The Sweet Smell of Victory

Odiphus, a small thief, dreams of joining Skeletor's Evil Warriors. After watching He-Man's team clash with the warriors, he makes his way to Snake Mountain, meddles with an experiment of Tri-Klops's and is transformed by the explosion into a creature with an overpowering stench. Skeletor throws him out, then recruits him to lead a dawn diversion against the palace of Eternia. Roboto, blaming himself for the earlier defeat, loses confidence until Man-At-Arms talks him round, and his deduction that the attacker is vulnerable to his own smell turns the battle. Back at Snake Mountain, Odiphus takes a new name: Stinkor.

"I have encoded the lesson that all beings make mistakes. But losing confidence in one's abilities and being unwilling to try again is the biggest mistake of all."

Man-At-Arms: "Dwelling on a defeat can turn you into your own worst enemy."

Odiphus: "I am Odiphus, and I have the power of stink."

Odiphus: "Am I? I mean, Odiphus is listening."

He-Man: "I'm sorry, but doing evil is never a heroic act."

Stinkor: "Odiphus? Who's Odiphus? Call me Stinkor!"

What does it take to get back up after you have been knocked flat? "The Sweet Smell of Victory" asks the question twice, once of a Master of the Universe and once of a small, sticky-fingered thief who talks about himself in the third person, and the more interesting answer comes from the thief. Odiphus spends the opening raiding a building for "lotions potions" and sighing over the Evil Warriors of Skeletor, who to him are legends out of the stories. He-Man and the Masters break up the warriors' raid on the same building, the villains get away, and Roboto decides the escape was his fault.

Kevin Campbell's script runs the two stories side by side. Roboto, missing from roll call, has replayed the battle in his head and concluded that he failed the Masters; Man-At-Arms tells him that dwelling on a defeat can turn you into your own worst enemy. Odiphus, meanwhile, walks into Snake Mountain, asks Tri-Klops to let him join, gets told to get lost, and decides the brush-off is a test. The best lesson about setbacks in this episode is taught by its villain. Odiphus is refused, blown up by his own meddling, blasted out of the mountain by Skeletor, and keeps coming back, and by the end he has a mask, Skeletor's favor and a new name.

The transformation is the episode's set piece, and the animation sells it. A small white creature swells and darkens as glowing lines crawl over his fur, then rises out of a swirl of green vapor as a masked, muscled brute. From there green gas becomes the visual signature of the second half, rolling over hills, smothering a field, and wrapping the white city at sunset. It is a smart way to draw a power that is, after all, a smell, and the stampede of unilopes is staged well too, the white herd scattering across canyon slopes before anyone knows why.

The standout performance belongs to Odiphus, and to the writing that gives him a voice. "I am Odiphus, and I have the power of stink" is delivered as a declaration of arrival, and his slip when Skeletor offers him a place, "Am I? I mean, Odiphus is listening," is a lovely beat of a would-be villain catching himself mid-sentence and going back to talking about himself in the third person. The cleanest joke goes to one of Skeletor's warriors, who calls Odiphus the most offensive thing they have ever smelt. The payoff comes at Snake Mountain, where the regular warriors are sent off to scrub armor while the newcomer is spared, and it lands because Skeletor plays it straight.

Roboto's half is where the episode stumbles. His doubt is real, and the careful, clipped delivery suits a robot who talks about logic and judgment, but the cure for that doubt is Man-At-Arms repeating his earlier advice word for word, with "remember what I told you earlier" in front of it. Roboto agrees, and he is fixed. An episode with a new villain to introduce does not leave much room for a crisis of confidence, and the script makes the sensible call to spend its time on Odiphus, but the result is that Roboto's turn is announced rather than earned. His real contribution comes after, when he works out that the attacker is vulnerable to his own aroma and the Masters use the stench against him, and that idea deserved to be the moment he gets his nerve back.

He-Man has a quiet role here, mostly reading the situation: he and Man-At-Arms work out that Skeletor would not send a new warrior in solo unless the attack were a diversion, and his line to Odiphus that doing evil is never a heroic act is the closest the episode comes to a speech. Battle Cat and the stink-free clearing do the rest.

The closing exchange between Roboto and Man-At-Arms spells the lesson out, but Odiphus had already shown it. He was turned away by Tri-Klops and blasted out by Skeletor and walked back in both times, and by the time he says "Call me Stinkor!" the name is his.

1. Continuity: This is Stinkor's first appearance in the 2002 series and, per the He-Man wiki, the first time the character had ever appeared on television.
2. Production: The He-Man wiki, citing a he-man.org feature, says Filmation's story editors laughed Stinkor out of the 1980s cartoon as "a walking fart joke" and vowed never to use him.
3. Production: The He-Man wiki says the fart sound at the very end was not originally meant to be in the episode, but the producers liked it and kept it.
4. Toys: The 1985 Stinkor figure reused the Mer-Man mold with Mekaneck's chest armor and was treated to smell musky, according to the He-Man wiki.
5. Use one spelling for Peleezean / Pelleezeea across both notes (check the He-Man wiki spelling). the episode keeps the name for his life before the accident.
6. Toys: Mattel's Masters of the Universe Classics bio for Stinkor folds this episode in, with Odiphus causing an accident in Tri-Klops's lab inside Snake Mountain, per the He-Man wiki.
7. Toys: NECA's 2005 Stinkor mini-statue, sculpted by the Four Horsemen, was meant to include a small Odiphus figurine, which the He-Man wiki says did not ship until 2007's Series 6 alongside Jitsu.
8. Continuity: Season two's Out of the Past goes back to Odiphus's childhood in the village of Pelleezeea.
9. Voice cast: The He-Man wiki lists Brian Drummond as both Odiphus and the unilope shepherd, and Scott McNeil doubling as Stratos, Merman, Ram-Man, Clawful and Beast Man.