Master of the Universe

The term is a recent acquisition from the toy aisles. In 1982, the American manufacturer Mattel launched the Masters of the Universe line, a media franchise designed to sell plastic action figures to children. The nomenclature promised a degree of domestic authority that the target demographic likely found difficult to exercise in practice.

The phrase transitioned into the lexicon of finance five years later. In his 1987 novel The Bonfire of the Vanities, the author Tom Wolfe applied the title to highly successful business figures, specifically those high-yield bond traders who viewed the financial landscape with the same inflated sense of omnipotence as the Mattel characters. The term has since remained a standard label for those whose influence is matched only by their self-regard.