Richard Pardee

Bill Reed

Leaking honey from the bee people's stockpile awakens some hungry Tycons, locust-like humanoid insects who go on a feeding frenzy - prompting an opportunistic Skeletor to take advantage. We furthermore learn that Orko is not only bad at magic - he's also a terrible cook!

Orko, King Randor, Man-at-Arms, Queen Marlena, Teela, Buzz-Off, Prince Adam (He-Man), Cringer (Battle Cat)

Skeletor, Webstor, Kobra Khan

bee lieutenant, bee people, Tycor, Tycons, bee children (including Tike), Eternian guards

Wind Raider

We open on some bee people, in the process of stocking a storage chamber with containers of gathered honey. Satisfied that they have put up enough food to feed their people for the winter, the bee people begin to depart - but they don't realize that a split container is leaking some golden goo into the ground. The honey drips onto some large buried eggs, out of which emerge some buglike guys who clearly have a serious sweet tooth. The insect interlopers climb out of their underground burrow and make quick work of all the honey containers. Just at the outer exit of the chamber, the bee people overhear all the slurping and munching inside and, looking back, recognize the food thieves as Tycons - a race they thought extinct. The Tycons are evidently still very alive and very hungry, moaning about "more honey" like a zombie would call for brains, so the bee people decide to fly back to the main colony and warn their people. The ravenous Tycons, who also have wings on their backs, fly off in pursuit of food.

At the colony, there's a magic show in progress, as Orko is entertaining a group of little bee children. Tike, a precocious young beeling, urges the Trollan to try a teleportation spell on a flower, which predictably fails - resulting in Tike being magicked into a glass jar. The fleeing party of bee people then arrive to warn everyone of the fast-approaching Tycon incursion. They determine that their only chance to get help in time is to have Orko translocate to the royal palace by casting his teleportation spell on himself. With some trepidation, he does so and vanishes, leaving the bee people to rally their troops in a defense of their home - and their nearby honey hive, stocked with a backup supply of food which the Tycons have sniffed out.

Orko appears in the middle of a royal meal at the palace, where the king and queen are hosting Buzz-Off, the apparent leader and representative of his people. After the teleported Trollan has wiped the food he landed in off his robe, he informs everyone of the danger and (surprisingly) Prince Adam takes charge: he will go and "find He-Man," while Man-at-Arms and Teela take Buzz-Off via Wind Raider to help defend the colony. Adam shepherds an unhappy Cringer into an unobserved corner of the palace grounds to make their transformation.

In the meantime, it seems the Tycons have gotten themselves a new ally, in the form of Skeletor. The bony villain has been spying on their doings via his desktop dome, and explained his plan to the nearest minion who will listen (in this case Webstor): Skeletor can lead the Tycons to honey, and then to King Randor's food warehouse. Once the bugs have stolen the Eternians' winter stores, the king will be so desperate to feed his people that he'll surely hand over the secrets of Grayskull in return for Skeletor's help. In pursuance of this plan, old Bonehead zaps himself right over to the Tycons and their leader Tycor, who are blundering through the Evergreen Forest gnawing ineffectually on twigs (having apparently not quite been able to find the nearby bee colony, even though they seemed to have sniffed it out earlier). The Tycons immediately take the villain up on his offer of directions, and carry him through the air as he leads them to the honey hive.

At the hive, a frenzied Tycor plows through the bee guards and the Tycons seem about to have a honey feast - but then He-Man shows up on Battle Cat. A horrified Skeletor, completely unprepared for this development, meekly backs into the hive's surrounding moat and gets drenched; but our hero has to physically restrain Tycor, who shows off an ability to shoot stinging rays from his eyes. He-Man dodges them, and advises Battle Cat to do the same; but the heedless tiger jumps headlong at their shared foe, forcing his friend to dive into the path of the stinger beams. He-Man takes them full in the back and is knocked unconscious, to Battle Cat's great dismay.

Our hero awakes on a bed in what seems to be the palace infirmary, with his tiger, Duncan, Buzz-Off, and Teela standing at his bedside. They explain what happened, and that they now have no idea where Skeletor and the Tycons could have gone. Fortunately, little Tike is a precocious bee child and was listening in on the conversations outside the hive - she knows the Tycons are headed for the king's warehouse. As the heroes discuss their next move, Man-at-Arms points out that the Tycons aren't necessarily evil: they're just hungry, nearly wiped out, and desperate enough to take what they want without asking. Buzz-Off and He-Man agree that a diplomatic approach to the Tycons might yield fruit.

Hurrying to the royal stores, the heroes find they are too late: the Tycons have already been and gone, leaving the place a devoured shambles. Orko notes that the bug men have even eaten his "baking soda pie," a treat he had made for the king and queen. Having established that Orko misread a recipe for "Baker's Supreme Pie," He-Man realizes the Trollan's mistake could work to their advantage. Eating all that baking soda has likely made the Tycons sick, and he has an idea that the sickened creatures would return to their burrow under the storage chamber to sleep it off.

Of course, He-Man is totally right - as he, Duncan, and Buzz-Off discover when they arrive at the location via Wind Raider. The Tycons are all lying around the place, moaning and groaning in intestinal distress. A still-spunky Tycor rushes up to defend his people, but the heroes suggest a truce and offer their assistance. Tycor admits he's tired of fighting all the time and would like to try having friends, so Duncan provides medical help to the Tycons (presumably by handing out a lot of Pepto-Bismol) and then Tycor takes a trip with his new friends - to Snake Mountain.

Skeletor is back at his fortress, laughing with his minions Webstor and Kobra Khan over how he has King Randor totally under his thumb. Any second now the king will be calling to negotiate with the Evil Warriors so he can feed his people; and those Tycons won't be causing any trouble, because they're - and just then, He-Man pops into the throne room, Tycor and Buzz-Off at his side. An embarrassed Skeletor tries to fight off the intruders, but his hand beams and Webstor's grappling ropes avail them not at all. Even Khan's stretchy arms and sleep breath don't help, since (as it turns out) Tycons are immune to the gas. The villains end up all stuffed upside-down into a handy cauldron, and He-Man strides off to grab some of Skeletor's food (at least some of which, we gather, is stolen from the royal warehouse).

Back at the palace throne room afterward, Randor praises the heroes and the redeemed Tycor and awards him a position as guard over the honey fields. A spying Tike gives away her position to a nearby Eternian guard. When the bee child is presented to the king, a seemingly stern Randor awards her too, with an honorary guard position. Teela, He-Man, and Man-at-Arms, who have been standing nearby, are overjoyed at these developments.

End with a Joke: "This calls for a celebration!" calls a happy Teela. Right on cue, in floats Orko, who has just finished baking his dumpling recipe. It's a wide, shallow pan with gross-looking off-white liquid sitting in it, which begins to bubble more and more as the heroes watch and Orko insists that this time, he read the recipe correctly. "Look out - I think it's going to explode!" warns He-Man; and sure enough, it does, though since everyone wisely backed off it's only the Trollan who gets tossed up in the air. Teela suggests Orko can save the recipe to use "next Fourth of July." And they all laughed...

• Skeletor: Ah, Tycons! How can that beeeee?
• Man-at-Arms: We want to help your comrades. / Tycor: No one helps Tycons except Skeletor, but then he makes us sick. Sick, sick, sick! Everyone else thinks Tycons are bad. / Man-at-Arms (fumbling over his line, but they kept the take anyway): We don't think you're bad, you-you just haven't been... given a chance to be good! / He-Man: Besides, it's more fun to make friends than enemies.

• Skeletor laughs, head back: At the prospect of his latest scheme, and again later as he watches Tycor raid the honey hive
• He-Man jumps on the back of Battle Cat: Preparing to go help the bee people
• He-Man in battle stance on Battle Cat: Arriving to face off against Skeletor and the Tycons
• He-Man rolls along the ground: Dodging Tycor's eye blasts
• Skeletor leans in close to the viewer: The already leaned-in part of the loop is used as he discusses plans with his minions. In different parts of the conversation, we see the leaned-in Skeletor flopped both ways: first facing to the left, then to the right.
• He-Man punches the viewer: The very beginning frame of the animation is used just to show a close-up of He-Man listening in to Skeletor's plotting
• He-Man laughs, head back: At the ending joke

One full

Brought to you by He-Man and Orko
Riffing off the selfish greed of the Tycons in today's episode, He-Man advises us to not just take things that we want from other people: "That's stealing." Instead, you should ask - or, if you're on the other end, offer to share. He makes no suggestion as to what you should do if the other person refuses your request. Orko appears at the last moment with a pot of honey, and silently agrees with He-Man's advice by wiggling his ears.

Everybody deserves a second chance: You could argue that the Tycons are never really "evil" and so don't experience a full turnaround when they ally themselves with the heroes in the second half of the story; but I think eating all the bee people's food and making a deal with Skeletor is evil enough for the purposes of tagging this category.

• We have previously seen the bee person Buzz-Off in two other episodes (MU074 and MU079), but we've never seen others of his race, as we now get to see in this episode. Your regular, run-of-the-mill bee people are bald and look disturbingly nude on the upper parts of their bodies. There is also a clearly higher-ranking individual who is dressed a bit more like Buzz-Off and who I've identified in the character list as a "bee lieutenant." He wears a helmet and in a later scene is shown with some hinged goggles that help him scan his surroundings, similar to Buzz-Off's sight-enhancing headgear (though it looks markedly different).
• Just like regular Earth bees, it seems the bee people make honey; but they don't let it drip around in messy combs. Instead they store it in metal cylindrical containers, kind of like humans putting up jam or storing away crops for the winter. (There is also later another building with honey stored in it, which I've called a hive, but which again likely has the honey stored more neatly than Earth-sized bees would.)
• The bee lieutenant comments that "Buzz-Off will be very proud" of the job he and his buddies have done putting up honey for the season. This seems to imply that Buzz-Off is the leader of the bee people, in a situation very analogous to Stratos and the bird people of Avion.
• I think the bee people's comment that they "thought Tycons were extinct" qualifies this episode in the "only a legend" sub-category. True, no one says that they thought Tycons were "only a legend," but is extinct really that far from legendary?
• At their fancy meal, King Randor refers to Buzz-Off as "our new ally and friend," suggesting this was meant to be the bee guy's debut episode. In fact, based on air dates, it was: Buzz-Off's two previous appearances (in MU074 and MU079) were aired in October of 1984, after this one.
• Duncan shows that he's a true renaissance man, able to spout off-the-cuff trivia about the nearly extinct tycons: "They must eat several times their body weight just to survive."
• In this episode Skeletor is depicted as almost completely helpless in the face of He-Man's arrival: when our hero shows up at the hive, he backs down immediately and falls into the moat outside. He at least makes an attempt to defend himself in the ending battle, but again quickly panics and starts crying for help, and looking for his staff. We've seen our bony villain be much braver against He-Man in other stories (I'm thinking in particular of their fun one-on-one battle in MU081's "The Arena") - I guess he just wasn't ready for beefy heroes today!
• In the first instance of Orko's poor cooking this episode, he reveals that he made a "baking soda pie," apparently from having misread the recipe for a "Baker's Supreme Pie." Unless "baker's supreme" was in the list of ingredients, and he misread it there, Orko seems to have tried to make the pie solely based on its name in the recipe book. That's some high-level stupid, Orko!
• Tycons are immune to Kobra Khan's sleeping gas - useful knowledge!
• We spot a sort of cauldron set on the path just adjacent to Skeletor's throne room. It's a new item that is there entirely so that the heroes can unceremoniously stuff Webstor, Khan, and Skeletor into it.
• In the ending joke, which showcases Orko's second and possibly even worse display of bad cooking, Teela references the very American holiday of "Fourth of July" as the proper time to enjoy exploding dumplings. It does seem apt - but how and why would Eternians celebrate this holiday? As at other times when the characters casually discuss Earth customs, we have to wonder at the impact Marlena the Earthling has had on Eternian culture.
• We've never met the Tycons before, but we've encountered a similar word; in MU096's "Battlecat," Melaktha and company dug up trouble in the "Tikon" jungle. The alternate spellings are based on the DVD captions and confirmed by other sources. It's intriguing to theorize a connection between the two words, but in the end I think it was just a coincidence.

• I've found many associations to make between this show and the Star Wars franchise, which I think is understandable considering its huge impact on 80s culture in general (an impact that very much continues to resonate today). I've also noted in the past some connections to what some might consider the flipside of Star Wars, Star Trek (see for instance my lore section for MU079's "Disappearing Dragons," or in particular MU081's "The Arena"). That these connections were all deliberate might be a little harder to justify or support, since the original series aired 20 years before MOTU; but you can see how the 80s generation of Filmation writers and animators would have grown up on Star Trek, and been influenced by it (consider also that Star Trek story editor D.C. Fontana gave us the script for MU096's "Battlecat"). I don't know why I just spent so much time blathering about this, when all I really wanted to say is that the title of this episode, "The Good Shall Survive," has the same flavor as a Star Trek episode title - for instance, "That Which Survives," a third season episode which was definitely not about bee people.
• The lieutenant claims that the honey he and his two bee friends have put away in the chamber will "last our colony all winter," but it seems as if the four awakened Tycons eat it all up in mere seconds. Yikes! I think you have to make some allowances here for the limitations of the animators, and assume that there are actually many more Tycons than the four we see on the screen (for instance, in a later scene where the sickened Tycons have returned to their cavern under the storage chamber, we can count five of them). But it still seems odd when, a bit later in the episode, Skeletor is able to lead the Tycons to a completely different structure, closer to the bee colony, that is also filled with honey. So I guess that wasn't the whole supply. Was this intentional redundancy on the bee people's part, to avoid complete disaster if one location was destroyed or raided? Or perhaps one is their current food supply and the other is their winter storage site.
• Animation error: When Tycor smacks down the three bee guards, he and his opponents are drawn as though they're all just inside the doorway of the honey hive. But in wider shots, they are clearly standing just outside the doorway.
• I've noted in other episodes the S2 trend of omitting Battle Cat. He actually appears in this episode, but unfortunately proves himself less than worthless: He-Man warns his tiger against taking a "stinger" blast from a Tycon, but the cat ignores him and leaps straight for Tycor, forcing He-Man to leap into the path of the attack and take the brunt of it himself. Yeesh! It's rare that you see Battle Cat screwing up so emphatically. I thought that these circumstances would give us the rare chance to see the cat in action without He-Man to guide him (see his questionable performances in similar situations, in MU066 and MU031); but after our blonde oaf goes down, we get a hard cut to He-Man waking up on a hospital bed with Battle Cat at his side, and no real explanation for how they got there.
• In the infirmary (or wherever He-Man is brought to recover from his stinger hit), Duncan turns to speak to Teela and his mustache seems oddly overdrawn, with the left half stretching far over to hug the left side of his face. Get a hold on that lip caterpillar, Man-at-Arms! On the subject of the infirmary, we've hardly ever seen a room like this in the palace before; the closest I can think of is when Whiplash was being treated for his injuries in a rather different-looking room of the palace, in the exciting beginning of MU075.
• "Are you thinking...what I'm thinking?" He-Man says suggestively to Duncan, as though he's just made an intuitive leap in the face of Tike's information about where the Tycons are going next. But he hasn't: there was no leap to make. Tike's information required no follow-up inference or analysis, and they all now know that they have to go to the palace warehouse; so He-Man's statement seems entirely pointless. Duncan's response to He-Man's comment is along the lines of "Um, yeah, dude; it's obvious what you're thinking," as though Man-at-Arms is also confused at our hero's comment. Maybe he's still shaking off the effects of that stinger!
• The heroes seem surprisingly unfazed by the discovery that the Tycons have eaten all the food in the royal warehouse. This is just like those darn Belots stealing all the corn in MU082's "Attack from Below." Can they grow a whole new crop of food that easily? Skeletor certainly doesn't think so, as he's now betting that Randor will be forced to negotiate for sustenance with Snake Mountain. There's also a lack of clarity on the ultimate whereabouts of Randor's food stores, as depending on which part of the episode you watch, you might think the Tycons ate it all or that Skeletor simply stole it. He-Man makes a side comment near the end of the episode that he's going to grab some things from Skeletor's "food locker" to replace the loss to the kingdom - it might be the stolen palace food, or it might be Skeletor's. Again - and as when we saw four Tycons eat up all the stored bee people honey in a few moments - it seems to put the episode on a strangely small scale, as if the planet's food supply were a few boxes of pasta that can be easily made up by raiding one guy's pantry.
• There are several logistical issues with this episode, where the locations of people and things don't quite add up. First, based on Skeletor's view of the Tycons from his desktop dome, it seems they are mere seconds away from arriving at the bee colony (we see the structure just behind them and Tycor is pointing the way, having sniffed for honey); however when Skeletor arrives to parley with them, the Tycons are clearly lost in the forest and have no idea where to find the honey. To defend the bee people, Adam suggests a division of forces and arrives at the hive as He-Man on Battle Cat; but there were other good guys who were supposed to be helping. What happened to Man-at-Arms, Teela, and Buzz-Off, who left earlier and on a faster vehicle (the Wind Raider)? They never arrive, and He-Man is left to defend the hive with only an imprudent tiger at his side. Lastly, when the heroes are going to the honey storage area to find the ailing Tycons, He-Man specifically tells Man-at-Arms and Buzz-Off to take the Wind Raider, and declares he will follow on Battle Cat. But in the subsequent scene, He-Man is driving the Wind Raider with Duncan and Buzz-Off as passengers, and Battle Cat is nowhere to be seen.
• Animation error: A sickened Tycor makes a headlong charge at He-Man, right into the camera. We see the tunnel he's charging through passing by, except for a portion directly behind him, which stays static. It makes it seem as if the cave is following him.
• Home invasion time! In the concluding part of the episode, He-Man and friends drop in on Skeletor in his throne room in Snake Mountain. They don't need to sneak; they don't need to find a secret entrance; they don't set off any alarms. They just show up in the center of the Evil Warriors' fort. In fact, their entrance is so stealthy that Skeletor is completely unaware of their presence, giving He-Man a chance to hear some of old Bonehead's plans and surprise him with an interrupting zinger: "Why wait, Skeletor?" It's actually been a while since the heroes have broken into Skeletor's house; the last verifiable time was in MU092, when Teela took Orko and Squinch there.
• Desperate to avoid the heroes' retribution, Skeletor calls out for "my staff - where's my staff!" He's trying to find his havoc staff, but you could be forgiven for thinking that he's wondering where all his other lackeys are. It would be a good time to have more staff in Snake Mountain than just the tittering, sycophantic bumblers, Webstor and Kobra Khan - Skeletor should have been more careful when he set up his work schedules this week! Even a bunch of easily-crunchable robot soldiers would have helped delay the heroes and given our villain a chance to teleport out of there. Instead, he ends up stuffed in a cauldron with his minions.
• Randor very much puts the fox in charge of the henhouse when he just brazenly assigns Tycor to guard the "honeycomb fields." Even Tycor - not the sharpest knife in the drawer - questions this decision: "You would trust us to guard what we took?!" He also recalls the child labor practices of MU076 when he appoints mini-bee-person Tike as an honorary guard.
• This is a pretty sub-par episode, I think. In addition to its oversimplistic issues of scale, numerous animation flubs, and logistical issues, there are several clearly padded-out sequences showing heroes slowly walking out of rooms or down hallways, suggesting the animators needed to burn up some of the running time on this sparse story. It is nice to get to see Buzz-Off's people and their lovely colony buildings, however; and I like the design for the Tycons.