13 items
The spring-loaded battle-toy franchise from Spin Master and Sega Toys (Bakugan Battle Brawlers), tied to an anime series that launched in Japan in 2007 and on Cartoon Network in the U.S. in 2008. The toys were marble-like orbs that popped open into fierce little figures when rolled onto magnetic metal battle cards — a successor to the Pokémon and Beyblade collect-and-battle craze.
LEGO's buildable biomechanical warriors, sold in collectible canisters and wrapped in a sprawling island mythology kids argued about at recess. Part toy, part epic saga — you built the heroes, collected their masks, and followed the lore across comics, books, and films.
A green rabbit captain, a four-armed duck gunner, and a boy from San Francisco fighting a Toad Empire run by a computer. The cartoon lasted 13 episodes in the fall of 1991, the Hasbro toys lasted one wave, and the Konami NES game outlived them both.
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.
Seth Green's action figures, animated into eleven minutes of sugar-rush sketches on Adult Swim. Robot Chicken premiered February 20, 2005, dropping toy-aisle heroes into mundane adult life, and its Star Wars special got George Lucas himself into the recording booth.
Joe Dante's 1998 movie about toys that come alive and go to war: a defense contractor puts a munitions-guidance chip in a line of action figures, and the Commando Elite decide the gentle Gorgonites must be destroyed, along with anyone who gets in the way. Empire's verdict: "It's Gremlins with toy soldiers, except not quite as dark or funny."
Todd McFarlane's hyper-detailed, faintly grotesque action figures based on his Spawn comic — spikes, chains, teeth, and claws painted in a level of detail no toy aisle had ever seen. Aimed at teenage and adult collectors, they made every other action figure suddenly look like a baby toy.
Kenner's four-inch sports stars in blister packs, each with its own trading card, on toy-store pegs from 1988 on. Kenner shipped them by region, so out-of-town stars were hard to find.
Four brothers gene-slammed into half-shark street fighters by a mad scientist, battling Dr. Piranoid in Fission City. It was a syndicated cartoon built to sell Mattel's chomping action figures, which a young Vin Diesel pitched to toy buyers.
A gel-filled rubber superhero who stretched to grotesque lengths and slowly oozed back to shape — a sensory toy for kids who liked to push things to their limit. The 1990s revival of a 1976 classic, Stretch Armstrong became a staple of toy boxes and a messy, satisfying favorite.
Five episodes on Fox, a Kenner toy line with glow-in-the-dark eyes and rubbery slip-on "BioMasks," and a theme song that rewrote "Wild Thing" as "Swamp Thing! You are amazing!" The cartoon barely existed. The song never left.
Troma took the Toxic Avenger, the mop-swinging mutant from its gory 1984 cult film, and turned him into a kids' cartoon hero leading a squad of fellow mutants against alien polluters. Thirteen syndicated episodes aired in 1991, and Playmates, fresh off the Ninja Turtles, sold neon action figures with glow-in-the-dark accessories under the tagline "They're gross, but they still get girls!"
Galoob's tiny monster figures came sealed inside miniature trash bags. You dropped the bag in a sink, it dissolved, a tablet inside fizzed like Alka-Seltzer, and a Disposer or a Trashor floated up out of the foam. It was 1991, Earth Day was cool again, and you never knew which of the 36 you'd get.