6 WTF Cancelled Toys (That Nearly Ruined Famous Characters)

This is how Mattel released Wonder Woman and the Star Riders, which can be best described as the result of a teleportation accident involving Wonder Woman and My Little Pony. In addition to replacing Wonder Woman's invisible plane with a winged unicorn ...

Mattel
Extremely visible. Conspicuous, even.

... Wonder Woman and her pixie-dust-smoking crew would square off against the villainess Purrsia, who rode a fabulous panther. These toys were announced in conjunction with a new animated series, but the whole thing was ultimately shelved, sparing Wonder Woman both a great deal of embarrassment and hours of apocalyptic grooming at the hands of babbling giants.

Mattel
Imagine how many minions died trying to get those bangles on that cat.

While these dolls were introduced at the 1993 New York Toy Fair, they were never released, possibly because someone realized that the sun would explode before anyone bought one. Sad, though it saved at least a few children the terror of trying to sleep with one of these in the room with them.

alienscollection.com
If there was any justice in the world, that thing would have sprayed acid when you cut its hair.

Contestants submitted their ideas to the Masters Of The Universe magazine, from which five finalists were chosen. Along with the thrill of seeing their toy manufactured, the winner would receive a trip to Disneyland and a $100,000 scholarship, which ... holy shit, can they open this contest up again?

Anyway, the winner ended up being 11-year-old Nathan Bitner from Illinois, who won with his design of the Fearless Photog:

Mattel
"Noooo! Dust on my lens! My only weakness!"

While having a cannon for a face might seem kinda cool, we should point out that it's meant to be a camera. Photog "focuses" on his enemies and drains them of their evil, leaving behind the good inside them. His vanquished foes would then be displayed on the zoetrope on his chest. Nathan's toy was never produced, presumably because at some point an accountant got wind of the project and said, "Come on. No."

Still, Nathan's design was genuinely the best. Have a look at his competitors.

Mattel
Terrible concepts, but the origin stories have to be incredible.

We have Netta, the only female entry, whose superpower is holding down bad guys until a man can come and take things over. And then there's Compactor, a cyborg that is infinitely less capable than a normal human being due to his hands being swapped out for suction cups.

Mattel
That eyeball does not skip leg day.

And here's Eyebeam, who is an enlarged version of one of the weakest and most easily injured points of the human body. And finally we have Brainwave, who has a giant brain that is mostly outside of his skull, widely considered to be the worst place for a brain to be.

Seriously, Hasbro, run this contest again and open it up to millennials with student loans. We could crush this.

That's Dracula transforming into a bat, because this clearly wasn't an operation where anyone was trying that hard. In the same vein we have the Fly, who would transform from a fly into a ... fly in a lab coat:

Hasbro
Hopefully someone lost their job over this.

Finally we have the Creature from the Black Lagoon, who transforms into a salmon or trout or whatever, which ... OK. You tried. Take a lap, then hit the showers, tired Hasbro toy designer.

Hasbro
So inspired.

Or this Anakin-Vader-Anakin Russian nesting doll.

LucasFilm
You could replace the entire prequel trilogy with this picture and walk away happier.

Then we have this life-size 3D action figures of Jar-Jar Binks, which would only have been purchased by people wanting to practice hate crimes, and a Jabba the Hutt, whose life-size figure would have had to weigh at least 10,000 lbs, right?

LucasFilm
Seriously, what's the shipping cost on seven tons of Hutt?

Or there's the Death Star grill, which ... actually looks pretty sweet.

LucasFilm
Just be careful of the thermal exhaust ports.

And then there's the AT-AT couch caddy, which looks ... about exactly as precarious as a real AT-AT would be.

LucasFilm
A brave place to set your drink, in any event.

But let's circle back to something more familiar: the action figures. Did you know that Kenner's original plan for the action figures was to release 12-inch versions? The deal with those, and large action figures in general, is that you can change the clothes on then, as seen by all the fun outfits on Leia here:

LucasFilm
Those heads aren't meant to be detached, incidentally, suggesting this collection probably belongs to a serial killer.

The line got the ax because it was worried it would cannibalize sales of the smaller action figures. Probably a good thing, in that it saved us all from having to come to terms with the sight of Han Solo and his smooth, genital-less crotch.

When he's not designing rejected Star Wars toys, Chris can be found on Twitter .

Also check out 5 Bootleg Toys That Are Straight Out Of The Bowels Of Hell and 11 Bootleg Toys That Are Completely Insane.

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