The Visionaries toy line didn’t grab me when I was a kid, and apparently it didn’t grab a lot of people because it didn’t last long. Like so many ’80s toy properties, Visionaries managed a brief cartoon series and a comic book tie-in, but unlike the more successful big league properties, they only managed 13 episodes on television compared to the 65+ of more established and successful toys. The comic managed a brief six issues before puttering to a truncated finish.
Visionaries utilized holograms in their toys, a feature that, while cool and definitely trendy (supernaturals used a similar feature in their brief line), didn’t really scream SUPERFUNGIGANTICACTIONPLAYTIME I guess, which is the make or break of a toy line. Basically what it seems like it boils down to is that this was a toy line that required you to use your imagination a lot more than some of the more obvious toy lines.
I know I saw them in stores, and I definitely remember seeing them advertised in those giant sears and J.C. Penney catalogs alongside other properties, but I ended up glossing over them on the way towards the properties that I had much more of an interest in. Something about them just didn’t click with me. In hindsight they had all the hallmarks of a line I should have been interested in: colorful figures, interesting designs, funky backstory. But then this was 1987, and I was too invested in other toy lines to give a new one a fair overview.
Looking at them now, I can see how back then they wouldn’t have stacked up against some of the other properties I was into. There’s a generic quality to them that would have made them fade into the background — at least when put up against Masters of the Universe, Transformers, G.I. Joe and MASK. But now I can appreciate things a little differently, and I can see the potential in a brand new, fully sculpted and updated line.
The colorful nature of the figures is what strikes me now. These are very bold-looking toys, unafraid to utilize every bit of the rainbow and entire boxes of crayons to get the point across. The armor is all quasi-similar but also very diverse among them, and the various helmets for both the good guys and the bad guys are especially distinctive. The bad guys, of course, look like they’re the most interesting from a design standpoint, but the good guys have their own merits. Really, there’s not a true dud in the bunch. It was just poor timing that these weren’t more successful.
You can tell this entire toy line was built around the hologram idea, and back then that would have been something new and fresh. I’m not sure if a new line would keep the holograms or go with something different in their place. I’d like to think that the holograms would remain as a callback to the original toys.
Since each of the Visionaries turn into the totem represented by the holograms in their chest, I think the coolest thing about an updated line would be to include the colorful translucent animal represented in each chest symbol. It would have to be fully articulated, of course, meaning each visionary would essentially have to be a deluxe package to accommodate both the Visionary and his or her animal totem. But that would add an essential element that was missing in the original line (hence the “having to use their imagination” that might have killed the original toy line. Hey, it’s the future. Imagination should be made out of plastic!).
Visionaries would not have to be a deep line and it really wouldn’t need the vehicles. All it would need would be a decent representation of the main characters both good and evil. Hasbro currently still has the rights to these, so maybe at some time they’ll update this!