It’s not uncommon in today’s world to walk down the toy aisle of any big box store and see action figures from games like Halo, Super Mario Bros., Sonic the Hedgehog, Pokemon, Street Fighter, and Mindcraft. Before the late 1990s, any action figures related to video game properties either didn’t exist or were poorly constructed.

In 1993, toy companies and Hollywood realized that video game properties were an untapped market for releasing action figures. One of the first toy companies that jumped into the market was Hasbro, combining their GI JOE series of action figures with the mega-hit franchise Street Fighter 2. Following the release of the Super Mario Bros: The Movie, toy company ETRL released several action figures based on the silver screen picture. While both the Street Fighter 2 and Super Mario Bros: The Movie toys were not precisely what video game fans were looking for to celebrate their favorite games, companies were getting close.

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Mike Mertes Mike Mertes (84 Posts)

From the moment he touched an Intellivision controller in 1985, Mike knew that he had experienced something incredible in the world of video games that would shape him for the rest of his life. From that point forward, he would make it his mission to experience video games from every console generation going forward. Eventually, he would become obsessed with magazines that wrote about the games he loved, and it would inspire him to start writing about games himself in 1998 for various local media outlets. Always looking for an opportunity to branch out, Mike eventually coded the foundation of a website that would ultimately morph into Gamer Logic Dot Net, an independent video game site that continues to cover modern and classic video game today. Additional, Mike composes music for indie games under his other alias "Unleaded Logic"