Spotted Online – Visionaries Skyclaw Review at CollectionDX
The eighties will, I predict, go down as the Golden Age for the boys’ toys category. Action figure sales were incredibly high, launched to new heights in the late seventies with the birth of Star Wars and sustained for a decade by lines such as Transformers, G.I. Joe, and Masters of the Universe. And with sales so very high at the time, the eighties was a time of experimentation in the boys’ toys aisle.
And that’s where Hasbro’s Visionaries came into play.
By 1987 the formula was tested and proven many times over, and Hasbro launched their Visionaries series with the required trifecta:
- Toys, both action figures and vehicles.
- A comic book, courtesy of Marvel (responsible for earlier Hasbro successful tie-ins).
- An animated series.
Those three were the necessary components for a successful line in the boys’ toys category, but by 1987 it had been attempted so many times that kids — such as myself — were so distracted and torn that no one brand was really able to dominate . . . especially after the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles blew sales charts away and consumed a massive portion of the potential audience.
What’s all this have to do with anything? Well, if you visit CollectionDX you can see the Visionaries Skyclaw review and get a peek at one of the failed toy lines of the eighties. The entire Visionaries concept and toys were quite fun, but the brand just didn’t have that necessary spark to succeed and soon faded away.
Which makes reviews like this one so much fun to look at.
It’s too bad we’re unlikely to ever again see an action figure Gold Rush like we enjoyed in the eighties.
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