One of my personal favorite oddities of action figure history from the 80s and 90s are the action figure lines based on R-rated action movies that the kids of the day couldn’t or wouldn’t see. I wrote about that a bit with the two different Rambo TCT entries I did, but was reminded about that again while re-watching Demolition Man recently. These toys themselves are pretty basic action figures of the time, in fact they were mostly all repaints of The New Adventures of He-Man toys (the space ones). In fact, the only commercial I remember from that He-Man line featured that same bolo-shooting ship thing.

What really made me laugh about this commercial, though, was how they used Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes’ names in the spot. They’re not even trying to hide the fact that they’re marketing a bullet-ridden film and toys based on its characters for kids!

It seems crazy by today’s standards, but when I was a kid I remember thinking how awesome guys like Stallone and Chuck Norris were without ever having seen their actual movies. Between the toys, commercials and video games, it was impossible not to have at least some idea of who these guys were. It was the same thing with Freddy and Jason too, for whatever it’s worth.