The 1980s produced a flood of iconic toys, but not every line became a household name. Alongside Transformers and He-Man sat a handful of ambitious, strange, and short-lived toy lines that flopped commercially at the time but are now genuine collector's treasures.
Here's a look at some of the rarest and most fascinating 80s toys, the stories behind their obscurity, and why they're worth so much to collectors today.
Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future was a live-action TV series that aired from 1987 to 1988, notable for blending live-action footage with early computer-generated animation.
Mattel's Captain Power action figures and vehicles used an interactive light-gun system: toy weapons fired an infrared signal at the TV screen during the broadcast, and sensors on the toys registered "hits" in real time.
The Captain Power toy line was cut short after only one season, in part because parent groups criticized the show for excessive violence, which contributed to its cult, hard-to-find status today.
Mattel released the Food Fighters toy line in 1988, pitting the heroic Kitchen Commandos against the villainous Refrigerator Rejects in an anthropomorphic food-item battle.
The Kitchen Commandos were led by Burgerdier General (a hamburger), while the Refrigerator Rejects were commanded by Mean Weener (a hotdog).
Food Fighters figures were made of a soft, hollow squeaky-toy-style plastic rather than the rigid plastic typical of most 1980s action figures.
The Saga of Crystar, Crystal Warrior began life as a toy line from Remco, first sold in late 1982, with the tie-in Marvel Comics series following in spring 1983 — the reverse of how most toy-comic tie-ins usually worked.
Marvel Comics itself created the Crystar concept and characters specifically to license out to a toy company, making Crystar one of the few 1980s properties Marvel originated purely to sell a toy line.
In the Crystar story, the crystalline hero Crystar and his brother Moltar, leader of the lava-based Forces of Chaos, wage war on the planet Crystalium.
Mattel's Computer Warriors, launched in 1989, imagined heroic and villainous computer programs that could transform into everyday household objects and small vehicles.
Computer Warriors leaned on the era's growing home-computer craze, but the line failed commercially and was discontinued after a single year, making surviving figures scarce today.
Coleco's Sectaurs: Warriors of Symbion (1985) featured insect-warrior action figures with puppet-like hand grips that let kids manually move the figures' pincers, wings, or other appendages.
Sectaurs was supported by a short Marvel Comics tie-in and an animated mini-series, but the toy line struggled commercially and was discontinued after its initial run, making it rare today.
Starcom: The U.S. Space Force was a 1986 Coleco toy line featuring space-military action figures and vehicles built around a magnetic "Magna Lock" feature that let figures stand on vehicles and playsets without falling off.
After Coleco went bankrupt in 1989 and was acquired by Mattel, Mattel kept producing small runs of Starcom toys for the European market until 1990, but the line never caught on in the United States.
Starcom's toy line included roughly 23 figures, 6 playsets, and 13 vehicles for the heroic Starcom side, plus additional figures and vehicles for the villainous Shadow Force.
Several of these obscure 1980s toy lines lasted only a single production year, which is the main reason mint-condition, complete figures now command high prices among collectors.
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