The Incredible Crash Dummies
Tyco's action figures were engineered for destruction: press one button on the torso and the head and arms sprang off, press the other and the legs flew. They were born from the famous Vince & Larry crash-test-dummy PSAs — and the tie-in backfired so badly that TV networks pulled the safety spots rather than cross-promote a toy.
In the late 1980s, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ran a famous PSA campaign starring Vince and Larry, two talking crash-test dummies who survived spectacular wrecks to teach kids about seat belts. Tyco Toys licensed the characters, and by 1992 the toy line — designed by David McDonald and Jim Byrne — was on shelves as "Vince & Larry: The Crash Dummies." The gimmick was engineered destruction: impact buttons on each figure's torso sent the head and arms springing off, or the legs flying. You crashed them, snapped the parts back on, and crashed them again — backed by a fleet built to fall apart on cue, from the Crash Car and Crash Cycle to the Crash & Bash Chair and Crash Test Center playsets.
Then the appeal backfired on the message. Parenting groups questioned whether toys this fun about crashing really promoted safety, and three major TV networks stopped running the Vince & Larry PSAs for fear of cross-promoting a toy line and muddying the safety message. Tyco retooled the line, stripped out every Vince & Larry reference, and rebranded it "The Incredible Crash Dummies," with new lead dummies Slick and Spin.
1993 was the brand's big media year: a Fox Kids animated special aired May 1, LJN published an Incredible Crash Dummies video game for the NES and Super NES, and Harvey Comics launched a comic series that November. The toys were discontinued in 1994, with a brief animated revival following in 2004 — but the line is remembered as the purest expression of an era when a toy could be built entirely around falling apart, and be better for it.
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