6 Beloved 80s Toys With Bizarrely Horrifying Origin Stories
Most Gen-Xers don't realize that they owe many of their Christmas memories to the FCC. During the early '80s, parents became concerned by the kinds of things their kids were seeing on TV, so they asked for new rules regulating advertisements shown during kids' shows. Bowing to pressure from the White House and from toy makers, the FCC responded to these concerns by pretty much deregulating children's television altogether. Kids' shows quickly became half-hour commercials for toy lines, which parents began buying at unbelievable rates.
What is strange is that, given the chance to create simple stories and background information on their products, toy makers instead took the characters' mythology to bizarre, dark places.
#6.
Cabbage Patch Kids -- Child Slavery, Kidnapping, Mutants
It's hard to overstate how big of a deal the Cabbage Patch Kids were in the '80s. Riots over the latest Christmas toy are all too familiar today, but back in 1982 when Cabbage Patch Kids hit the scene, it was almost unheard of. Determined to be ready for the demands of Christmas '84, toy makers released storybooks, cassettes and an animated Christmas special describing the adventures of the Cabbage Patch Kids. What they unveiled was a world of sheer madness.
Via Wikimedia Commons
Stare deep into the eyes of your dark fate, my children.
First of all, "Cabbage Patch Kids" is not a cute nickname -- they grow from actual cabbages. Which is fine -- we understand the makers of a toy line about babies don't want to have to begin their show with a woman screaming from labor pains. But it just keeps getting weirder from there -- the magical cabbages are pollinated by mutated creatures called bunnybees, who drop crystals on them.
Hybrids that scientifically must result from a rabbit sexing a bee.
The kids thus emerge into a world with no parents, and are basically left to fend for themselves until they're "adopted" (that is, until their doll is bought by some lucky kid whose own parents are willing to face down a stampede to get one). And these kids really need to be adopted quick, because unfortunately their little cabbage patch is in very close proximity to a gold mine owned by the evil Lavender McDade. Lavender is an entrepreneur with a brilliant business plan: kidnap the Cabbage Patch Kids and -- get this -- turn them into slaves.
To mine the gold, obviously.
Lavender describes her plan in a sassy song from the album:
"I've got to stop those Cabbage Kids from finding parents of their own
I'm going to need some henchmen I can't do it all alone
'Cause there's gold here in the valley and the kids cannot go free
I need their little fingers to dig the gold for me."
Buy some Cabbage Patch Kids, OR THEY WILL FEEL THE WHIP!
#5.
Gobots -- Human Experiments, Cyborgs, Nuclear Fallout
Sometime in 1984, there was a conversation over at Tonka Toys that went something like this:
"Hey, I have an idea -- let's import some of those robots from Japan that turn into cars."
"Well, sir, Hasbro's already doing that. They're going to call them 'Transformers.'"
"Oh ... well, what the hell, let's do it anyway."
"Good idea, sir."
Via Wikipedia
And the GoBots were born!
GoBots never gained as much mainstream popularity as the Transformers. For one thing, the toys just weren't as cool. Even the kids in the GoBots commercials couldn't seem to summon the enthusiasm needed to promote them.
Sure, buy this shit. Whatever.
But, like the Transformers, the GoBots had their own animated series (Challenge of the GoBots), and the creators knew that to compete for the imaginations of young children, they had to crank that shit to 11.
The show tells us that the GoBots are from Gobotron, a planet that was once home to a race of humanoids, the GoBings. Thousands of years ago, a terrorist group known as the Renegades started a war with a group of peaceful people called the Guardians, which ultimately ruined their planet. OK, that sounds a lot like the Transformers' back story so far. But here's where shit gets weird.
Facing extinction, the survivors sought out a man known only as the Last Engineer. Not because he was the most brilliant scientist or because he had a way to fix the planet. No, they needed him because for years, he had been slowly transforming himself into a cyborg by cutting off parts of his own body and replacing them with machinery.
For fun.
The GoBings decided to allow the Engineer to transplant their brains into robot bodies, allowing them to survive as GoBots. He provided these transplants indiscriminately to both sides, Renegade and Guardian alike, until they had all been assimilated.
Via MySpace
"Um, Mr. Engineer ... did I do something to offend you?"
When his work was done, the Engineer disappeared and left the two factions to continue fighting. Challenge of the GoBots is set in modern times, which means that the GoBots have been at war for thousands of years. Which is to say, this toy line is about human minds, trapped in metal bodies, trying to destroy each other. Forever.
#4.
The Hugga Bunch -- A Futile Quest of Murder and Hugs
The Hugga Bunch were a group of cute little plush dolls meant for, of course, hugging!
Awwwww.
In 1985, fans of the dolls tuned in to watch a TV special centered around the Hugga Bunch ... and came away needing therapy.
The story centers around Bridget, who is distraught over her parents' decision to send her beloved grandmother to a nursing home. She is also rather frightened that whenever she hugs her toys, an eerie giggling sound comes from her closet. The mystery is solved when, alone in her room, Bridget is confronted by a terrifying creature emerging from her mirror.
GAH!
The creature is, of course, Huggins from the Hugga Bunch. "We've been watching you through the mirror for a long time," she tells Bridget. Oh, we're sure you have, Hugga.
The Hugga convinces Bridget to travel through the mirror into Huggaland to find a solution to her problem. There she meets the whole Hugga Bunch, who bring Bridget to the Bookworm for advice about her grandmother. This is where things go from Alice in Wonderland with creepy sentient Peeping Tom dolls to FUBAR.
The Bookworm suggests collecting some youngberries and feeding them to poor grandma. You know, so she'll be young again and her family won't force her to go to a nursing home. There's just one catch: The youngberry tree is protected by an evil sorceress. To get to her, they will have jump down an endless hole to the Land of the Shrubs.
Read: Hell.
There they must travel beyond the River of Glass, defeat the hairy behemoth (aka the scariest creature in the Bible) and steal the youngberries from the evil queen, all without letting the berries touch the ground. The friends jump down the unending pit and make their way to the castle, guarded by the behemoth.
The plan: Hug it, of course! The behemoth transforms from a horrifying monster who's trying to kill them to, well, just a horrifying monster.
1. Monster. 2. Hug. 3. Elephant.
The creature, now an unsettling blue elephant thing, joins them on their journey into the queen's castle, where they find the youngberry tree encased in glass. They meet the queen, who is enraged that they wish to take her precious berries (note: they're the only thing keeping her alive).
Things seem hopeless when the queen imprisons the Hugga Bunch and freezes Bridget in place for all eternity (fortunately, a hug saves her). When the queen is distracted by her own youthful beauty, the gang steals her berries and runs away. The queen, who needs the berries to remain young, shrivels into old age and dies horribly.
Seriously. But hey, at least they got the berries, right?
Score!
Armed with the youngberries, Bridget returns through the mirror to restore her grandmother's youth. Unfortunately, the berries spill out and disappear, making the whole adventure totally pointless.
Finding herself as the star in what is apparently a goddamned Shakespearean tragedy, Bridget decides to take the only course remaining to her and threatens never to speak to her brother again unless he starts showing some affection. Moved by this tirade, her brother proclaims that he doesn't want poor grandma to leave, even if she is old and useless. Their father suddenly sees the error of his ways and grandma gets to stay in their home to die the same horrible, inevitable death we just watched the queen die, but in slow motion. Bridget, presumably, returns to her room to smash her mirror into tiny pieces.
Believe it or not, we haven't yet mentioned the most horrifying thing about this tale of a young lady on a one-way track to the local asylum: The Hugga Bunch won an Emmy.
Via NoFactZone.net
Solidifying the fact that Emmys don't mean a goddamn thing.
if this was for toys outside the 80's, then bionicle would be on here, after all, in the beginning millions of matoran were stuck building a giant robot for thousands of years, and it all took place in the pitch blackness of a universe without ANY light to speak of (well, except Artahka) and if these blind matoran couldn't do their jobs right, they were sent to Karzani to be "made better" which included grafting horrible organs, tools, and weapons into them, and after all this, they finally got light and happines and their own world inside their giant robot, until, of course, the makuta decided to royally F' EVERYTHING up, by enslaving the matoran, killing them and making horrible demonic mutants to just screw other things up, also they tried to kill the giant robot (Mata Nui) who is, again, THE ENTIRE F'ING UNIVERSE!
ReplyOh, I had forgotten about PJ Sparkles! I loved her!!! :)
ReplyIt's funny that these origins could be deemed frightening when the children's programs today lack creativity, artistic talent, and advertise greed/foul language/&sometimes even sex.
ReplyWhatever happened to having cute characters like these?
I don't see what's so bad about Hugga. That kind of thing happens on TV all the time. Her grandmother didn't go to a nursing home. Isn't that what she wanted?
ReplyDang! I had a P.J. Twinkle doll (I still do, she's in a box somewhere with my Barbie dolls, that one Rainbow Brite doll (which isn't RB) and some strange elephant-bee hybrid from some cartoon I never watched.)
ReplyI'm truly embarrassed that I know this, but I'm pretty sure the elephant/bee hybrid is from another cartoon called "The Wuzzles". I remember the toys being much more popular than the show.
You forgot that Cabbage Patch Kids are supposed to be kids with Down Syndrome, that's why they have funny faces and some of them have their tongues sticking out
ReplyIn the Cabbage Patch Kids defense, the actual doll came with a Birth Certificate, stating both biological parents names, the doctor who delivered the baby and the dolls baby feet and finger prints
ReplyI still have my PJ sparkles AND my Rainbow Brite dolls. I vaguely remember Rainbow Brite's origin story, but I never paid much attention to detail when I was a kid to realize how freaky it was. I might have had ADD or something but my parents were too cheap to get me tested LOL
ReplyWTF Hugga Bunch???? I remember seeing the toys but I don't think I ever wanted one cuz they were creepy as hell.
I don't think any kid is big on detail. If I go back to kid stuff as an adult my head is always full of fuck.
I had a bunnybee!
ReplyRobotix was another one. Very similar to Go-Bots except it's a bunch of lizard people who implanted themselves into giant robots. I remember the bad faction wanted to use all resources to create a space ship to escape the dying planet but the good guys hated that idea because people would be sacrificed, so instead they opted to cryogenically freeze the whole population until giant robots could be built to harbor each entity's frozen mind.
ReplyI had the PJ Sparkles doll!!! Well, in my country it had a different name, tho...
ReplyThe Hugga Bunch story is just fucked up... Thank God I didn't watch it as a kid... Otherwise I'd be more messed up than I already am...
I find the "bunnybee" thing interesting. At first it just sounds like they were just making up bullshit, but then I realized, I think they're symbolically acknowledging the very thing they're trying not to say.
ReplyRabits have been known to f**k like... what was the expression? And bees of course are literally how flowering plants fertilize each-other more or less exactly the way that the Bunnybees are doing to the cabbages here. As for the crystals, my guess is that anything liquid would have been a little on-the-nose, but crystals are small, white (well, shiny) and semi-transparant.
Yay! You figured it out and told everyone about it, dechha1981!
Seriously, f**k the ones who made the Hug one. They can burn in hell for eternity.
ReplyMy Pet Monster is another good example. The Nostalgia Critic reviewed it a few months ago (which may or may not have been a reason for you not including it in this list), and the supposed origin story for the loveable wisecracking purple monster is that a kid found an ancient shrine at a museum that turned him into the monster, thus causing the museum owner to try to hold him prisoner. Then the kid escaped and found that the powers wear off when he's not hungry (I think), and then his sister has her dog stolen so they have to go and get it back, which has nothing to do with anything although the museum owner does once again catch up to him at one point. Then, at the end, the museum owner is talking to one of the shrines, the shrine's eyes start glowing and the museum owner starts laughing and jumps into the air. Roll credits, no further story. What the fuck?!
Replyah the 80's great music and movies but seriously messed up children shows.........
ReplyFunny thing is, I prefer them to most of the kids shows of today... ^.^
Holy shit, I know what the Sectaurs really are. They're the Wraith from Stargate Atlantis, even the origin stories match up.
ReplyNo organic ships. Big plothole there.
Unless this is while the main Lantean leadership still has no idea what the fuck's going on on said planet.
thanks for that trip down memory lane! i loved that rainbow bright cartoon as a kid, watched it many times. the my little ponies ones too!
ReplyI bet the origin sotry of my little pony has to do with souls of ponies that were turned into glue and children used the glue with different types of glitter and then those children died from glue fumes and their souls combined to make rainbowish talking ponies
Im rethinking the responsibility of my parents, just 3 sons in the house and yet we had cabbage patch dolls, wth were they thinking?
ReplyOh, NO! And just what horrible consequences did that have? Are you and the other 2 sons totally gay now? Are you all dead? What?
I LOVED my PJ Sparkles doll, and watched Rainbow Brite movies like they were going out of style... but never had I ever heard of the Hugga Bunch. Guess that's a little too old school for even me.
ReplyI know that maybe I'm the only one who thinks this but, those stories sounds copmletly kick ass, I would liked to see those series.
ReplyYeah, you're the only one.