Roger Sweet, creator of He-Man character, dies at 91
Designer dies peacefully on April 28, says wife Marlene
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Roger Sweet, 91
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His wife Marlene confirmed his death occurred peacefully at his care facility on April 28
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Sweet had been suffering from dementia, which had deteriorated over the past month.
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Roger Sweet, creator of the He-Man character and Masters of the Universe — Dies At 91
Sweet, who had been diagnosed with dementia, passed away on Tuesday April 28 in a care facility according to his wife Marlene who spoke to TMZ.
In a GoFundMe post in February, Marlene said Sweet had recently been moved to the facility as his dementia progressed.
He's almost 91 and suffering from dementia now, she said back then. "His disease has advanced, and I have done everything I can to care for his needs at home.
"He had a long walk recently and got late home than normal and was really tired," she said. I found large, horrible bruises on his side and a lot of confusion: when I asked him what had happened, he couldn’t even remember falling over and sustaining this injury.
Marlene says she started the GoFundMe to cover their $10,200-a-month facility bill which wasn't covered by their insurance. As of Wednesday, April 29, the GoFundMe had surpassed its original $50,000 goal — raising more than $93,000 so far — with a donation of $5,000 from the Mattel Foundation.
As reported by the CDC, dementia is an all-encompassing diagnostic term for "the impaired ability to remember, think or make decisions that interferes with doing everyday activities". Alzheimer's disease is the most common type of dementia.
Sweet was born in 1935 and raised in Ohio. He graduated from Miami University of Ohio, and the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
Variety reported that from the 1970s and '80s, he was the head designer for Mattel's Preliminary Design Department. He-Man was invented by Sweet at a time when the company was searching for what action figure could compete with the Star Wars figures dominating that market.
He cemented a Big Jim doll in a fighting position and built up the torso with clay, resulting in what became one of the original sketches for He-Man. He sold it to Ray Wagner, then the company's CEO, and it went on sale in 1982.
In 1983, Mattel and Filmation started the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon. Over two seasons, it generated several spin-offs, including the 1985 feature film He-Man and She-Ra: The Secret of the Sword and Netflix series Masters of the Universe: Revelation and He-Man & The Masters Of The Universe.
The character's simplicity, he felt (as Sweet would later write in his book Mastering the Universe: He-Man and the Rise and Fall of a Billion-Dollar Idea), was part of its appeal.
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