The age of the man toy is upon us, and to be honest, has been for a while. Swarms of grown ups pushing middle age live in lairs that are saturated with display cabinets full of what 'normal' people would call 'Toys'. Indeed, in the age of the geek, adult friendly names such as collectables, action figures, statues, and models flood the internet, as grown ass men litter their homes with these objects like a badge of honour. Quite right too!

It doesn't take a psychiatrist to realise that the urge to collect toys comes from childhood, and for us who are floating dubiously around the 35-45 year old mark, there were many toy manufacturers in the late 70's/early 80's. The most famous of these were of course Hasbro who created the Transformers and Mattel, the Masters (HA!) of the He-Man series of toys.

​However, one of the the most famous, and cross media, companies was probably Kenner.

1989 was a good year. Bat fever was sweeping the world (literally the whole globe!) with the release of Tim Burton's phenomenal Batman. We also got a look into the future (now the past.....*Sobs*) with Back To The Future II, and the Ninja Turtles craze was at it's peak. The world of gaming also took a step up with the release of Shadow Of The Beast on the Amiga. The 16-Bit home computers and the Sega Megadrive were starting to come in to their, own but the Nintendo NES still had some mighty fight in it, and a deal was struck between Nintendo and Universal pictures to produce a kids adventure film which would feature heavy product placement.

The Wizard was released in 1989 to some mixed reviews but has since become a cult classic for it's retro games theme and it's unusual stance of lightly tackling some taboo issues.

As word of warning my dear reader, if you have not been watching The Flash, or are behind on the episodes, it may be a good idea to stay away from this article.


Superhero TV has always been a mixed bag affair. Whilst I will never hear bad things said about Lois and Clark (H.G. Wells builds a time machine to get Superman to help him catch Jack the Ripper.....brilliant!) or the old 90's Flash (oddly enough, the Trickster in that is one of Mark Hamill's best moments, including The Joker), I will agree that in live action, Superhero TV often has trouble taking the stranger concepts of comic's unlimited visual budget and realising them onto the big screen.