Throwback Thursday: Hasbro/ToyBiz 9-inch Figures

I talked about these figures a little bit in my DST Retro Wolverine review, but I forgot how goofy fun they were, so I dug out a couple more and took some pictures!

So back in the naughty nineties, ToyBiz was living large. They dominated the 5-inch figure market and owned more real estate in your local KB Toys than the franchise owners did.  All the way through to the beginning of Marvel Legends, the ‘Biz were cooking up all kinds of great stuff: box sets, exclusives, 10-inch “doubled up” versions, and the classic Famous Covers series.

*In case you’re wondering, yes, it was raining. But such is my dedication, I soldiered on.

Now, like I mentioned with Wolverine, these figures, while clearly inspired by their Mego forerunners, were a unique beast unto themselves. They ran an average of 9 inches tall — an inch over Mego — and sported articulation that was both impressive for the day and well-concealed under cloth uniforms. Their sculpts and rubbery goods — like boots, gloves, masks and the like — were a bit goofy and toyetic, but that’s part of the charm. And the cloth goods were very high quality.

The line ran for a long time, up to-and-even-concurrently with the early Legends figures. And they maintained a presence at that KB right up until the chain expired — something I lament to this day. They touched on many corners of the Marvel Universe, usually working in a classic style, and even getting into supporting casts before the end.

But ToyBiz wasn’t the only company experimenting with a 9-inch scale. Hasbro, the DC license holder at the time, also made a run of figures in similar style and scale, theirs starting in 1999. These, alongside a 6-inch that’s worthy of its own throwback, ran though until the early 2000s when Hasbro and DC parted ways.

Like the “Famous Covers” line, the DC Superheroes stayed initially very classic-focused, with very nice Silver Age versions of characters like Green Lantern, Green Arrow, and Aquaman, and both are still damn fine figures. Batman and Superman followed a little later as Target exclusives, and that might’ve been the error that kept this line from being as successful as the Marvel one. Still, they managed to even touch some of the Morrison JLA, with guys like Superman Blue and Martian Manhunter, and even a Batman Beyond version.

Figure-to-figure, I actually think the Hasbro DC ones are a little nicer.  Some of the earlier Famous Covers figures, like this Wolverine, have a goofy hourglass figure and used the dreaded Mego mitts and boots.  Batman and his line-mates used cuffs and ball joints for the hands and feet, which would prove to be a very progressive solution that lots of lines would look to.

And then some years later, around 2006 if I remember correctly, Hasbro, now holding the Marvel license, decided to revisit the scale and style in their Spiderman Origins Signature line. Hitting some Spider-variants and enemies, the line also touched on some of Spidey’s regular allies, like good ol’ Wolverine. These are scaled more closely to their old DC line and use the same articulation layout.  It may even reuse bodies, but I couldn’t say that for sure.

Like I mentioned before, I was too young for the Mego age, but these were definitely part of my action figure heyday.  Looking back on them, you can see how innovative they were, bringing elements like ball joints, bicep cuts, and the like several years before Legends, and they used them much more universally than the 5-inch line did. They have surprisingly held up as great toys, and, should you feel tempted to revisit them, they tend to trade for not much more than they retailed for initially. And it’s especially fun to see just how close Hasbro came to recreating the real magic of the World’s Greatest Heroes Line — cranking out figures of both sides of the Big 2, just a handful of years apart.