Mattel Secret Wars Catalog
In the early 1980s, Toy giant Mego fell and released both the Marvel and DC superheroes licenses for the first time in over a decade. This was also the first time the action figure license was seperated between companies. Kenner took the DC heroes and released Super Powers while Mattel scooped up the Marvel heroes to release the “Secret Wars” toy line. Marvel followed suite with a popular mini series of the same name.What resulted was an interesting mix of toy maker meets comics. Mattel didn’t put the effort into the line that Kenner initially did, the figures suffered from recycled body parts and some were not comic accurate. Despite these flaws, many recall the Secret Wars line as a fun toy line, a number of the characters had never been seen in action figure form making them exciting to collectors at the time as well:
Click here to visit the 1984 Mattel Secret Wars Catalog
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DC Super Powers and Marvel Secret Wars. Oh how they brought such happiness into my life. I loved these toys just as much as my G.I. Joe. The Marvel ones had some weird things though. They all had shields, and some had blasters. My Wolverine also had black claws instead of silver. But these toys brought hours and hours of fun. We had no Mego toys in Iowa so this was heaven for me when these finally came out.
I love the collection "Secret Wars".
Here in Brazil were released exclusive toys from this collection.
As the Castle Of Spiderman and Doctor Doom's Castle.
Very bizarre.
One thing I remembered about the Secret Wars figures was that the chest patterns on some figures were susceptible to being rubbed away, i.e. things like Spider-Man's webbings and Captain America's stripes. Must've been the plastic and/or paint Mattel used on the figs.
Dr. Doom is actually pretty comic accurate for the end of the series where he is capeless.
and i always wondered why wolverine came with black claws
I remember these figures being fairly poorly made–the legs and arms seemed to bend and break off very easily, and the colors seemed so garish. The obscure character list was nice, tho.