1980 Ideal Team America Catalog
By the late 1970s, Ideal Toys had a bit of a problem on their hands. Even though Evel Knievel had fallen out of favour with the public, their stunt cycle toy was still a viable product. The only logical choice was to rebrand the toy, their first attempt was in 1978 with Scare Cycles, a neat concept but not the home run they sought.
In 1980, Team America was born and in a wise marketing move so was a Marvel comic book of the same name.
Ideal (tee hee) Links
Wait… I'm a little confused. There was a point in time where Evel Knievel had fallen out of favor?
I heard his fell from public favor (and his toyline's sales plummeted) after he attacked his press agent with a baseball bat. Don't know how much truth there is to it.
I had one Team America comic book. The one I owned had a rider that was all dressed in black that was the teams protector. Kind of like a Batman on a motorcycle.
Ideal dropped EK over the baseball bat incident, it killed the line's sales dead.