FOR A BRIEF moment in time, specifically the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was cool to take a very adult property — let’s say RoboCop — and turn it into a kid-friendly animated series. RoboCop, the cartoon, aired in 1988 and was a later addition to the fad. It was preceded by an attempt to do that same thing with both hyper-action star Chuck Norris via the extremely short-lived Karate Kommandos and Rambo… yes, that Rambo, both in 1986. To solve the riddle of what to do with all of the gunfire inherited in your typical RoboCop film, the studio replaced bullets with lasers, opting to drop our cybernetic hero into a more science fiction setting over a Detroit of the future.
RoboCop lasted only 13 episodes. Karate Kommandos? Just five. Rambo — re-dubbed Rambo: The Force of Freedom for the animated show — got 65 episodes but was still a one-and-done offering with just a single season aired.
That brings us to 1990 and The Toxic Avenger… or should we say, Toxic Crusaders!
The Toxic Avenger was a B-movie released by Troma Entertainment in 1984 that told the story of a 98-pound weakling (Melvin Ferd) and his chronic mistreatment by the members of the Tromaville Health Club where he worked as “mop boy”. An incident at the club results in Melvin plunging into a vat of toxic waste. He would emerge alive but hideously deformed and incredibly strong. The Toxic Avenger was born! Melvin spent most of the rest of the film’s runtime exacting revenge on the societal elite responsible for his transformation… and in some very gruesome ways.
The movie struck enough of a chord to spawn multiple sequels and, in 1990, the most curious turn of all… a children’s animated television show.
The cartoon was brought to life by the trio of Murakami-Wolf-Swenson, Troma Entertainment and Playmates Toys, among others, and aired in the spring of 1991. Melvin was now a hideously deformed creature of super size and strength fighting for… the environment! Our hero was joined by a quirky cast of mutant allies fighting to save his beloved Tromaville (and the world!) from rampant polluter and general evildoer Dr. Killemoff from the planet Smogula.
Its 13-episode run was mostly ignored by kids, who had a lot of other entertainment, like Darkwing Duck, Ren & Stimpy and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, all vying for their attention.
Over the past few years, Toxic Crusaders has undergone a head-scratcher of a renaissance, and today no fewer than three companies hold licenses to create toys based on the property.
Leading the pack is San Francisco-based Super7, who reintroduced the world to the Toxic Crusaders in its 3-3/4-inch scale ReAction line beginning in 2019 with a single Toxie release.
“I think we finally left Funko, and that was probably the first one of the first figures we made afterward,” said Super7 boss Brian Flynn. “Why did we make Toxie? Because he’d never been made in three and three-quarters scale. We started to think about the things we wanted to make. That led to us concluding that there is an element, especially with some of this stuff, that’s kind of fucked up. It’s like we said, ‘What shouldn’t be made into a toy?’ King Diamond is a perfect example of that. King Diamond as a toy is ridiculous. It makes no sense. It’s so wrong, it’s right kind of a thing. Either going to do amazing, or it’s going to tank. There’s gonna be no in-between… and it did amazing.”
Flynn and his crew approached Toxie the same way, with meager expectations regarding overall sales. To the company’s surprise, it was a very popular release. Super7 followed that up with ReAction figures of additional characters from the show, included Dr. Killemoff, Radiation Ranger, Junkyard, Headbanger and Major Disaster.
“What we realized very quickly was that Toxie, in some ways, is a lot like Creature from the Black Lagoon,” said Flynn. “The people that like Toxie, and like that character design, because it kind of does stand out on its own. You don’t even need to have watched the movie. It’s not like the Hunchback from Notre Dame. You only need one Hunchback. You don’t need a variant.”
When Super7 transitioned and made the first Ultimates Toxie, they made him based on the movie property. The feedback was positive, but much of it also came with a request — make cartoon Toxie. So, the company retooled the original Ultimates Toxie to become cartoon accurate… and it outsold the movie version.
“The (original) toys were just bonkers,” says Flynn. “Toxic Crusaders was a line of monsters. They didn’t look like anything else. They’re all fluorescent yellow, fluorescent green, fluorescent orange… and they have a million accessories, a million paint apps. They’re all splattered and they’re gross. I can’t believe they got made.”
Super7 recently introduced a new wave of Toxie Crusaders Ultimates that will consist of Toxie, Junkyard and Radiation Ranger. Unpainted hardcopies were shown at San Diego Comic-Con in July. The trio is due to be released in Summer 2023.
The company is now working on Wave Two of Toxic Crusaders Ultimates, which TOYCOLLECTR can exclusively reveal will consist of Major Disaster, Bonehead and a third, still secret figure.
“We’ve toyed with the idea of vehicles for Toxie in Ultimate,” confessed Flynn. “Like remaking the smogcycle. I don’t know if enough people would go in for that.”
Another company with Toxie on the brain is Santa Cruz, CA-based Trick Or Treat Studios. Traditionally a costume company, the group has started producing toys with figures based on such properties as Halloween, House of 1000 Corpses, Return of the Living Dead and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Earlier this year, the company held an online Toy Fair, posting videos to YouTube about new licenses and upcoming product. One of the reveals? Plans to manufacture a line of Toxic Crusaders action figures.
Trick Or Treat plans to revive and revamp the line, starting with Toxie himself. As envisaged, the Trick Or Treat line will pay homage to the original Playmates Toys line from the early ’90s, but with a bit more height, width and overall detail.
“I love the gross-out era of the 1990s, and feel it’s an aesthetic that kids of that generation really enjoy,” said Justin Mabry, art director at Trick Or Treat Studios. “Our figures are just a little bit taller than the originals, and the details are punched up a bit. There are also some unproduced figures (from the original line plan) that we are developing. We do have plans to do a line closer to the way they appeared in the show as well.”
Trick Or Treat even worked with Varner Studios to help bring at least the initial figures in the new line of Toxic Crusaders to life.
“Justin and I loved the figures and the cartoon,” said Chris Zephro, president of Trick Or Treat Studios. “Not to mention, we got to work directly with the Varner Family on these. Retro is very popular right now, and there are a lot of fans of the cartoon that are now our age that want these figures.”
A third company, ISH Toys, obtained the rights from Troma for just one Toxic Crusaders figure… but a very cool and almost mythical one: the living oil slick, Polluto!
ISH Toys is the brainchild of Justin Ishmael, the former top man at Austin-based Mondo. Ishmael has been out on his own for a few years now, making some interesting designer toys, posters and shirts, among other things.
On the figure side, he most recently delivered a Billy Bob Brockali vinyl figure. Billy Bob is the bear guitarist of the Rock-Afire Explosion, the original animatronic band from ShowBiz Pizza Place. He also has been working on six-inch-scale Scott Pilgrim figures to be released before year-end.
You can read more about ISH Toys’ plans for Polluto below.
IT’S CLEAN UP TIME!
PLAYMATES Toys was in a groove entering the third year of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle phenomenon in 1991 when it dropped the first wave of product for Toxic Crusaders: a gross and garish distant cousin to the heroes in a half-shell. While the company had robust plans for Toxie and his team of hideously deformed heroes of super-human size and strength, the cartoon failed to click with audiences, and the toys were soon demoted to the bargain bins.
RIDING high from the unexpected success of an earlier group of toxic mutants, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the crew at Playmates Toys may have felt a little daring and willing to take a chance on a more unconventional toy line. Enter Troma Entertainment and the Toxic Crusaders. With the Toxic Avenger movie and sequels building a cult following, it was important for Troma to keep the momentum going for the property. Having saturated the adult market with successive R-rated splatter fests, kids were the only market left to corner.
“I was completely shocked when it was brought to me saying, you’re gonna make an action figure line of this, and all that existed at the time was the movie… oh, boy,” recalled Playmates’ senior vice president of marketing Karl Aaronian. “The first thing was to, as much as we could, separate it from the movie as a completely separate entity.”
Before too long, much of the crew that brought TMNT successfully into the world of animation was working on the newly-minted Toxic Crusaders: Aaronian’s boss Richard Salas, the toy company’s ad agency led by Jerry Sachs. Fred Wolf from production house Murakami-Wolf-Swenson, John Schulte and John Besmehn from Pangea, showrunner Jack Mendelsohn, and scriptwriter Chuck Lorre. The team would turn Toxie into an eco-warrior on a mission to save the world from polluters, a theme also explored by Captain Planet around that same time.
“The IP needed to be team-based, so the Avenger became the leader of the Crusaders,” recalls Schulte. “Heroes don’t avenge, they crusade. Toxie needed an entourage to sell more action figures. During this time, heroes sold better than bad dudes. Turning Toxie’s mop into a bit of a character was another distinction that evolved during the toy-animation development. So, the concept of Toxic Crusaders, as we know it today, was not fully realized until after the toy licensing deal and the subsequent development by the aggregation of Troma, Playmates, Pangea, Murakami-Wolf-Swenson, SOB Productions, and Sachs-Finley, the agency headed by the legendary Jerry Sachs. But with all due deference, Troma’s openness to provide the wild palette of their original film and allow seasoned folks from the toy and animation sectors of the industry to transform, contribute, and develop the property into Toxic Crusaders, was the secret sauce. Without the unusually creepy canvas of The Toxic Avenger and its macabre and disturbing elements, Toxic Crusaders would not exist.”
Aaronian adds: “The leap from Avenger to Crusaders was accomplished by changing the name, getting a lot more colorful with everything, and then playing up the environmental message in a much more obvious fashion. It was also important to make that clear in the design of the characters and the characters themselves. Nozone with his big nose and all that was an attempt to not only integrate some humor, but some almost Big Daddy Roth-ish, grotesque styling, but also literally embody these environmental issues in the character.”
Development of the line and animated series started in 1989, and the cartoon and product line launched in 1991. The show had a very Turtlesque feel, which stands to reason, given the players involved.
Playmates hit the ground running with first-year product that included nine individually-carded action figures and five vehicles. In the initial wave, characters included Toxie himself and allies Nozone, Junkyard, Major Disaster and Headbanger and villains Dr. Killemoff, Psycho, Bonehead and Radiation Ranger. The vehicles released included the Toxic-Powered Crusaderskater, Toxie’s Turf Surfer, Smogcycle, Hideous Hovercraft and Apocalyptic Attackcopter. Unfortunately for all involved, the series didn’t perform well and was not re-upped after its initial 13-episode run.
“We loved working with Troma, and they were incredibly disappointed that the show didn’t perform better than it did,” says Aaronian. “It’s hard to say why it didn’t play with kids. Turtles was still going gangbusters, so it was a tough environment. Maybe we tried to recreate the Turtle formula with lots of ooze or slime splatters, neon greens… and neon, in general, to give it that ’80s feel. Did we stay too close to that formula? Maybe. Maybe that was the lesson we learned from that. Toxie was a fascinating character, but his look wasn’t heroic. His acts may have been heroic. His intentions may have been heroic. But you know, grotesque superheroes don’t exactly spawn huge franchises normally. I think that was the prevailing wisdom.”
Whether planned or serendipitous, Playmates turned to the same studios to produce the action figure sculptures for Toxie they had already used for TMNT — Varner Studios and Anaglyph Studios.
“We were doing it concurrently with the Turtles, and Toxie was very similar in a way,” recalls sculptor Steve Varner. “Whereas, Karl with the Turtles was always on us for more turtle texture, more turtle texture. For Toxie, it was more toxic texture, more toxic texture. I think we even used the same armature system on the Toxie figures that we had on the Turtles.”
Scott Hensey, the artist who ran Anaglyph, worked on the project for about a year and both studios had already started working on a second-year line extension for the brand.
“What stands out in my mind was two things about doing this figure line,” recalls Hensey. “We had to sculpt the thing perfectly, just like always, and then we had to cover it with blotches of slime. Each one of the little blotches of slime had to be sculpted. They weren’t random. They were supposed to look random… look like he just threw them on there. But each one had to be sculpted so that everything took twice as long to do. The second thing was the color palette. It used the most radiant colors in the spectrum. Everything was day-glo. It hurt your eyes after a while. We were in San Pedro in one of those business parks at that time. I rented two or three units. I remember we put a bunch of them out front in the sun to dry, and my neighbors across the way came by and asked if we could take the figure back inside because they were negatively impacting his staff’s workday.”
With the cartoon’s stunted life span, the toy line soon followed, ending up in most retailers’ bargain bin. By the following year, Toxie toys were out of stores and the cartoon a strange footnote in animation history.
“We had our ad agency continuing to say ‘You really want to do a hideously deformed hero? It ain’t gonna work,’” recalls Aaronian. “Perhaps they were right. As a mass market, action figure line, five-year-old boys, which would be your sweet spot, didn’t embrace it, because they didn’t aspire to be Toxie… and there were other heroes to choose from, including the Turtles.”
POLLUTO LIVES!
The most famous of the unmade Playmates Toxic Crusaders toys was Polluto… the living oil slick! Revealed in the first episode of the animated series, Polluto is unleashed by Dr. Killemoff to help defeat the Toxic Crusaders. Playmates showed the prototype in its 1991 Toy Fair catalog, but the show’s short life resulted in the toy being canceled. For decades, many thought the beast was lost… until now! Dan Eardley reports…
IN THE early 1990s, toy sculptors Eddy Mosqueda and Steve Varner had lunch with Karl Aaronian, then-executive vice president of Playmates Toys. Over lunch, Karl explained to the Varner Studios designers that Playmates had cut a deal to work with independent movie studio Troma to adapt their cult-classic (and very adult) Toxic Avenger films into a new toy line and animated series… for children.
“No way!” said Mosqueda. “This is gross! This is disgusting! We can’t do this!”
“You’re going to,” responded Aaronian.
And by the end of that lunch meeting, Varner Studios decided to take the chance. Eddy and his team were assigned the duties of not only developing the action figures for this new series but were also tasked with helping to outright design some of the characters as they would appear in the animated series.
“It was like this contest between the (toy) studio that was putting this thing together and their studio trying to create it,” says Mosqueda, discussing the creation of a personal favorite character of his we know now as the Radiation Ranger. “This thing just came to mind… being about toxicity and all that.”
Unfortunately, the Toxic Crusaders toy line and animated series were not the big hit that everyone had hoped they would be, leading to an early cancellation of the toy line. Before the axe came down, just 15 items (action figures and vehicles) were released, leaving several toys that had been prototyped and readied for the second year of product unproduced. One of the most legendary of these unproduced items is another figure that Eddy took great pride in designing: the massive oil slick/garbage monster called Polluto.
The Polluto figure appeared at New York Toy Fair before the Toxic Crusaders toy line was canceled, and a few small photos of him appeared in a catalog. These photos have circulated online for years, making toy collectors aware of the fantastic toy that never was. Polluto has topped many “most desired canceled toys” lists over the years, gaining cult status all on his own. This brings us to now, nearly 30 years later, when it was discovered that Eddy still has that original Polluto prototype in his possession!
This revelation was made by Justin Ishmael, owner of his own toy company ISH. Justin had recently acquired the rights from Troma to produce a new Polluto action figure. Ishmael wanted his new Polluto to be as close to the unproduced version as possible, so he began a quest to track down what happened to the original prototype. He first reached out to the folks at Varner Studios, who quickly suggested he reach out to Mosqueda.
“So, I emailed him (Eddy),” Ishmael said with a chuckle. “And very casually, he says, ‘Yeah, I’ve got it. It’s in my garage, in my archive.’”
So, Justin visited Eddy, where he saw the actual Polluto prototype in all its gooey grandeur. Outside of that one image floating around the Internet, fans had not gotten a good look at the proposed toy.
“I don’t think there had been anything high resolution or (the knowledge of) a prototype existing!” says Ishmael.
On top of the actual prototype being located with Mosqueda, more details on what could have been also were revealed. The original Toy Fair presentation touted that Polluto would have a walking feature. Amazingly, Eddy still had old home movies in his collection showing him and his team attempting to build this walking mechanic into the Polluto prototype. In this footage, it was also learned that there was intended to be a slew of cannons that would attach to Polluto and move around with the walking action feature.
And while the intended walking feature was known from that original catalog image, one brand-new revelation is that Mosqueda also sculpted a ton of tiny minions based on his Radiation Ranger design. He had proposed that these mini figures would come packaged with the Polluto figure, and there’s even one worked into the Polluto prototype, trapped in his body of sludge!
Justin Ishmael and Eddy Mosqueda, along with the help of the talented designers at Four Horsemen Studios, have joined forces to bring this original unproduced toy to life. The new figure is a direct scan of Eddy’s original prototype. While it won’t contain that intended walking mechanic, it will be fully articulated and promises to be a faithful re-creation — finally allowing fans to add this legendary lost toy to their shelves.
Count this one as a win for Toxic Crusaders fans and toy preservation!