This year, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe turns 40. And over four decades later, the franchise is still widely popular dabbling in various forms of media from comics to a couple of new animated series, an upcoming live-action movie, and of course, toys and action figures.

With all the new media that is coming for the franchise in the foreseeable future. This year, one announcement that certainly piqued my interest is that Sun-Man and the Rulers of Sun will be joining the Masters of the Universe toyline this year.

So, Who is Sun-Man?

Sun-Man is an action figure created by Yla Eason in 1985. Eason created the figure after her son told her he could never be a superhero because of his skin color while they were on vacation. “[My son] was playing with the He-Man toy. [Myself and my former husband] said something to him about being a superhero and he looked up at us with the straightest face possible and said ‘I can’t be a superhero because I am not white,’” Eason told IGN when retelling the story about the inspiration that led her to create Sun-Man.

When asked about Sun-Man’s name, Eason told us that his name was inspired by two things: the first one being her son. The second and more important one is that Eason began researching “why is our skin brown” and she learned that it was because of the melanin or pigment that gives color to your skin, hair, and eyes and can also help protect against sun damage and reduce the risk of sunburn. “The more melanin in your skin, the darker you are,” Eason said.

While further noting that the sun is a source of energy. “All his powers come from his magical melanin skin which can’t be cut, torn, scraped, bruised, or nothing can happen to his skin. And that was all intentional to place the positive actions, thoughts, and beliefs about my son’s skin color and other kids who may think that there is something negative about dark skin,” Eason explained.

At first glance at Sun-Man, he looks like he could easily fit in the He-Man universe, which was always the intended goal so that if fans of the He-Man toys were to buy one of the Rulers of the Sun toys, it would not stick out like a sore thumb. “That was a conscious decision; we did not want Sun-Man to be seen as an outsider through this massive He-Man collection,” Eason said. “That’s why his size, his muscularity, his obvious superhero stance was all intentional.”

The “Doll Test”

While creating Sun-Man, Eason told us that she spoke with Dr. Kenneth Clark, an American scientist who is best known for a series of experiments using dolls to study children’s views on race during the 1940s. The tests themselves were massively influential back then as they observed the racial perceptions in children. “At that time, segregation is when children can’t see themselves in a toy, it affects what they think of themselves, their self-worth, their importance, and may even affect their achievements in their life,” Dr. Clark told Eason when they met.

Eason explained that in the 1980s, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe toys were among some of the most popular figures, noting it was “the landscape” of toys aimed at little boys at the time. “Everyone was into He-Man,” Eason said. When she went out looking for black superhero toys, Eason was surprised to find none at the stores and she later asked other mothers of color about it to which they concurred that they could not find anything for their boys that looked like them.

Sun-Man is not the only hero that Olmec created, though, as the Rulers of the Sun also brought along other allies for Sun-Man. Including Digitino a computer wizard of Latino descent, and Butterfly woman, one of the rulers of the sun who served as a black counterpart to She-Ra.

Yet creating Sun-Man was not the most difficult part about Sun-Man and the Rulers of the Sun toy line: marketing it was. Eason explained that when she introduced the toy, she pointed out the demographics and importance to Sun-Man and was met with resistance from the retail buyers. “[The] resistance to the concept was severe, unexpected,” is what Eason said was said to her when trying to get Sun-Man to the market.

Despite this, Eason decided to sell the toy at various local spots, from bodegas to local neighborhood stores, and build up proof that showed there was a market for this type of toy. “I took out a full-page ad in Ebony magazine and announced the product to the market and then started getting through letter writing and this mailman type effort of getting people to got to the stores and say ‘Where’s the Sun-Man?’”

Looking to the present, Eason has a lot of hope for the toy industry in terms of the changes that are being seen. “People are recognizing that the market is very diverse and that we’ve got to cater to the cultural, social needs of everybody out there.” Eason believes that the toy industry has a lot of growth in which how these companies can recognize different figurines of ethnic backgrounds.

This would mark the second time Mattel released a Sun-Man figurine. Last year, the company released a special limited edition figurine of Sun-Man that sold out instantly. Sun-Man’s figure as part of the Masters of the Universe Origins toy line will arrive on shelves around the globe sometime in Q1 of this year.

Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

Supermassive Games seemingly has plans to release at least six more Dark Pictures Anthology games on top of its upcoming The Devil in Me.

The developer has trademarked six further titles in the franchise with the European Union Intellectual Property Office, as spotted by @the_marmolade on Twitter.

The six games trademarked, all under The Dark Pictures Anthology brand, are called Switchback, Directive 8020, The Craven Man, Intercession, Winterfold, and O Death.

Supermassive Games has already released three games in the series - Man of Medan, Little Hope, and Houses of Ashes - and has confirmed a fourth is on the way. The upcoming game, The Devil in Me, was announced by the studio in October and revealed to be a Season One finale for the series.

Ahead of the franchise's first release, Man of Medan in 2019, Supermassive Games said The Dark Pictures Anthology would span eight games with a release schedule of two per year.

If all the trademarked games are released, however, that would bring the total up to ten games, two more than the developer initially planned. There's no guarantee that Supermassive Games will develop all of the trademarked titles into full games, but it's likely some of them will be in the initially planned eight-game release schedule.

IGN has given The Dark Pictures Anthology mixed reviews so far. We said Man of Medan was "good", and "offers an unnerving horror adventure" with consequences directly linked to the player's actions. Little Hope was "mediocre", with "uninspired characters and relatively meaningless consequences," but we thought House of Ashes was "great", and the studio's best since Until Dawn released in 2015.

Supermassive Games seemingly has plans to release at least six more Dark Pictures Anthology games on top of its upcoming The Devil in Me.

The developer has trademarked six further titles in the franchise with the European Union Intellectual Property Office, as spotted by @the_marmolade on Twitter.

The six games trademarked, all under The Dark Pictures Anthology brand, are called Switchback, Directive 8020, The Craven Man, Intercession, Winterfold, and O Death.

Supermassive Games has already released three games in the series - Man of Medan, Little Hope, and Houses of Ashes - and has confirmed a fourth is on the way. The upcoming game, The Devil in Me, was announced by the studio in October and revealed to be a Season One finale for the series.

Ahead of the franchise's first release, Man of Medan in 2019, Supermassive Games said The Dark Pictures Anthology would span eight games with a release schedule of two per year.

If all the trademarked games are released, however, that would bring the total up to ten games, two more than the developer initially planned. There's no guarantee that Supermassive Games will develop all of the trademarked titles into full games, but it's likely some of them will be in the initially planned eight-game release schedule.

IGN has given The Dark Pictures Anthology mixed reviews so far. We said Man of Medan was "good", and "offers an unnerving horror adventure" with consequences directly linked to the player's actions. Little Hope was "mediocre", with "uninspired characters and relatively meaningless consequences," but we thought House of Ashes was "great", and the studio's best since Until Dawn released in 2015.

Although Jurassic World: Dominion wraps up the Jurassic World trilogy, we can expect more Jurassic movies to come.

During an interview with /Film, producer Frank Marshall revealed that Jurassic World: Dominion isn’t the end for the Jurassic World franchise:

“I think that Dominion's going to wrap up this trilogy, but we're not resting on our laurels,” he said. “We're going to sit down, and we're going to see what the future is.”

Jurassic World: Dominion is the third and final part of the Jurassic World trilogy. Starring Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, Dominion is said to bring the dinosaurs to the mainland… and that will only be the beginning of a new era of Jurassic Park movies.

“We have that wonderful series, Camp Cretaceous, on Netflix,” he added. “We obviously want to make quality, good movies with great storytelling, great writers and directors, but we're definitely looking to do more in the Jurassic world.”

Introducing a new type of raptor, Jurassic World: Dominion poses an interesting question – what if dinosaurs lived among us? Of course, we’ve seen dinosaurs escape from the parks previously, in The Lost Word, but it seems Dominion will up the ante and then some.

Of course, this opens the door for more Jurassic movies in the future. For now, it looks as though those plans will remain firmly under wraps.

Jurassic World: Dominion stars Chris Pratt as Owen Grady alongside Bryce Dallas Howard as Claire Dearing. They’re joined by Mamoudou Athie, Omar Sy, Daniella Pineda, and BD Wong as well as Jurassic Park alumni Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum.

Colin Trevorrow directed the film from a script he co-wrote with Emily Carmichael, based on a story by Derek Connolly. Frank Marshall and Patrick Crowley produced the film, with Alexandra Ferguson-Derbyshire, Steven Spielberg and Colin Trevorrow, and Tim Wellspring as executive producers.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Encanto's "We Don't Talk About Bruno" has hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, surpassing Frozen's "Let It Go" and becoming the first Disney song to top the charts in 29 years.

The infectious earworm, written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, has evidently got everyone talking about Bruno as, per Variety, the Encanto song moved up to the coveted top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 this week, passing Frozen's "Let It Go," which peaked at No. 5, to find itself occupying the same position that Aladdin's "A Whole New World" reached in 1993.

Billboard reports that "We Don't Talk About Bruno" rose through the ranks following 34.9 million U.S. streams of the ensemble song, which also set the record for the most credited recording artists ever on a Hot 100 No. 1 track, having been performed by Carolina Gaitán, Mauro Castillo, Adassa, Rhenzy Feliz, Diane Guerrero, Stephanie Beatriz and the Encanto cast.

It's only the second time that a Disney song has featured in the top slot and it's also the first Hot 100 chart-topper for Miranda, who penned eight original songs for the Encanto soundtrack. The soundtrack itself was co-produced by Mike Elizondo and has spent the past three weeks in the No. 1 slot on the Billboard 200 albums chart.

One of Encanto's Heads of Animation, Kira Lehtomaki, previously spoke to IGN about the process of animating the album's very large and complex musical numbers for the movie, noting that Miranda's toe-tappers were a "complete joy" to work with but also presented a challenge when it came to bringing them to life through animation.

"Not only is there the musicality, which means the characters have to be dancing and moving to the beat and rhythm -- so there is a constraint there and a technicality there -- but also with Lin's songs you have very quick lyrics," she explained, speaking about the huge undertaking. "And getting that lip-synced and the breathing correct was tricky."

Encanto centers around a Colombian family called the Madrigals who, after a terrible tragedy, find themselves in possession of a magical candle that grants powers to each newborn child across three generations. Each person is blessed with a unique gift except for lead protagonist Mirabel, who actually ends up becoming the real hero of the family.

IGN awarded Encanto 9 out of 10, praising Disney's 60th animated film for delivering "vibrant songs and stellar animation" that dazzled on-screen "both visually and narratively." Our review also commended Stephanie Beatriz for leading "a superb voice cast who help bring a film to life that is grounded but also feels like a magical delight."

Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

Red Notice director Rawson Marshall Thurber has been drafted in to help adapt Hasbro's beloved Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game for television.

According to Deadline, Thurber has been enlisted as the creative overlord of an upcoming Dungeons & Dragons series at eOne, with a deal that sees him writing and directing the pilot, in addition to executive producing the hourlong project. The series is expected to serve as a cornerstone of the D&D TV universe, which will feature both scripted and unscripted shows.

"We don't want it to just be one show, so we are building out, developing out a multi-pronged approach for television, a number of scripted shows and unscripted, and we hope to be taking this out to the marketplace early next year," eOne's President of Global Television Michael Lombardo said of the company's plans while speaking to Deadline last November.

The D&D project that Thurber is shepherding is said to have garnered the interest of multiple buyers, which likely includes Netflix, the company that previously took a gamble on Red Notice, only for it to become the streamer's most-watched movie ever. Netflix has since ordered two sequels of the star-studded heist caper, with Thurber reportedly back for both.

eOne previously tapped John Wick creator and writer Derek Kolstad to develop a D&D series, which is just one of several spinoffs said to be accompanying eOne's film franchise. The first feature film set in the fantasy world of Hasbro's hugely popular game from Wizards of the Coast recently wrapped filming and is expected to roll out on the big screen in 2023.

Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

Thumbnail image credit: Wizards of the Coast.