Most Iconic 80’s Toys That Ruled the Decade

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: You remember those toys you begged and begged and begged your parents to buy for you? The ones you had needed because every other kid in school had them? The ones that have now been sitting in your parents' attic for the past 10, 20, 30, 40 years? Well, each one of those insanely popular toys has an equally insane backstory about how they got to the store shelves in the first place. I'm Mike with List25, and these are 12 most iconic 80s toys that ruled the decade. 12. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles In November 1983, two broke, struggling artists in Massachusetts were just goofing around. One of them, Kevin Eastman, drew a turtle wearing a mask with nunchucks strapped to his arms and wrote Ninja Turtle as a joke. His friend, Peter Laird, tickled by the idea, drew his own, more polished version. Not wanting to be outdone, Eastman then drew four of them, each holding a different weapon, and, well, a legend in a half-shell was born. Pretty original idea, huh? Well, no, not exactly. You see, the entire franchise started as a riff on an entirely different hero. Marvel's blind lawyer and martial arts expert, Daredevil. In the Daredevil comics, a young Matt Murdock pushes an old man out of the way of an oncoming truck. A canister of radioactive material flies out, hits him in the face, blinds him, and gives him superhuman senses. In Eastman and Laird's version, however, the canister smashes into a bowl of pet turtles instead, and the ooze that leaks out mutates them into walking, talking, pizza-loving, ass-kicking heroes we know and love today. Splinter, the turtle's wise rat sensei, is a direct nod to Daredevil's mentor, Stick, and even the foot, our reference to the hand. The only thing they didn't do was make the turtles blind, probably because Teenage Mutant Ninja partially sighted turtles is a bit of a mouthful. And so, with a budget of only $2,000, they printed 3,000 copies of the very first comic, a one-shot, self-contained story with no sequel planned. They then took out a small ad in an industry trade magazine, and within a few weeks, sold out. So, they printed 6,000 more, and the rest, they say, is green ninja-based history. But the comic was pretty dark compared to the eventual cartoon. It had swearing, brutal fight scenes, and a genuinely grim tone. And remember their nemesis, Shredder? A huge part of the show and movies for years? Well, in issue 1 of the comic, the turtles actually killed him. Spoiler alert for a 40-year-old comic. Not the kind of thing you'd want your particularly sensitive 6-year-old to be watching on a Saturday morning. So, how did we go from this to this? Well, in the mid-80s, Playmate's toys decided to produce a series of Ninja Turtle action figures. And, reasonably enough, were worried about the content of the comic. And so, to make the toys and the cartoon work, everything was deliberately softened. The turtles gained their individual color schemes and became pizza-obsessed wisecrackers. Because in the comic, they all wore red bandanas. Shredder became a bumbling cartoon villain, and even the catch-raises were sanitized. Much to the distaste of their two dark and wacky creators. So, there you have it. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles you grew up loving only existed to increase toy sales. It seems like the one enemy the turtles couldn't successfully fight was the Playmate Corporation. I am missing a lot of accessories here for Michelangelo. His belt, his nunchucks. Sounds more hollow than I remember. I know there are hollow in there, but still. Who's your favorite turtle? Let me know down in the comments below. As a kid, Michelangelo. As an adult, I'd say a Donatella. 11. The Real Ghostbusters It was 1985. Toy giant Kenner had been dominating shelves for years with a range of Star Wars toys. But that line was winding down, and Kenner needed something big to fill the gap. So, who are they going to call? Ghostbusters landed in their lap at exactly the right time. The movie had already made nearly $300 million worldwide. A successful cartoon tie-in had been produced, and Kenner jumped on that as hard as the Stay Buff Marshmallow Man on a trampoline. By 1988, they were launching multiple waves of figures. Proton packs, the Ecto-1 vehicle, the Firehouse playset, and demand was so high that it soon became the franchise that replaced Star Wars as Kenner's flagship line. And the most popular character of all, Slimer. But here's something you may not know. Slimer wasn't always called Slimer. And no, I'm not saying he had some ordinary-sounding name like Bob or Gary, but in the earliest merchandise, he was simply marketed as the Green Ghost. I mean, think back to the movie. Slimer was only in a handful of scenes. He shows up in the hotel, he slimes Bill Murray, and he gets trapped after our heroes completely trash a fancy ballroom. The cartoon writers, however, turned him into a permanent friendly team mascot. The toy division noticed how much kids responded to him, and Venkman, Stan Spangler, and Zetamore were soon pushed out of Slimer's green and sticky spotlight. In fact, he was so popular that by 1988, the show was renamed Slimer and the Real Ghostbusters, with half the runtime turned over to short, cheap slapstick cartoons built entirely around him. And while I'm on the topic of the four not-so-popular Ghostbusters, why did the cartoon characters look like this when their movie counterparts looked like this? I mean, these are four completely different guys, right? Yep. And that was the whole point. The cartoon deliberately redesigned the Ghostbusters to be more toyetic, visually distinct from each other, and therefore, easier to manufacture and sell as individual action figures. Once again, it was all about that sweet, sweet moolah. The show even wrote an episode explaining, in-universe, why their look had changed from the movie. I've got to tell you, this came in just before you went up to fight Gozer. It's her new uniforms. 10. Strawberry Shortcake In the early 1970s, an American Greetings artist named Barbie Sargent created a Valentine's Day card featuring a little, freckle-faced girl in a strawberry-print bonnet holding a daisy. Customers loved it, so Sargent was asked to draw a handful more strawberry-themed cards. The response was overwhelmingly positive, and a very, very, very lucrative franchise was born. Another American Greetings employee, Muriel Therion of the toy licensing division, then took the character and created a world around her, designing Strawberry Shortcake's Pet Cat Custard and more than 30 other dessert-themed friends, which led to disputes, lawyers, and more stress than you'd think a little freckle-faced girl would be capable of causing. In 1983, Sargent sued American Greetings over the copyright and won, only to voluntarily hand the rights back to the company, saying it was never about the money, but proper recognition for her work. But hey, this video isn't about blood-sucking lawyers. So, let's get back to what you really want to talk about. The toys. In 1979, Kenner started making Strawberry Shortcake dolls with every single doll scented to match the fruit, or dessert, it was named after. The Strawberry doll smelled like strawberries. The Blueberry Muffin doll smelled like blueberries. You get the idea. Simple, but effective. And still talked about by toy manufacturers to this day. Does not smell like strawberry. Oh, f***. And you know what else is still discussed with Wide-Eyed Wander? The sheer amount of money they brought in. People who'd worked in the business for decades had never seen anything like it. In 1981 alone, Strawberry Shortcake merchandise pulled in something like $300 to $500 million. Kenner made $8 million in one year. Four times what they had made the year before. And still sold out completely, leaving parents scrambling across the country trying to find one for their kid. Strawberry Shortcake even got her own official Marvel comic book series in 1985. Although sadly, we never got to see her in a fistfight with Doc Ock or saving human life from Galactus. And as with any toy, however, it didn't last. By 1985, her popularity had dropped off a cliff. Kenner dropped the toy line, and the brand went quiet. Over the next four decades, Strawberry Shortcake was passed between company after company, redesigned again and again, and reinvented as everything from a ragdoll, to a businesswoman running her own cafe, to a Netflix series with a genuinely diverse cast living in a real city. So, a bit like Sex and the City, but, you know, with no sex and everyone smelled like dessert. [00:09:19] Speaker ?: FBI, open up! [00:09:23] Speaker 1: 9. Care Bears Sticking with Muriel, in 1981, American Greetings tasked her with replicating her Strawberry Shortcake success. So, you know, no pressure. The new concept would be based on the work of artist Elena Kucharik, who'd been creating a set of card illustrations meant to represent emotions in a simple, huggable way. Bears. Each one with a symbol on its belly telling you exactly what they stood for. A heart, a rainbow, a cloud. These days, it's an iconic toy, of course. But back then, these Care Bears were meant to sell sympathy and birthday cards, not plushies. All of that changed, however, when the toy department suddenly got the smell of dollar bills in their nostrils. When the designers put together the initial lineup, it had nine bears. Tender heart, cheer, funshine, wish, bedtime, birthday, good luck, friend, and love a lot. Which kind of sounds like a weird version of King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table. You know, they spent less time slicing people apart with their swords and more time hugging each other. And that's kind of the point. Even for the toy division, everything seems a little too nice. These bears were so sweet that you need to check your blood sugar level if you came within several feet of one. It was too much. They needed contrast, some light, and darkness. They needed Grumpy Bear. A grumpy, skeptical rain cloud badge bear whose entire purpose was to say, it's okay to feel bad sometimes. A pretty modern philosophy, which might explain why Grumpy has continued to be in every single Care Bears generation for the past 40 years. By 1985, Care Bears had become the best-selling toy line in the entire country. Ahead of Barbie. Ahead of G.I. Joe. Over 40 million of these things sold. More than 100 different products carried their faces. And this all happened in a decade completely dominated by laser guns, transforming robots, and muscle-bound action figures. Not to say that the Care Bears couldn't kick ass when they wanted to. They just did it differently. The Bears would line up, face the villain, and blast pure, caring energy out of their belly badges until the bad guys simply gave up. What am I doing? But I mean, who could withstand the Care Bears stare? In a decade where every other toy line solved problems with a punch or a missile, Care Bears solved problems by carrying their enemies into surrender. A pretty great message, really. 8. Hot Wheels In 1968, Elliot Handler, one of Mattel's founders, wanted to build toy cars that could actually race. His team thought it was a mistake, but they went ahead anyway, and the result was Sweet 16. A lineup of 16 cars with a shiny metallic paint job called Spectra Flame, and a new low-friction wheel design which let them roll faster than anything else in stores. To prove this claim, Mattel staged a demonstration for a buyer at Kmart, racing one of their cars against a Matchbox car on a track. The Matchbox car crawled along and fell off. The Hot Wheels car kept going, and the buyer placed an order for 50 million units on the spot. Ten times what Mattel had even predicted for the entire line. And Mattel weren't shy about choosing new, real-life cars for their toy car lineup, even if they didn't technically exist yet. At that time, lead designer Harry Bradley was working at General Motors on the side, so he had early access to GM's upcoming third-generation Corvette. It wasn't supposed to be revealed to the public for months, but Harry basically went, eh, whatever, and built a Hot Wheels version of it anyway. And you'd think GM would be slightly annoyed by this, right? No, not at all. They figured that the toy would actually build excitement for the real car, which gives you a small example of how well-known Hot Wheels were at the time. Not all of their designs were winners, though. Like the aptly named Beach Bomb, a small Volkswagen bus with two surfboards sticking straight out the back window designed to look exactly like the real van. When tested, however, the thing was too narrow to fit their own racetrack, and too, it's not this one, but top-heavy to take corners at speed, so, well, it was scrapped. But, its legend lives on. A small number of those original Doom prototypes had already been built and handed out to employees. Today, there are maybe 25 of them known to still exist anywhere in the world, with a hot pink one selling to a collector for over $70,000. So, apparently, even their failures were a success. Well, kind of. If you don't count Hot Wheels nearly being wiped out parent company's dishonesty. For over two years in the early 70s, Mattel's chief financial officer was quietly reporting canceled and tentative orders as if they were confirmed sales, just to make the numbers look good for investors. Then, in 1973, a sudden $32 million loss was reported, just weeks after investors had been told everything was fine. The stock collapsed. The SEC got involved, and the fallout was so serious that Elliot Handler, his wife, and that shady CFO were all forced out of the company. But, despite all that, Hot Wheels clawed its way back, kept innovating decade after decade, and now there's no sign of sales drifting over into the slow lane. 7. Barbie I mean, what can I say about Barbie that you don't already know? She's glamorous. She's adventurous. She's iconic. And she has a more different version of herself than a centipede has legs. But, even for Barbie, the road to toy success has been slightly bumpy at times. In early 1986, Mattel were getting ready to launch one of the biggest Barbie lines of the decade, Astronaut Barbie. Complete with a silver spacesuit and a bubble helmet, timed perfectly to cash in on America's growing love affair with the space program. The ads were ready. The line was about to debut at the International Toy Fair. And then, just before launch, the Challenger space shuttle exploded on live television. And so, the question was, do you pull an astronaut toy after a national tragedy involving actual astronauts? Or, do you just push forward and hope for the best? Well, despite opting for a slightly less in-your-face ad campaign and marketing strategy, Mattel went for the latter option. And, amazingly, kids didn't reject her. In fact, to this day, Astronaut Barbie is remembered as one of the more meaningful dolls of the decade. Some Barbies, on the other hand, didn't last too well. But, they did have surprising comebacks. Take Great Shape Barbie, for example. The leotard and leg warmers workout doll from 1983. Pixar needed a nostalgic 80s Barbie to put in Toy Story 3, and they picked her specifically because she captured that whole Jane Fonda aerobics craze so perfectly. Toy Story 3 came out in 2010, of course, but they dressed the movie version in that exact 1985 workout outfit, as if it were brand new off the shelf. In other words, they were into 80s nostalgia way before Stranger Things became a, well, thing. There was no way Mattel could have seen that coming, but they were very good at keeping up with the times, especially when you consider Day to Night Barbie. This was the era women were flooding into corporate America in real numbers for the first time, and Day to Night Barbie showed that a woman could be a serious professional by day and still be glamorous by night. She came with a briefcase, a tiny magazine, even a mini calculator. But her business suit jacket flipped inside out into an evening gown so she could go from the office straight to a night out. A pretty deliberate cultural statement. And just like their feisty doll, Mattel were never likely to back down from some healthy competition. In the mid-80s, word got out that Hasbro was developing a rival toy line called Gem and the Holograms, rock star dolls with wild-colored hair. Well, Mattel essentially beat them to the finish line, designing, producing, and shipping a product line called Barbie and the Rockers before Hasbro's Gem line even launched. It became one of the most popular, and now most expensive to collect Barbie lines, from the entire decade. But was it all forward-thinking and breaking down barriers? Well, no. Because let's not forget 1984's Peaches and Cream Barbie, the almost absurdly glamorous chiffon-drenched gown doll that had nothing to do with any career or message at all. But hey, maybe that's what some people want in a doll. I mean, who are we to judge them? You see, that's the great thing about Barbie. Because of her, a whole generation of kids grew up believing they could be anything they wanted to be. Just like their hero. Six. My Little Pony. Believe it or not, My Little Pony was originally rejected by Hasbro. More than once. Designer Bonnie Zuckerman was constantly turned down. Because, according to Hasbro executives, little girls like to cook and clean and iron. Little girls aren't like you. And so they almost kissed goodbye a billion-dollar franchise. Bonnie Zuckerman's whole love of horses traced back to her childhood. Her father was a veterinarian stationed with the U.S. Army in Japan. And she grew up around a Korean pack pony. So that one real horse is the reason an entire generation of American kids grew up brushing plastic ponies' manes in their bedrooms. Yes. Despite the executives' short-sightedness, in 1981, almost by accident, Bonnie's vision finally became a reality. Hasbro put out a toy called My Pretty Pony, a big, hard plastic horse aimed at kids who like styling hair. One of the marketing directors brought a prototype home to his wife and said, Why is it this soft and cuddly? And Bonnie redesigned it around that idea. And how much did Hasbro pay Bonnie for a billion-dollar idea? Brace yourselves. One stinking dollar. By 1986, that one-dollar idea was popular enough that Hasbro greenlit a full-length My Little Pony movie. Weirdly enough, this was one of the first movies ever released by Marvel Productions. But this was many years before the roaring success of the MCU. [00:20:00] Speaker ?: Assemble. [00:20:08] Speaker 1: The studio only gave the animator six weeks to complete the entire film. The animation quality suffered badly. Critics tore it apart. And the movie became a box office bomb. In fact, it was such a disaster that executives started to panic and scrapped plans for an upcoming movie about Jem and the holograms, too. The ripple effect was felt far and wide. Luckily, they had more success in the world of TV. The very first My Little Pony special was outsourced to Toei Animation in Japan, the same studio behind so many iconic anime. That's actually why that very first special has this distinctly different, almost anime-influenced art style compared to every other My Little Pony cartoon that came after it. I mean, just imagine what could have been. Attack on Titan meets My Little Pony? Now that's something I'd pay to see. Five. Cabbage Patch Kids Cabbage Patch Kids started as one woman's personal art project. And the story of how it became a billion-dollar craze is, honestly, a little heartbreaking. Back in the mid-1970s, Kentucky-based artist Martha Nelson Thomas learned an old fabric sculpture technique and started making soft, hand-stitched cloth babies called Doll Babies. She asked people to adopt these at craft fairs, each one coming with important papers, a letter from Martha describing the doll's personality, and a note written as if from the doll itself. No two were alike. Now, a young art student named Xavier Roberts saw her dolls at one of these fairs and bought a few. Later, he started selling his own version out of a gift shop in Georgia. However, when Martha found out and asked him to stop, he said, Whether I get them from you or not, I'm gonna keep selling dolls like yours. What a guy. And because there's no justice in the world, Xavier's version exploded. He opened a place in Cleveland, Georgia called Babyland General Hospital, where the dolls were born out of a fake cabbage patch in front of visitors, complete with nurses and scrubs and a whole birth ceremony. I've actually been there and seen it. And when Coleco licensed the concept and mass-produced it with vinyl heads in 1983, it became one of the most explosive toy crazes in American history. So apparently, plagiarism is a really, really good career option. Meanwhile, Martha Nelson Thomas was still working craft fairs, making basically nothing, watching someone else become a multi-millionaire from an idea she'd never trademarked. In her words, you don't put a copyright stamp on a baby. Mind you, she'd later have a change of heart. In fact, she's performed a complete 180. Martha eventually sued. The case dragged on for years and settled quietly in 1985, right in the middle of the trial. And importantly, part of the settlement acknowledged she had an influence on the design. Xavier Roberts, for his part, always maintained he'd been inspired by her work, but built his own thing on top of it. And while Martha's case was working through the courts, just to show that he truly had no self-awareness at all, Roberts filed his own copyright lawsuit against companies knocking off his Cabbage Patch Kids. Yeah, what a guy. 4. Transformers Yes, Transformers were possibly the most original toy idea of the entire 1980s, except they weren't. When Hasbro launched this line in 1984, they didn't actually design most of these toys from scratch. Instead, they licensed a bunch of toys that already existed from a Japanese company called Takara. You can actually see it right there. I don't know if you want to zoom in, it says Takara. You see, Takara had a toy line called Diaclone, where cars, trucks, and construction vehicles transformed into robots. Not only that, but they also had a separate line called Micro Change, with everyday options, objects that secretly turned into robots. Like a tape deck. Sound familiar? And so, Hasbro decided to combine both of those concepts and, um, send them to war with each other. Good guys, bad guys, one story. And that decision is the entire reason Transformers exists the way it does. This origin story also explains one of the weirdest products in the whole line. Megatron. This is not Megatron. I'm just transforming it while I talk. In the actual first year toy, before the cartoon smoothed them out, Megatron transformed into a real working scale replica of a Walther P-38 handgun. Chrome, black grip, the whole thing. That's not something you'd see hit shelves today. And it only happened because this toy wasn't originally designed as a kid's action figure at all. Nope. It was designed as a spy gadget toy for a completely different line. And Hasbro just kept it. And yes, apologies to all the Transformers geeks out there, but your hero, Optimus Prime, yeah, he was basically ripped off too. Optimus came straight from a Diaclone set called Battle Convoy. The cab, the trailer that opens into a little command base, the tiny scout vehicle named Roller, all of that existed before he even had a name, a voice, or a single line of dialogue. I'm missing a head. Where's your head? Now, once Hasbro had these toys, they needed the story fast. So they brought in Marvel Comics to write character bios and a whole mythology before the cartoon even existed. And that's why the two factions are so cleanly divided. Autobots are all recognizable, friendly Earth vehicles. Cars, trucks, ambulances. Because they're supposed to be hiding in plain sight. Decepticons, on the other hand, look like weapons and military hardware. Because they're the invaders. It's got Deception right in the name. So apparently, you can judge a book by its cover. And after all that hard work defining the characters, what did Hasbro decide to do with their most popular one? Murder him. Yes, in 1986, Hasbro made an animated movie to introduce a new lineup of toys, which meant they needed to get rid of some old characters to make room. So, in the middle of what kids expected to be a normal Saturday morning cartoon, Optimus Prime dies. On screen. It's still one of the most talked about moments in 80s kids' TV. And it happened purely because Hasbro needed shelf space for new products. RIP Optimus Prime. And Peter Cullen. We know they're both looking down on us right now from that great scrapyard in the sky. I didn't even transform any of these fully. Oh my god. 3. He-Man and the Masters of the Universe In the early 1960s, the record label DECA turned down a chance to sign the Beatles. And in 1976, Mattel CEO Ray Wagner turned down the chance to create toys for a new movie called Star Wars. As you can imagine, neither of them were happy about it. And so, as Mattel watched Star Wars become the phenomenon it became, they decided to do their own thing instead. Well, you know, after they finished crying and curling up into a fetal position, of course. Their lead designer, Roger Sweet, and a packaging artist named Mark Taylor came up with a fantasy warrior concept, which they almost called Lords of Power. Luckily, somebody pointed out that this sounded a little too religious for a kid's toy aisle. So, they landed on Masters of the Universe instead. But, the road to Eternia was covered with pretty hazardous paving stones. Around that same time, Mattel had a deal to make toys for the 1982 Conan the Barbarian movie. And when they got a look at He-Man's barbarian look, loincloth, and not entirely subtle S&M vibe, they realized it was more than a little similar to their own main character. And so, it was lawsuit time. But He-Man won. Obviously, because, well, he's He-Man, isn't he? Mattel, however, didn't even have a cartoon ready yet. And the very first version of the story, told through little mini-comics packed in the boxes, was way darker. He-Man was basically a wandering barbarian in a war-torn world. And Skeletor was not a bumbling villain. He was a genuinely menacing figure, trying to reunite two halves of a magic sword to break into Castle Greyskull. Mind you, even the final toned-down Skeletor was pretty horrific. Imagine being a parent in 1982, walking down the toy aisle and seeing a grinning exposed skull on a purple-hooded villain. Back in those days, toy villains were usually cartoonish. This one looked like it belonged in a horror movie. Also, while most toy play sets in this era were bright, clean, shiny plastic, Castle Greyskull was deliberately designed to look terrifying and old. It was painted with a weathered black wash to make it look mossy and ancient, and had a working jaw bridge. Yeah, that's right. I said jaw bridge. Skulls, jaws, not so much I have the power as I have the keys to the local mortuary. And of course, like many toy lines from the 80s, certain characters were created by reusing the mold from an entirely different toy. In the case of He-Man's trusty pal Battle Cat, it was a tiger figure from Mattel's 1970s line Big Jim. They just repainted it, armored it up, and gave it a new name, which was pretty much the same thing that happened with the figures themselves. In other words, they shared body parts to keep costs down. Nothing creepy about that. 2. G.I. Joe, a real American hero. In 1978, the original G.I. Joe got canceled, partly because of rising plastic costs from the oil crisis, and partly because after Vietnam, nobody wanted the toy soldier standing on their kid's shelf. And then, the thing that inspired so many of the toys in this video occurred, Star Wars. And there are millions and millions and millions of tiny 3 and 3 4th inch figures. So in 1982, Hasbro brought G.I. Joe back from the dead, shrunk it down to the same scale, and even added something these Star Wars figures didn't have. A little rubber band called an O-Ring, connecting the upper and lower body through the waist, which let them swivel, bend, and actually sit down in vehicles. They also rebuilt the entire concept from scratch. G.I. Joe became a codename, an elite international task force, each soldier with their own name, specialty, and backstory. Once again, a Marvel writer, this time Larry Hama, was given the task of building the entire mythology in comic book form. And he was a good choice, not least because Hama was a Vietnam veteran himself, and able to give the whole thing a sense of reality you wouldn't usually find in a toy commercial. He wrote 155 issues of the comic, which ran for the entire life of the toy line, and basically functioned as the instruction manual for how kids should imagine these characters. But putting Larry Hama's creativity to one side, some of the most iconic G.I. Joe characters came into being for no other reason than to save money. Take Snake Eyes, for example. Arguably the most iconic G.I. Joe of all time. Late in development, Hasbro needed to cut costs on that first wave of figures. And somebody looked at Snake Eyes and said, why don't we just not paint him? And that was it. No face detail, no colorful gear, just solid black. They accidentally created the coolest, most mysterious character in the entire lineup, and all to save a few bucks. And then you've got Cobra Commander. Do you remember him? The hooded guy with the creepy high-pitched voice? Well, in the very first production run, if you look closely at the Cobra logo on his chest, there's something that looks suspiciously like a famous pair of mouse ears. Because as we all know, nothing says pure evil like Mickey and Minnie. These days, collectors actually call this the Mickey Mouse Cobra Commander, and it's one of the most sought-after variants from that entire first year. By the time G.I. Joe wrapped up in 1994, Hasbro had put out something like 500 figures in 250 vehicles. The USS flag alone was over 7 feet long, longer than the average kid's bed. Nobody who owned this line as a kid ever completed it. It was too big. And if you did, you'd need your own life-size army base to keep them all in. 1. Star Wars Almost 50 years ago, in a toy shop far, far away, unless you lived close by, the most successful toy franchise of all time landed and blew the competition to smithereens Death Star style. Yes, in 1977, Star Wars was an absolute phenomenon. Lines around the block, kids sing it 5, 6, 10 times that summer, and their old friends Kenner had the license to make toys for the movie. Great. Well, no, not exactly. You see, the movie came out way faster than anyone expected, and there was no way they could design, mold, and manufacture action figures in time for Christmas. So, what did they do? Easy. They sold what every kid always dreams of receiving on Christmas morning. An empty box. Yes, that Christmas, kids unwrapped a cardboard box with a picture of Luke and Leia on the front and a certificate inside promising that their action figures would arrive in the mail in a few months. That's right. Parents paid real money for an IOU. And somehow, it worked. Because when the figures of Luke, Leia, Vader, Chewbacca, and co. actually showed up in early 1978, it was like Christmas morning all over again. Or in my case, it's like Hanukkah. That's a reference to a reference. If anyone knows where that's from, let me know in the comments below. And here's the thing that made them so special. And yes, I've mentioned this a few times now, but it really can't be understated how revolutionary it was. They were tiny. Three and three quarters inches. Every other action figure at the time, your G.I. Joes, your superhero toys, were big 12-inch dolls. Kenner went small on purpose. Because small meant cheap to make, cheap to buy, and also, you could have a whole army of them. Or one. You could actually recreate the Battle of Hoth in your backyard with real numbers. Not just one Luke, one Stormtrooper, and a pile of mud pretending to be Jabba the Hutt. He's not on the Battle of Hoth. What is happening here? So yeah, kids went crazy for them. But that doesn't mean they were perfect. Vader's cape was vinyl. And it ripped, if you even looked at it the wrong way. Chewbacca's bowcaster snapped off and vanished into the carpet within a week. And the original Boba Fett, with his spring-loaded firing rocket pack, was pulled at the last second. Apparently, Kenner suddenly realized that tiny plastic missiles and kids' faces, eh, not a great combination. A few prototypes actually got out in the wild, with one of them sold at an auction a few years back for over a million dollars. And that's why we have no issue at all with putting Star Wars toys in our number one slot. And now, sadly, it's time to put away childish things and get back to the business of adulting. Which is kind of fun, right? Well, okay, maybe not. So, if you're not ready to leave those days behind you just yet, check out our next video. 25 Vintage Toys Worth a Fortune Today. Don't forget to like, share, comment, and subscribe. You know what? Let me know what was your favorite toy growing up. Do you have any on this list? Let me know in the comments below. As always, stay curious. What do I say? As always, I'm Mike Estrin. Stay curious, and I'll see you in the next one.