Hard Riding Heroes

A short story about the Marvel & Ideal Toy superhero team: Team America

It all started in the late 1970s, when the Ideal Toy Company found themselves in a bit of a pickle. Their best-selling toy line, Evil Knievel, had to be shelved because the real Evil Knievel ran into some trouble with the law. Ideal didn't want to let all those amazing toy molds go to waste. So, they reached out to Marvel Comics to help them create a new superhero team. In a later interview, Marvel writer J.M. DeMatteis admitted that they were "kind of forced" into creating this new property, but they did it anyway. And the result was epic!

In May of 1982, the team made a preview appearance in Captain America before launching their own monthly series. The team consisted of Cowboy, Honcho, R.U. Reddy, Wolf, and Wrench. These badasses first met at a racing event in Daytona Beach, Florida, and soon discovered that they could manifest a collective self when they were together. This masked motorcyclist dressed in black became known as The Marauder, and he helped them take on Hydra and all sorts of other villains.

Over the course of twelve issues, Team America traveled the world, fought evil, and even had some special guest appearances from other Marvel characters. They teamed up with Captain America to fight a giant monster at Madison Square Garden, and even hung out with Tony Stark to stop an evil employee of Stark Industries who wanted to steal The Marauder's bike. The legendary Ghost Rider even made an appearance to help them fight Hydra. Unfortunately, the series didn't do as well as Marvel had hoped, and it was canceled after just twelve issues. But Team America didn't let that stop them. They popped up later in New Mutants #5 to help the New Mutants in a battle against Viper and the Silver Samurai. During that adventure, they discovered that they were mutants themselves and decided to rebrand as the Thunderiders.

We're not entirely sure why the rebranding happened, but it may have had something to do with Marvel wanting to keep the characters after Ideal Toys went bankrupt. Today, the characters are part of a forgotten corner of the Marvel universe, and now part of the CSN library of toy licenses. Will we see Team America ride again? Perhaps one day.