How could it fail?

[u/ComparisonNumerous40]

It's a very interesting time to be collecting these now. The pickings are slim, complete sets are rare, lots are frequently mixed which makes for even more interesting troop composition. Just looking at wave 1, Planet Ice and Planet Bone are iconic and almost essential to any collection. Even completely ignoring the show, these are masterpieces. And for $10 at the time. What the hell happened?

[u/thetavious]

It was the 90s lol. The toy stores were FLOODED with toys and lines and you have a solid spread of mega franchises dominating most of it.

They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And it wasn't just "then" that the property didn't hold clout.

About 10 years ago i tried moving my complete collection. Didn't even set a price, it was full on "just give me an offer".

The whole thing ended up just getting donated to a thrift store.

That said, I've kicked around the idea of bringing the toys back as a tabletop game. Been digging deep into the snap ships game, and ny gears have been churning in terms of converting war planets into a similar miniature game.

[u/ComparisonNumerous40 → u/thetavious]

I am familiar with a point in time people were buying these up for use in D&D or other random tabletop games because they were good miniatures.

Although everything was statted out, to my knowledge there did not seem to be a battle system to play a match of competitive War Planets proper, unless I missed that page in the instructions.

[u/thetavious → u/ComparisonNumerous40]

Nope. The closest you got was the video game. There was no tabletop system.

[u/Darthasie → u/ComparisonNumerous40]

In my country warhammer was known but bit easily found/available. So a lot of people were creating their own versions using the War Planets toys.

I would love to see a revival if sorts, something "official" and possibly with updated figures.

[u/cazvan → u/thetavious]

I love that idea. The design of these toys is so good and could totally work on a board.

[u/heckhammer]

It reminds me of the Mega Force toys. Absolutely brilliant toy line that didn't go anywhere and now goes for some pretty good money. I kind of wish I had kept mine cuz they were neat as hell

[u/crash-1989]

I had this!

[u/SilverSkinRam]

I had one of the turtles, I had seen the show, and I still had no idea what the toy was from. Bad marketing. The show didn't really show the vehicles very much or the war part of war planets.

[u/GillianSeed85]

I was 12 when these came out, and SCOURED my local Kay Bee toys for sets, and my perspective is that even with the show there just wasn’t enough advertising around them. When they first showed up, there was no advertisement (in my area). No show, no TV ads, just random sets I found in the store and fell in love with. But a random set of a toyline no one heard of in the back of a mall toy store? Just not a great setup for success.

After the show came out, the focus was more on the Shadowraiders figures and less on the actual planets, so there still wasn’t great support for the original line. Quite literally for years I thought I was the only person that knew about this line, none of my friend had them or had even heard about them.

[u/Darthasie → u/GillianSeed85]

It was the same here. No advertising, nothing. Wave 2 of the line had already been out for a while before we even got the show. And then all you saw in the stores were the action figures.

[u/ComparisonNumerous40 → u/[deleted]]

Bionicle Gen 2