Revisiting Retro Toys Of The (Mostly) 90s (RANT)

Maybe it’s because this week’s New York Toy Fair has us nostalgic, or perhaps it is the impending sense of doom we feel waking up each day in America, but we’ve been thinking about 90s toys. While every generation will claim to say they have the best toys, it is safe to say that each new generation will be impacted by different trends that will affect what toys are and are not made. We aren’t sure what toys are out there for kids these days, but considering how ubiquitous screens and technology are in our lives, we suspect that there the market for tactile action figures for kids has been impacted. Sure, action figures are still made, but before everyone had a tablet or a phone toys were the best way to escape into the imagination of your favorite characters, franchises, and games.

To be fair, this will mostly resonate with the millennial folks as these are toys that were popular in the early to mid-90s, and one exception for a 1987 line, around the age a swath of us were still the target demo. We know this isn’t a comprehensive list, so if you’d like to send us your ideas for another volume of this series, make sure to comment on our Instagram and let us know what we missed!

Monster Face (Hasbro)

Move over Mr. Potato Head, the kids want to play Frankenstein with a monster, not a spud! Monster Face was the kind of toy that not every kid had, but a lot of kids wanted. Like so many other toys released around this time, some were more cost-prohibitive than others and Monster Face was certainly on the higher cost side. The concept was quite simple, you are given a monstrous blank slate and a series of accessories/body parts to attach to the face and create your very own monster. The kicker is that the face itself has animatronics and is interactive. So you can move the jaw, and eyes, and even make pulsing blisters and ooze spew out. What a treat!

Monster Face did get a Goosebumps licensed version that is by and large the same thing with some light aesthetic changes and book tie-ins, but that’s about it. This won’t be the first time that we see weird viscous liquids popping out of toys from this era, and what a commercial! It’s no wonder we clamored for this so much as young horror fiends. You can read more about Monster Face over at Nothing But Nostalgia!

Super Naturals (Tonka)

Many of the toys released in the late-‘80s to mid-90s were somehow tie-ins to other things like comics, cartoons, movies, or a combination of those. As many familiar with the origins of He-Man will know, the vitality of a toy line that doesn’t have some sort of anchor to a property can make the process of innovation a challenge. Tonka found this out when they released the Super Naturals line in 1987 which only lasted one wave before being cancelled. The concept behind the toys was to leverage holograms adorned on the bodies of warriors that show their spiritual/demonic side. They aren’t super complex, but they're kitschy and horror-themed and have some interesting vehicles and playsets.

The Tomb of Doom is the standout centerpiece alongside the two vehicles and two “battle creatures.” The vehicles are a mixture of goth rockabilly sensibilities mixed with a monster (no pun intended) truck. The novelty of the hologram and shifting looks ultimately wasn’t enough to sustain the line, but we can’t help but think these would be a fun thing to revive for nostalgic collectors. Nothing But Nostalgia has a great look at the line of figures, vehicles, and history!

Monsters In My Pocket (Matchbox)

The shift from toys being made in Taiwan to China largely affected the toy lines released during the late 80s and 90s. The shift to Chinese production was in large part due to decreased labor costs, unsurprisingly, and the production capacity expanding to meet increased demand for toys. Matchbox, known for their cars and the only competitor to Mattel’s Hot Wheels line dabbled in the monster business in 1989 when they released their first wave of Monsters in My Pocket. These miniature versions of both familiar and foreign monsters were a hit from the jump and it’s not hard to see why. They’re small, cheap to produce, and varied enough to make them collectible. Packs came with 3-4 monsters, and it wasn’t until some of the later waves that the figures incorporated more than one color.

If you were a horror kid in the early 90s, there’s a good chance you had some of these on you and were always strapped with at least a few monster homies. The series has over 10 different lines and even had a small reboot back in 2006. It’s a shame that the 2006 reboot didn’t take off because the designs are exponentially better and have more detailed coloring done to make them look less cheap. The series got so popular it even expanded to an NES game as well as a cartoon series, which was par for the course at this time when success meant hyper-commercialization. If you ever wonder why millennials happen to be materialistic, it’s because we were the first generation to be bombarded with unregulated toy advertisements as kids, but we digress. We’d be lying if we said we wouldn’t mind nabbing a few retro monsters and adorning our offices with their monstrously mini presence. There’s a fantastic Monsters in My Pocket wiki page with a wealth of resources and a killer, and concise history of the figures on YouTube!

Mighty Max (Mattel)

Often referred to as Polly Pocket for boys, although really, anyone can play with any toy they want no matter how they identify, Mighty Max traded in the domesticity and lifestyle-themed miniature playsets for landscapes filled with action, danger, and skulls. Mighty Max toys came in a hard-shell plastic case often shaped to reflect the theme of the set itself, and within was a miniature diorama of sorts with accompanying character pieces you could use to take your adventures on the go. What we loved about these was how self-contained each set was, but also how different despite having the recurring and titular Max character included. The level of detail on the insides of the sets varied in quality, but for the most part, these were well-designed and thoughtfully executed playsets which led to multiple waves and spinoffs as well as a limited partnership with McDonalds.

The toys did so well, that they even launched a Mighty Max cartoon series, a recurring theme. Max is almost always fighting the Skullmaster and his minions, and the line ran from 1992 - 1996 with the last series seeing some of the most creative and interactive iterations of the miniaturized sets. Some larger playsets were released, but the draw was always the pocket-sized ones that you could take with you so your parents didn’t nag you for fidgeting too much, or was that just us? RetroJunk has a great write-up and pictures of the different waves and sets, as well as the Mighty Max Wiki page!

Atmosfear / Nightmare (J.W. Spear & Sons)

By the mid-90s VHS was so common that you could almost guarantee that every house with a TV had one. With that also came new opportunities to see how the medium could be used for more interactive purposes, like board games. The concept behind Nightmare / Atmosfear was simple, you put on a VHS tape where the Gatekeeper provides some light instruction and a whole lot of negging as you and your other players try to collect the different harbingers before the 60-minute timer runs out. The commercials alone made horror kids drool because it promised what looked like a “transformative” experience, but the catch was you needed to have at least 3 players, ideally more to make the game work.

The game itself has marginal replay value since you’re given one tape, and while things may shake out differently each time the tape itself will regurgitate the same things over. This led to some expansions, three of which were released and three of which were shelved due to the drop in popularity which could probably be attributed to the rise of commercial internet access. Still, there is likely a good chance this could be revived and reconfigured to work with our current tech landscape, especially taking advantage of mobile devices for greater immersion. Board Game Geek has a wonderful resources page for those curious or wanting to go down memory lane.

Doctor Dreadful Food Lab (Tyco)

If anyone ever wonders how we got so many microplastics inside us, maybe we should look into the myriad of 90s toys that entrusted kids with mystery powders to concoct unholy gummy edibles from mostly plastic materials. We aren’t saying there is a connection, but (puts on tin foil hat) maybe. Regardless, from the classic Easy Bake Oven comes the evolution of Doctor Dreadful’s Food Lab, every parent’s worst nightmare on multiple levels. From powdery ingredients, elementary chemistry, and a lot of mess to clean up after Doctor Dreadful’s Food lab gave kids the chance to make their own creepy crawly creatures, and then eat them as you do.

The taste of the output is questionable, but as a kid, the excitement of eating something you just made usurps any sense of taste or quality. The fine doctor shares a lot in common with the creeeeeeppy crawlers line, but the main difference here is that the doctor’s creatures are meant to be eaten and the crawlers not so much, but did that stop us? The spirit of the doctor is still alive and well as toys enabling kids to make tactile and/or edible things still persists, although we hope it’s a little less messier this time.

The Unholy Kenner Movie Tie-Ins

Kenner are the Icarus of toymakers who let their hubris and greed propel them from one of the hottest toymakers to being swallowed whole by one of their competitors, Hasbro. Kenner most famously were the toy company that partnered with George Lucas on the original “Star Wars” figures which turned essentially created the market for modern movie tie-ins and toys. Kenner was the go-to toymaker if you had a property in need of a toy line as evidenced by the partnerships they made with films that both did and didn’t have theatrical release tie-ins. Starting off with “Aliens,” the most interesting and vast of these Kenner franchise deals tried to take the action-heavy 1986 “Aliens” and produce a toy line for it in the 90s. While “Alien 3” was released around this time, it isn’t represented in the “Aliens” toy line which would grow to include the Predator as well. These toys were a trip, and almost a parody of Ridley Scott’s original film, but fun as hell for kids looking to recreate the action in their own homes. NECA would go on to release a retro Kenner line of these figures and the 1979 “Alien” ones as well.

“Terminator 2” was a massive hit, and it’s hard to understate just how much it permeated pop culture. One could make the case that these “Terminator 2” tie-in toys paved the way for the “Aliens” ones as they both start off with a great first wave of movie adjacent concepts, then diverging into something wildly different and stylized. The “Terminator 2” toys borrow from the movie, but liberally apply their own interpretations to mimic something less grounded and more akin to what would make a cool toy. This is most evident in the vehicles released which not only look nothing like any vehicle in the movies, they’re wildly impractical. Why would the T-800 drive a convertible?! The thing is, these toys included a lot of motion and moving parts which made them fun to play with, unless you lost a piece. The peak playset was the bio-flesh regenerator which would give kids the chance to add skin to their terminator models. It’s gross, weird, and we didn’t know anyone who had one, but damn if it isn’t an interesting idea!

Don’t say his name three times, well, unless you’re in this commercial which does but alas, not “Beetlejuce” appears unless you count in toy form. This is an odd tie-in, but we distinctly remember some of these “Beetlejuice” movie toys which again, featured loose interpretations of characters and situations from Tim Burton’s film. The vanishing vault turned a full-size figure into a micro figure, but the figures that Kenner released have no bearing in the movie at all and are quite random. Some of this could be the influence of the animated series released around this time, but this particular movie tie-in is the strangest of these three because it takes such liberties with the source material for the sole purpose of selling toys. Capitalism bayyybayyyyyyyy.

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