From Toy Galaxy’s YouTube description: Kids love dinosaurs and kids love war. Put them together and you get Dino-Riders.
It was supposed to be huge with a full out marketing and merchandising blitz with tons of intricately sculpted toys but it failed after just one season and 14 episodes.
But that sculpting work did have a second and third life. This is the history of Dino-Riders.
From Toy Galaxy’s YouTube description: Dungeons & Dragons, the most successful RPG of all time, has seen many tragedies and triumphs over it’s long history, including being in the middle of the Satanic Panic in the 1980s, to now be part of pop culture and as popular as ever. From Gary Gygax and TSR through Mazes and Monsters and it’s (sort of) use in such shows as Community and Stranger Things.
From Toy Galaxy’s YouTube description: On this episode we cover the history of the Visionaries: Knights of the Magical Light.
Released by Hasbro in 1987 their play gimmick was holograms. With a comic book series from Marvel and an animated series what could go wrong? Plenty.
While Visionaries didn’t sell in 1987 the property has been sitting on the edge of resurrection for a number of years, including a new comic and maybe a new movie.
From Toy Galaxy’s YouTube description: On this episode we cover the history of Captain Power and the controversy surrounding it’s initial run in 1988.
Born from the ashes that were the Masters of the Universe movie and married to advanced light gun technology, it was a show aimed at kids and adults that struggled to get either on board.
Rising from the ashes again with a reboot planned in 2016, legal troubles have derailed those plans.
From Toy Galaxy’s YouTube description: Inhumanoids was a 1986 cartoon and toy line created by Hasbro that lasted only a single season.
Unique because the title characters were the bad guys, the Inhumanoids, and not the good guys, the Earth Corps (bunch of nerds).
There was a line of large action figures and the stories in the cartoon were serialized so it had a lot going for it but not enough for it to break through the glut of ’80s properties.
From Toy Galaxy’s YouTube description: The Dungeons and Dragons cartoon hit the airwaves in 1983 riding the Satanic Panic wave from the Dungeons and Dragons Role-playing Game and only lasted a few seasons.
It was also not helped by the fractured marketing approach which had a toyline and other merchandise being released as Advanced Dungeons and Dragons with no action figures made of the characters from the cartoon.
Despite all that, it led in the ratings for it’s first 2 seasons and made a lasting impression on pop culture at large.
