Monday, April 29, 2019

AD&D Toys and Quest for the Heartstone

Maybe somebody out there can explain this to me. The toy line from the 80s was branded as Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, yeah? (Official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, no less!)

 So why did the characters from the AD&D toy line only appear in a Basic Dungeons & Dragons module, XL-1: Quest for the Heartstone?

 This is a completely unimportant question, but I've always wondered what happened there. 
I still have a few AD&D toys from my childhood; I've got an ogre, a roper, a carrion crawler, a Strongheart, and the bronze dragon. Oddly enough, I was able to buy a Warduke and a nightmare as a highschooler (about a decade after they first hit shelves) from a failing chain store that only seemed to stock toys that were discovered in the backs of warehouses ten years down the road. Thanks, Ames! (Sorry all your stores closed.)
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11 comments:

  1. Horrible Old ManApril 29, 2019 at 12:57 AM

    Ahh dude I remember the Ames store, Ninja Turtle toys and a pet section with the saddest looking lizards in the world!

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    1. Jack GuignolApril 29, 2019 at 7:48 AM

      Ooof, pet section...glad I have no memory of that.

      Delete
  2. bombasticusApril 29, 2019 at 3:02 PM

    That's a great story. Those poor pets, I hope some found love. What I suspect happened with the branding was that the cartoon tied up the plain D&D marks so TSR reactivated the "AD&D is a separate property" argument to make its own separate toy deal. Kids didn't care and the "Advanced" probably looked cool and mysterious. Then, however, for the publishing tie-in the toy company would have logically wanted compatibility with the version marketed to younger gamers without all the sinister baggage in Advanced. Thus the IP packaged as "Advanced" points to the Mentzer edition instead. Again, Warduke fans don't care.

    If they hadn't settled with Arneson by that stage I wouldn't have been surprised to see the cartoon aggressively branded as "Advanced" to cut him out, in which case we might not have gotten the toys at all because there was no "doppel mark" to license. Whether this unwieldy title would've doomed the cartoon is vanishingly hypothetical on a Monday, since as some people in our house point out if there's no point in watching Brideshead Revisited if you haven't seen the first one, maybe jumping straight to "Advanced" adventures of Bobby, Uni and company is too steep a learning curve.

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    1. Jack GuignolApril 29, 2019 at 3:08 PM

      Weirdly, the toys came BEFORE the cartoon.

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    2. bombasticusApril 29, 2019 at 3:21 PM

      I stand by the Hypothesis! The cartoon was in development by early 1982 (Evanier would know) so that would've tied up the core brand even before the episodes aired. If a toy maker approached Lake Geneva directly during that critical window looking to move plastic fast, from what I've heard the Blumes would've handed them "Advanced" and grabbed the check.

      This might be why the cartoon never spawned its own figure line, come to think of it. There were already *DND toys on shelves, settling for half that aisle would've been pointless. But the toy maker who grabbed the "Advanced" license looks like a genius, again because Warduke fans mock puny edition wars.

      (Did anyone ever figure out his outfit? What is up with his seminudism?)

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    3. bombasticusApril 29, 2019 at 3:27 PM

      Hey this is cool
      https://picclick.com/Dungeons-Dragons-1982-Hanna-Barbera-Tv-Series-Show-273723952991.html

      Delete
    4. Jack GuignolApril 30, 2019 at 12:40 PM

      Yeah, the toy maker had the license for the characters they made and that license did not include the cartoon characters. The toymaker didn't necessarily *want* the Advanced moniker, but that's what TSR wanted to push.

      Delete
  3. What a Fine HandApril 30, 2019 at 2:21 AM

    Dang, I wished I could've seen this.

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    1. Jack GuignolApril 30, 2019 at 12:40 PM

      The cartoon? If so, you can probably pick up the full run for $5 on dvd.

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    2. What a Fine HandMay 3, 2019 at 2:12 AM

      No I meant DnD toys being selled at stores. I already know the....BULLYWUGS ARE COMING!

      Delete
  4. jbeltmanApril 30, 2019 at 3:57 AM

    They also appeared in AC1 The Shady Dragon Inn, also for the Basic product line. So I am not getting you any closer to an answer!

    "All the characters listed in this special section have figures in the D&D or AD&D toy line. The statistics given here are for the D&D line, and may be different from the AD&D statistics given."

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shady_Dragon_Inn#Special_characters

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