15 Toys That Were Canceled Before They Had a Chance to Suck

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15 Toys That Were Canceled Before They Had a Chance to Suck

Most things suck. It’s a miracle anything doesn’t, really. Luckily there are processes in place that make it pretty hard to, well, make things — there are plenty of opportunities between having an idea and it hitting store shelves for people to go, “Ah, shit, it’s not good, let’s stop this.”

Toys are no exception — for every shitty toy that makes it out into the world, there are dozens of shitty ideas that don’t make it anywhere near that far. A lot of these ideas don’t make it anywhere past a few drawings and a goofy name, but some get as far as prototypes, being shown off at toy fairs and turning up in catalogs of what a brand has on offer.

And only then does someone go, “Whoa there, this isn’t good, let’s not use any more of the planet’s precious resources pursuing this bad, bad, shitty idea.”

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The Car: The Movie: The Game

CRACKED CAR STOP STOP KC GA - THE CAR PL The 1978 horror movie The Car - not at the top of James Brolin's resume by any stretch - spawned a game that never made it, in which players competed not to get run over by Satan.

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Detroit Tent City: The KISS Kamping Set

CRACKED megonnseum.com PETER GENE A ACE KISS PAUL Mego made a 12-inch line based on the band KISS. Among the kits they proposed for it was a tent and sleeping bag set - you know, so the long-tongued fire-breathing gang could have a wholesome weekend outdoors.

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The Child-Devouring Cabbage Patch Kids

CRACKED KS! Feed Me My mouth really moves! Pa us! 1996's Cabbage Patch Snacktime Kids did make it to shelves, but not for long - their gimmick was that you could feed them through their battery-powered jaws, but inevitably kids got their hair and fingers stuck, leading to a mass recall.

Source / Youtube 

The Needlessly Bondage-y Heroes Putting the DC into BDSM

CRACKED ATI A series of DC figures known as Anti-Heroes NNE was pitched with Mad Max-esque and robotic versions of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, all of whom looked like they belonged in a Berlin sex dungeon. Superman had a tattoo. BUT HOW?

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Star Wars Runs Out of Extras to Merchandise

CRACKED There are action figures for every obscure-ass Star Wars character, but around 1985 they ran out. New characters were prototyped in a continuing story, including an alien tribe with the offensive-sounding name Mongo Beefheads.

Source / Etsy 

The Xenomorph/Trolls Crossover Nobody Needed

CRACKED During the 1990s Trolls craze, a series was pitched combining them with horror movie icons. While most were pleasant enough, the one combining a troll with H.R. Giger's Alien design was fucking terrifying, and the series never reached shelves.

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The Iconic Horror Legend That Turns into a Trout

CRACKED A Transformers series of classic horror characters was set to include a Dracula that transformed into a bat, and a Creature from the Black Lagoon that transformed into... a fish. Not a scary fish, just a fuckin' fish.

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The Contest-Winning Camera-Faced Farce

CRACKED Fearless Photog In 1985, Mattel held a contest for kids to design a Masters of the Universe character. The winner, Nathan Bitner, designed Fearless Photog, with a camera for a head. Mattel never made the character, but (mostly) put Bitner through college.

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The Crappy Mummy’s Super-Desirable Bad Toy

CRACKED Funko ГОРЬ MUMMY 436 HOTEL POP! MOVIES NICK MORTON AGE ECURINE EN VINYLE/ Bizarrely, the Funko Pop figure of Tom Cruise's character Nick Morton from 2017's The Mummy fetches huge amounts of money. Cruise didn't sign off likeness rights, so only a handful of prototypes were ever made. Bad movie, shit-looking toy, worth a fortune.

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The Cuddly Console

CRACKED FL ASE MMA WeeWaa was a plush toy you inserted a Nintendo Wiimote into in order to play it - a fun enough idea plagued by logistical issues, licensing issues and the realistic prospect absolutely nobody would want such a thing.

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God Creates Dinosaurs. God Destroys Dinosaurs. God Makes Dinosaurs Glow in the Dark

CRACKED 1999's Jurassic Park Chaos Effect Night Hunter series was a desperate attempt to keep an ailing line going with glow-in-the-dark paint slapped on existing designs. The plug was pulled before they went into production and everyone decided to try harder.

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Something Weird, and It Don’t Look Good: Ghostbusters Toys

CRACKED Likeness rights caused issues with a 1985 line of Ghostbusters action figures designed in Japan, which is probably for the best, as their facial designs were the stuff of nightmares.

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Robots in Disguise (As Half-Animal, Half-Robots)

CRACKED шини transformerta + wwш.transformertoys.co.uk Transformers duocons are pairs of vehicles that each become half of a robot and snap together. One proposed line featured animal/vehicle pairings - i.e., a car and a crocodile that form a half-car, half-crocodile. Actually, shit, that sounds awesome.

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