: a collection of empty cages. She-Ra does some detective work and deduces that since the Hordesmen are shipping empty cages, they aren't the ones responsible for the animal-nappings; but they must know who is. So our curious heroes head over to question the dazed and muddy Mantenna.

After threatening their victim with a beating by vindictive, Horde-hating Spikeheart trolls, our valiant heroes extract a location: Outpost 6. Satisfied with the fruits of their interrogation, Bow and She-Ra (who has assured her mustached friend that Adora just decided to go home) leave Mantenna and the others hanging in one of their own cages and head back to collect Kowl. Our retiring bird thought he was staying safe as usual up in a tree, where he had a very surprising and unexpected encounter with a female member of his own species. (His people, as he established earlier in the episode, are few and far between.) The flirty bird exchanged a few words with Kowl, fluttered her eyelashes, then fluttered off into the air. But before Kowl could stop her and get her number, his new acquaintance was swiped away by the same black shadow from earlier! And so was Kowl! The returning Bow and She-Ra find nothing of the bird but a few molted feathers drifting down from the trees.

They've got to save their little buddy! To get a lead, our heroes must again turn to intimidation and bullying. They ride to the nearest village, apparently with the welcoming name of "Outpost 6," to find a collection of Horde troopers relaxing at the local inn. She-Ra smashes heads together until learning that all the animals have been getting nabbed to fill out the cages in Hordak's zoo, located just north of town. The stocking of the zoo is the solution to the forest mystery, and no doubt explains Kowl's whereabouts as well; so Bow and She-Ra's course is clear. Our heroine pauses outside the bar just long enough to demolish the soldiers' hover bikes, thus dissuading pursuit. Then the pair hop on their horses and head to the rescue!

So what about the rescuees? Kowl and Kowla (yes, that really is her name) find they've been kidnapped by Vultak, a vulture-man whose job it is to collect the animals for Hordak's zoo. True to his task, he carries his latest two acquisitions to said zoo, where we see many other critters locked in prison cells within a dank, swampy hut, girded by a moat filled with mean-looking gators, the whole enclosed in an energy field. On top of that, the prize exhibits are all watched over by Vultak's "zootron" security robots, hovering little trash cans with tentacle arms and a hive mentality, who are very good at guarding the one door that's the only way in or out. Kowl is at first locked in his own private cell, but soon gets tossed in with Kowla. His prospective girlfriend is surprisingly complacent at their situation, arguing that the zoo gives them a roof over their heads and three square meals. Hearing his list of favorite things parroted back at him, Kowl realizes with dismay that there was one very important item missing from his list: freedom! For all its perks, Hordak's zoo is just a prison, and Kowl is determined to break out.

Calling the nearest zootron guards over with the promise of a card trick, Kowl instead tricks the robots into filling all their tentacle arms with cards from Bow's deck; he then niftily ties their limbs into one huge knot. The tangled zootrons are unable to stop Kowl from stealing the keys to the cells, unlocking his cell door, and sneaking out with his new friend. It almost looks like our prisoner will manage his own rescue without the aid of his two friends; but then Vultak shows up and gets the jump on him. The Horde villain is just getting ready to zap his recalcitrant captives with stun sticks when She-Ra and Bow fortuitously smash their way into the zoo.

That's right! Having hitched a ride up to the door after a friendly chat with the moat's resident snap gators, She-Ra is here and ready to rumble. She kicks the zootrons into a heap and convinces Vultak it's time for him to take flight; but the fleeing villain is brought down to Etheria again thanks to Bow's ridiculous boomerang arrow. No more zoo for Hordak! Our heroes release all the animals from their cells, leaving only Vultak within, stewing in a cage that will provide him with some appropriately ironic comeuppance. It only remains for Kowl to reiterate the lesson he learned today about not taking his own wonderful freedom for granted, and for Bow to intrusively suggest that his buddy get closer to the lovely Kowla.

• Bow: Kowl, you're such a complainer; don't you like anything? / Kowl: Yes: a roof over my head, something to eat, and most of all - good music. / Bow: Well now; would you like me to play for you? / Kowl: I said good music.
• Princess Adora: Animals don't just vanish! / Bow: Not vanish, Adora; disappear. There is a difference. (Begins shuffling a deck of cards) When something vanishes, it's gone forever. But when it disappears (shows his hands are now empty, the cards gone), it has to reappear somewhere else.
• Kowl: One of me is quite enough. / Bow: You can say that again.
• Mantenna (of Bow): Only one man on Etheria would be crazy enough to attack two vehicles on horseback... and that's the man!
• Kowl (of Hordak): He'd put trees in prison if he could! / Vultak: Hm, trees in prison - not a bad idea! Not bad at all!
• Bow (of Kowl): If anyone hurts my little buddy, they're in trouble with me. / She-Ra: And with me, too!
• Kowla: This zoo isn't so bad. / Kowl: How can you say that? / Kowla: They give you a roof over your head and good things to eat. What more could you want? / Kowl: That's funny; this morning I said the same thing - but I was wrong. / Kowla: What more is there? / Kowl: Freedom! That's what. ... Hordak's zoo is just another prison.
• Kowla: You're right, Kowl; freedom is wonderful. / Kowl (moralizing unrepentantly): But it's something you have to earn. No one can give you freedom, but anyone can take it away if you let them. / Bow: The first freedom you two need is the freedom to get to know each other better.

• She-Ra runs at the viewer, bug-height: Charging at some zootrons

One full

13:15 - Loo-Kee is hiding behind a tree and peeking out at us from the far left side of the screen, in an establishing shot of an Etherian village.
Did I spot him? YES!

Oddly turning to a subject that he avoided in what would have been a natural place for it, 67029's "The Price of Freedom," Loo-Kee reiterates Kowl's ending musings on the value of freedom. Pointing out that Kowl didn't appreciate how good he had it until his freedom was taken away, Loo-Kee advises us not to take our own good things for granted: "sunsets and flowers and our family." What about our burgeoning collection of Mattel brand playsets and toys, Loo-Kee? Perhaps we should take the time to say "thank you" for those, as well. Ahhh, the freedom of capitalism!

Kowl DOESN'T avoid capture: The second in this series theme, a category I invented because of this episode - because sometimes, two episodes maketh the category.
Love is in the air: Kowl and Kowla are inevitably destined to wear each other's rings and go steady, don't you think?
Hordak-less episodes in Season 1
Landmark Episode: I think it's been long enough that I can add another POP episode to this list! The debut of Vultak and Kowla, combined with a fun script and exciting adventure, make this one worth remembering.

• This is Mike Chain's third and final writing credit with POP, the previous two being 67008's "The Red Knight" and 67021's "The Stone in the Sword." Though these two were solo efforts, this time he is aided in his endeavors by the prolific Larry DiTillio and the experienced Francis Moss. Moss already has three other POP credits, and seems to specialize in punching up teleplays.
• We visit a new location today - the rebelliously named Forest of Freedom (or Freedom Forest).
• Fed up with Kowl's constant carping, Bow point-blank asks his buddy what he actually does like, and we hear it straight from the owl's beak: "a roof over my head, something to eat, and most of all - good music." There you have it folks! You'd think this is giving us some insight into why Kowl spends all his time flapping around the musician Bow; but in his next breath, Kowl implies that he doesn't think Bow's tunes are any good.
• Soon after this preceding exchange, we're reminded of another of Bow's many talents, when he performs a card/magic trick that astounds Kowl (though the bird characteristically claims afterward that he never wants to see the trick again).
• It looks like we're going to be learning a lot about Kowl today: he mentions to his friends that there are "very few of my kind left." Just as with his list of favorite things, this admission turns out to be prophetic.
• Mantenna provides us with an important Horde regulation: "No transport goes faster than four gleams." This is crucial to know for traveling Etheria, since I've never once spotted a posted speed limit!
• I doubt we've ever seen Mantenna extending his eye stalks as far as he does in this episode, when he stretches them all the way out of the open slot in the roof of his ground buster vehicle so he can cast an angry stare back at Grizzlor.
• By the way, though the "ground buster" vehicle type has appeared before (in episodes such as 67011 and 67042), this is the first time we've ever heard the characters refer to it by name. It's an armored truck with a swivel gun mounted in the center of its roof. Grizzlor's shipping truck is called a "Horde transport" in this episode, but this is a generic name that I've used before to describe a different vehicle (Catra's flying prisoner ship in 67012) - in addition to sounding very like "Horde slave transport," which is yet another type of vehicle - so I'm going to stick with the name I've used before for this one. (See further grumbling about the Horde vehicle-naming policy in the commentary.)
• Note that, per the shots of Grizzlor accelerating to harrass Mantenna, Horde trucks use accelerator pedals just like Earth automobiles. Amazing!
• She-Ra and Bow name-drop the trolls of Spikeheart (seen in 67022 and 67034) during their amusing interrogation of Mantenna.
• Secret identity covering: for the first time in a while, She-Ra is forced to cover for her secret identity, when Bow goes to the trouble of asking "what happened to Adora?" She-Ra's very convincing explanation, which settles the issue and removes all suspicion? "She left."
• While on the subject of Adora's secret, it's worth noting this episode gives us another concrete example of proof that Kowl is in on that secret, since he's the one who suggests she make her transformation. The first time we saw proof of this was in 67035.
• A female Kowl?!?! A new member of the Horde?!?!? We get both in very short succession today, and I am here for it. The female Kowl, as confirmed by Wiki Grayskull and my DVD captions, has the derivative name of Kowla ("What should we call this girl Kowl?" "I don't know; just put an 'a' on the end!"). But due to the longstanding Filmation habit of refusing to tell us secondary characters' names, it's very difficult to learn this from the episode. You don't hear it until late in the eighteenth minute, when Kowl finally happens to say it aloud.
• The Hordesman - who, with more politeness than Miss Kowla, actually introduces himself in his first scene - is named Vultak. He's a vulture-like fellow who - perhaps due to the difficulty of fitting his impressive feathered wings on the usual card backing - was never produced as a contemporary Mattel figure. (He was eventually produced as part of the MOTU Classics line in 2016 - and again in 2025!) Spider-Man fans will immediately see that Vultak looks like Spidey's recurring foe, the Vulture. I mean, if you're both going to make a vulture man, visual similarities will be kind of unavoidable.
• We finally learn, past halfway into the episode, the solution to the mystery of the disappearing animals (and the reason for today's title) - Hordak's zoo. This is not, however, our first time hearing about the zoo; that happened in the disconnected pink scruffer scene at the front of 67009's "Missing Ax." So we're forced to conclude that some of the occupants have been stuck in those cages for quite a while!
• Just as I'd hoped it would, our arrival at the zoo provides the opportunity for seeing many new and very interesting creature designs, some of which I've enumerated in my other characters list. None are given names in the episode, but I felt "snufflers" was an appropriate descriptor for the long-trunked creatures seen first, who bear a resemblance to Sesame Street's Snuffleupagus.
• We also meet Vultak's servant robots, called "zootrons." These droid-like critters remind me of the little garbage-can-shaped floating bots from Disney's The Black Hole (1979).
• After our introduction to the zoo, full of unfamiliar faces, we cut back to She-Ra and Bow for some familiar vehicles in a familiar location. There are a line of Horde hover bikes parked outside the oft-used Laughing Swan Inn facade, with its distinctive laughing swan logo above the door. The first and most obvious connections to make here are to 67006's "Duel at Devlan" or 67030's "Play It Again, Bow," both of which featured the bikes and the inn's familiar logo/interior; but we first visited the original Laughing Swan all the way back in 67001, and a clone of the inn also popped up in 67017. Today's location doesn't seem to be Thaymor, Devlan, or any of the other towns that have served as locations for Laughing Swan franchises; per Mantenna's information, the village is named simply "Outpost 6."
• All these animals hanging around give She-Ra another chance to show off her animal communication abilities, last seen in 67058's "Black Snow" (episode 35). Here she has a psychic chat with her "scaly friends," the snap gators, and is able to cadge a ride.
• Bow shows off a new arrow today - a boomerang arrow. Um... yeah. See the commentary.
• Vultak will return - albeit very briefly - in 67074's "Above It All."

• The Horde has a vehicle problem. Well, to put it more accurately: I have a problem with the Horde's vehicles. As I've noted a few times previously (see lore section for 67026, 67028, 67029, 67031), they possess a bewilderingly varied fleet of ground, sea, and air transports, whose forms seem to keep changing, and whose names are hardly ever provided - or when they are, as today, they're more often than not confusingly vague: viz. "Horde transport." I've already had to tangle with several similar or redundant names for different vehicles, such as the "destructo tank" (first named in 67005), the "destructor" (67010), and the Horde "destroyers" (67012). Or what about the "Horde flyer," a name that's alternately been given to a flying ship our rebel friends stole to make their escape from 67002's "Beast Island" and to the one-man rocket-type vehicles in 67031? (To add to the confusion, the first iteration of the Horde flyer, a winged, mosquito-like craft, seems to share its design with the smaller robotic "batmeks" of 67005 and other episodes.) And I wrote this initial complaint before even realizing there are two completely different vehicles which Horde characters identify as "crawler" (see 67029 and 67025). Even just looking at the Horde's range of tanks reveals a number of models, more than one of which seem to go under the "destructo" label (see my discussion of this in the lore for 67026 - and for good measure, the commentary of 67022). It's odd that the animators would go to the trouble of continuing to squirt out new vehicle designs instead of reusing old ones, but they undeniably do so. This is in stark contrast to MOTU, where even though there certainly were plenty of interesting vehicles to see, the heroes and villains generally stuck to their regular set: Wind Raider and Attak Trak for He-Man and crew, Basher and Collector for Skeletor et al, and sky sleds for everyone. Part of the problem is likely the lack of input from Mattel, who (as again I've noted before - see the Act II part of my commentary section for the Secret of the Sword entry) failed to produce any non-four-legged-friend vehicles for their Princess of Power line. With no product placements to direct their pencils, our animators were left awash in a sea of indistinct vehicle options.
• I'm a bit disappointed that Loo-Kee didn't take the opportunity in his PSA to remind us of the importance of wearing our seatbelts, as there's an excellent object lesson provided in today's episode by Mantenna and his Hordesman driver. As soon as their ground buster hits a rock, they go flying out the windshield and into a mud puddle. (For a related discussion of seatbelts and MOTU, see the commentary section of MU095.)
• Animation error: In the long shot showing the Horde minions hanging in a cage, Mantenna is incorrectly colored all blue (his head and chest Horde logo should be red).
• Also, in the scene just preceding the coloring error, Bow pronounces Grizzlor's name "Grizzler," which makes him sound like the imitation grizzly bear, the "grazzler," defeated by Fisto in the beginning of MU070. Or perhaps like the West Coast steak house restaurant chain, Sizzler.
• I loved all the new creature designs in Hordak's zoo, none of which appear to have been recycled from some other episode. Those zootrons are cute little rascals as well.
• There are a couple of scenes in the zoo where Kowl is threatened or abused by Vultak, which always end in a sound effect of squawking, bird-like laughter. I kept mistaking this for the amusement of some other members of the zoo, haranguing which felt particularly cruel and unusual coming from fellow prisoners. It took me until the nearly the end of the episode to realize this was supposed to be Vultak laughing! His regular speaking voice is so disconnected from the squawks, and the sound effect so frequently shown without Vultak visible on screen, that I couldn't make the connection.
• As is usual in these inn scenes, our Horde soldier patrons end up making a confusing statement about their robothood vs. their humanity, a long-running issue in the series. Why would robots need or want to sit around carousing - drinking, laughing, and playing cards? These are not traditionally robotic behaviors, unless you count Bender from Futurama.
• It's a bit surprising that Bow and She-Ra resort to low-grade torture a couple of times in this episode. True, their threatening of Mantenna with Spikeheart trolls is all talk and bluff; and She-Ra's smashing of Horde soldiers could be considered perfectly aboveboard since (as is inconsistently and randomly noted) they're all soulless robots; but it still feels a bit wrong to see our rebel heroes utilizing tactics of terror and intimidation to get what they want.
• Continuity error: It's sort of ironic that I mentioned in the lore section how often that laughing swan logo has cropped up. After She-Ra smashes the hover bikes sitting just outside the inn entrance, she and Bow run off to the right of the screen. We next see them riding away to the right on horseback; as they proceed off the screen and out of town, the panning camera stops on a view of the village that once again shows the inn entrance with swan logo - which by all rights they should have left far behind by now. Either they're going in circles, or there are multiple Laughing Swan franchises competing against each other in the same neighborhood! These things are like Dunkin's in Manhattan.
• The appearance of another of Kowl's kind raises the question: just what kind is that? To what species do Kowl and his new acquaintance belong? According to Wiki Grayskull, that species name, like that of his female counterpart, is pretty unimaginative: Kolian. It reminds me of Ommy the Omaran from MU123's "Mistaken Identity."
• You have to wonder just who the intended audience is for Hordak's zoo. At first blush, the zoo seems a typical dictator's vanity project, a self-indulgent hideaway for Hordak to visit and admire all the rare Etherian life forms he's collected and enslaved. But in one of the first panning shots of the zoo's interior, we see a couple of regular Etherians who seem to be casually visiting. So this thing is open to the public?! Do they offer a membership plan? And where's the gift shop?
• Continuity error: Kowl claims that his magic trick is "going to knock [the] treads off" of the zootrons; but the hovering robots don't have treads. Seems like a disconnect between the script writers and the animators; perhaps the original design had the robots rolling around on caterpillars.
• A funny naming inconsistency: Bow calls the green scaly things guarding the zoo moat "snap gators," but my DVD captions more prosaically named them "ALLIGATORS."
• Bow's boomerang arrow is the most pointless and laughably stupid projectile I've yet seen him use. I originally followed this controversial opinion with a long, belabored explanation as to why a boomerang arrow with a line tied to the end of it would never work, but ultimately decided it's a waste of the readers' time (unlike the acres of preceding text! ha) and an unnecessary criticism of our hardworking animators and writers. Let's just sit back and enjoy the nonsensical silliness, shall we? "My, that Bow sure has a nice collection of useful and very practical arrows. And such functional and fabulous chest armor!"
• At the very end of the episode, when all the released animals are exiting the zoo, a manticore-type creature who I never noticed in earlier interior scenes is seen leading the procession. Wish we'd gotten more of this guy - very impressive!
• Continuity error: Another seeming disconnect between writers and animators: Bow asks She-Ra if she destroyed all the cages, and she replies, "All except one;" we then cut to the inside of the zoo, where every single prison cell is still in perfect working condition, including the one in which Vultak has been stuffed. If Bow was referring not to the cells, but to the cages being used to ship the animals, She-Ra's statement still doesn't make any sense, because Vultak isn't in one of those.
• Yes there were a few continuity issues and bouts of silliness in today's story, but it was a rollicking tale with some fun action, great character designs, and dialogue that was often amusing and memorable (if a little heavy on the moralizing). It also had some great character debuts, which I decided tipped it over into the "landmark" category.