What did he mean by this?

This is what he's angling for now, not sure if he originally had any motivation past just being mad at people for making fun of him online, but he's trying to parlay it into something useful for him now.

At a time where I was mainlining every form of X-Men content I could from the cartoon, to the video games, to Valentine's Day cards, to the toys I picked this up and had my mind blown by what at the time felt like secret knowledge and a more mature take on my favorite team of superheroes.

Also fun to point out this also applies to comics. Marvel's Nightcrawler got his look from Cockrum pulling out one of his old, unused designs from DC's Legion of Superheroes.