Toy Biz Marvel started 25 years ago 1990

[ovenmitt]

Hard to believe we would not have Hasbro 6" Marvel Legends or ANY Marvel figures today if it were not for the 1st humble Toy Biz 5" Marvel Super Heroes that arrived 25 years ago in 1990!

Yes the 1st Toy Biz Marvel and X-Men figures were crude and poorly sculpted but things turned around when Marvel bought Toy Biz and the sculpting improved in 1994 with Spider-Man, Fantastic 4, and Iron Man cartoon lines and better X-Men figures! There were SEVERAL Spidey and X-Men series and Hulk, Avengers, Ghost Rider, and Silver Surfer!

There were were other scales besides 5" like 10" Marvel Universe, Spidey, F4, X-Men, and Iron Man, some 12" cloth costumed, and Mego-like 9" Famous Covers!

There were all these great lines but they did not all fit together in sculpting, scale, and articulation that is until 6" MARVEL LEGENDS which has been going since 2002 except for a 3 years break for 4" Marvel Universe! There were also 12" ML ICONS!

I miss the Toy Biz Marvel days of the 90s which TB dominated I wished Kenner could do the same with DC back then instead of just Batman and a few Superman! *What if Toy Biz had held on to Batman and DC licenses past the terrible 1989 figures?

Most of my Toy Biz Marvel figures are gone now mainly sold off when I moved from Arkansas to St Louis in 2005. Marvel Legends is the collection I regret selling the most I had them all 2 of each. Remember when they were $7 each had a diorama or BAF piece AND a full size comic book reprint of a clssic issue of the character? Now ML are $20 each! *sigh* I long for $5 action figures!

*I wish Hasbro's Marvel license had not been extended to 2020 and give another company a chance. Maybe that way we could get $25 single carded Mego 8" Marvel figures!

Many have speculated when Hasbro's Marvel and Star Wars licenses end in 2020 that Disney will start making the figures itself. Disney was looking into BUYING Hasbro not so long ago to own GI Joe and Transformers, too! I want Disney to buy Time-Warner and merge DC and Marvel universes!

[enyawd72]

I love all the old Toy Biz 5" stuff. I disagree that they didn't all fit together until ML though. All the 5" animated lines were compatible, and even though they're less articulated, I actually prefer the less realistic sculpts and brighter colors of many of them.
The original eight Toy Biz figures will always be special to me.

[ovenmitt]

I was just glad to get any new Marvel figures in 1990 not since 1984 Mattel Secret Wars!

I remember the 1st 8

Spider-Man w/ suction cups hands and web
Hulk- w/ bending bar and rock
Captain America w/ launching shield
Daredevil w/ grappling hook?
Punisher- activating arm to point guns? He was hard figure to find out of 1st 8!
Silver Surfer w/ rolling surfboard
Dr Doom w/ rotating glove?
Dr Octopus w/ bendy tentacles

Next 4 were Iron Man, Thor, Green Goblin (bad sculpt), and VENOM (excellent sculpt!)

Then Fantastic 4 and X-Men

I have a soft spot for these early Toy Biz Marvel figures from the fledging company who had the license for 16 YEARS and ended last 5 with Marvel Legends and spin-off 6" lines Spider-Man, X-Men, Hulk, Fantastic 4!

And I agree that I prefer less articulation than 30 points! for better sculpting!

I wish Hasbro's Marvel Legends were Toy Biz prices!

[enyawd72]

^Don't we all! LOL

Man, I remember the day I walked into TRU and saw those Toy Biz figures. I couldn't get my wallet out fast enough. I bought all of them and the carrying case too.

[Earth 2 Chris]

I think the original Punisher came with caps and had a metal lever in his back that you could pull back on to fire the caps. The Marvel figures were an improvement over the DC Super Heroes second wave, which have to be the ugliest licensed figures ever made. There is something about that Captain America sculpt from wave 1 I still really like. He looks like Kieron Dwyer's Cap, and he was the artist on the series at the time. They are a bit knock-kneed, but I still like 'em, and Toy Biz certainly created a frickin' Marvel Universe of toys for a good 10 or so years there!

Chris

[ovenmitt]

Speaking of Kieron Dwyer Toy Biz repainted Captain America to look like USAgent (John Walker?) Dwyer came up with The Captain costume Steve Rogers wore while Walker was Captain America and later used The Captain costumed renamed USAgent. Good Cap run in the 80s!

[toys2cool]

still remember the first time I saw them.. Lionel playworld

[nvmbrsdoom5]

I've had an interesting journey with the ToyBiz figures.... When the ToyBiz Batman and D.C. Comics figures first hit, I bought them as an impulse buy one day, having been away from purchasing toys for a few years (i.e. most of my teen years). The last toys I'd bought with any regularity were the Secret Wars figures in '84, and somehow I missed out on Super Powers all together, so I was pretty excited to see Hawkman, Green Lantern, Mr. Freeze, etc. on the pegs in 1989/1990 courtesy of ToyBiz. Then shortly thereafter they came out with the Marvel heroes and I was quickly hooked. I collected these pretty faithfully throughout the first half or so of the 1990s. During that time I also discovered Toy Shop, Lee's, and Tomarts, and started rebuying old "vintage" toys too, which gradually became more of my passion due to the sentimentality attached to it. I wound up really getting sick of the ToyBiz stuff later on, all the massive amounts of repaints, repackaging, etc. There was so much of it everywhere I looked, and foolishly I and many others hoarded a lot of this stuff thinking it was going to be worth something (which as we know, a lot of it really isn't.) So by the turn of the century I was either selling off much of it, giving it to people's kids to play with, or packing it away in boxes to make room for other toys I felt more attached to.
Fast forward to more recent times, and I have found myself surprisingly getting nostalgic for some of those D.C. and Marvel figures from the early '90's. It's hard to believe that I've had some of these toys for around 25 years now, and enough time has passed that I've become able to look at them with a different perspective and even appreciate some of the quirky features and paint jobs. I even opened a bunch of them up, made some shelf space to display them and had fun put it together. I really dig those toys and I'm glad I hung onto some of them after all

Sorry about the long ramble!

[enyawd72]

^That was a great ramble!

I had a similar journey when it came to Toy Biz's stuff. During the 90's I had sporadically collected a lot of the animated lines, never really completing any of them just because there were so many figures it was impossible to get them all. Then when Marvel legends came out I sold many of the 5 inch figures in favor of what I thought at the time were better figures. Then as time went on I came to miss the simpler, more colorful comic stylings of the 5 inch figures, which I also found to be sturdier toys. (I had a lot of breakage with Marvel Legends) I've been buying a lot of the 5 inch lines back in recent years because they're so readily available and inexpensive, and have truly gained a new appreciation for them. One area I feel Toy Biz definitely beats Hasbro was in character selection. Toy Biz wasn't afraid to tackle those obscure characters. Many of which Hasbro still hasn't redone to this day.

[El Hombre Nuclear]

I've had an interesting journey with the ToyBiz figures.... When the ToyBiz Batman and D.C. Comics figures first hit, I bought them as an impulse buy one day, having been away from purchasing toys for a few years (i.e. most of my teen years). The last toys I'd bought with any regularity were the Secret Wars figures in '84, and somehow I missed out on Super Powers all together, so I was pretty excited to see Hawkman, Green Lantern, Mr. Freeze, etc. on the pegs in 1989/1990 courtesy of ToyBiz. Then shortly thereafter they came out with the Marvel heroes and I was quickly hooked. I collected these pretty faithfully throughout the first half or so of the 1990s. During that time I also discovered Toy Shop, Lee's, and Tomarts, and started rebuying old "vintage" toys too, which gradually became more of my passion due to the sentimentality attached to it. I wound up really getting sick of the ToyBiz stuff later on, all the massive amounts of repaints, repackaging, etc. There was so much of it everywhere I looked, and foolishly I and many others hoarded a lot of this stuff thinking it was going to be worth something (which as we know, a lot of it really isn't.) So by the turn of the century I was either selling off much of it, giving it to people's kids to play with, or packing it away in boxes to make room for other toys I felt more attached to.
Fast forward to more recent times, and I have found myself surprisingly getting nostalgic for some of those D.C. and Marvel figures from the early '90's. It's hard to believe that I've had some of these toys for around 25 years now, and enough time has passed that I've become able to look at them with a different perspective and even appreciate some of the quirky features and paint jobs. I even opened a bunch of them up, made some shelf space to display them and had fun put it together. I really dig those toys and I'm glad I hung onto some of them after all

Sorry about the long ramble!

Interesting story! I can't say I ever bought these guys, but I had similar experiences with that last wave of fantasy figures in the late '80s. I was too old for toys at that point, but when I would go to TRU, Child World, etc. to buy video games, I would sneak away from my friends and skulk around the toy isles, grabbing every cool-looking figure (usually the bad guys) from lines like Visionaries, Supernaturals, etc. I justified it by claiming that they looked "totally metal", which is a concept that only an '80s metalhead could come up with. I still have some of that stuff sitting in a closet somewhere. That time always seems like the last big years of the action figure market to me. Seemed to become nothing but TMNT after that...

By the way, not to pry, but based on your user name... Were you by chance in the band November's Doom? That would be kind of bizarre if two people from the early US doom/death metal scene ended up on the same '70s toy forum.

[nvmbrsdoom5]

By the way, not to pry, but based on your user name... Were you by chance in the band November's Doom? That would be kind of bizarre if two people from the early US doom/death metal scene ended up on the same '70s toy forum.

LOL, yep, I'm still in the band actually, I'm Larry the guitarist. Our vocalist Paul is also a part of the forum here, though he doesn't frequent as much as I do these days.

It's funny too because back in that time we're talking about, some other guys I knew from the scene were also collecting toys and into this stuff. It certainly wasn't viewed as being too cool then, but we knew better haha

[LordMudd]

I was just glad to get any new Marvel figures in 1990 not since 1984 Mattel Secret Wars!

I remember the 1st 8

Spider-Man w/ suction cups hands and web
Hulk- w/ bending bar and rock
Captain America w/ launching shield
Daredevil w/ grappling hook?
Punisher- activating arm to point guns? He was hard figure to find out of 1st 8!
Silver Surfer w/ rolling surfboard
Dr Doom w/ rotating glove?
Dr Octopus w/ bendy tentacles

Next 4 were Iron Man, Thor, Green Goblin (bad sculpt), and VENOM (excellent sculpt!)

Then Fantastic 4 and X-Men

I have a soft spot for these early Toy Biz Marvel figures from the fledging company who had the license for 16 YEARS and ended last 5 with Marvel Legends and spin-off 6" lines Spider-Man, X-Men, Hulk, Fantastic 4!

And I agree that I prefer less articulation than 30 points! for better sculpting!

I wish Hasbro's Marvel Legends were Toy Biz prices!

I remember getting those first 8 figures. That was when explanations of why we kept getting multicolored Batmen were all over the magazines of the time-"that the mold making process was the most expensive part." Based on this, I wrote a letter to the address on the back of the cards suggesting the USAgent figure because he was just becoming popular in the comic books and it was exactly the same mold as Cap which they already had. I got a nasty letter back "explaining" that they were essentially just middle men with no creative input into the line, then 8 months later the figure just appeared on the pegs. Now if you ever read Toyguru's explanation of why Stel looked the way he did, you know that the time frame I described is just about right if they acted on my suggestion but wanted to undermine any effort I might make to claim a royalty. I never had any such interest, I just wanted the figure, the insult was unnecessary, and would have repercussions later on another line of toys.


CCC.

[LonnieFisher]

I was working at Toys'r'us when they came out.