The Adventures of Tintin
The boy reporter and his dog Snowy stepped off the comic-book page and into a faithfully animated series that arrived on HBO in 1991. For many American kids, this was their first Tintin — and it stuck.
#Comics
4 items
Nickelodeon Magazine
The kids' magazine that brought Nickelodeon into mailboxes nationwide, packed with comics, pranks, gross-out humor, and celebrity features. Published from 1993 to 2009, it was the must-read subscription for 1990s and 2000s kids.
Sea-Monkeys
The comic-book ad promised a smiling pink family of underwater people in a castle. What arrived in the mail was three foil packets and, eventually, a cloud of barely visible brine shrimp. Sea-Monkeys were the great bait-and-switch of childhood — and somehow everyone forgave them, generation after generation.
Spawn Action Figures
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.