Ideal Toy’s Team America
The comic book series Team America launched in 1982, running for 12 issues. Was this a great comic series?
If you’ve ever visited our company website (csnpress.com), you probably saw the news that in addition to Comic Shop News, we purchased the rights to the largest independant collection of toys & board games from the 1960s-1980s. This is an eclectic mix of properties, many you probably don’t even remember. We have no idea what we’re doing with these things, but we are having fun digging through the old archives to see what “gems” are included in this collection. One of the highlights is Team America, the line of action figures and vehicles introduced by Ideal Toys back in 1982. As we understand it, Ideal had the rights of the extremely popular Evel Knievel license. The Evel Knievel stunt cycle toy was selling like hotcakes, that is until the real Evel Knievel had an issue with the authorities that threatened to kill sales of this toy line aimed at kids. Panicked, the executives at Ideal Toys called up the fine folks at Marvel with an idea. Why don’t we do a joint venture where you develop a set of new characters that work with our existing motorcycle rider toy molds. This collaboration aimed to provide a backstory and richer narrative context for Team America, which would, in turn, deepen the engagement with the toys. Marvels storytelling expertise helped to flesh out the characters, integrating them into the broader Marvel Universe. The comic book series Team America launched in 1982, running for 12 issues. Was this a great comic series?
No, it was not. The Marvel series depicted Team America as a group of elite motorcycle riders who discover they share a telepathic link that grants them extraordinary skills when they work together. This plotline provided a dramatic backdrop to the action figures, enhancing their appeal. Notably, Marvel introduced a mysterious character, The Marauder, whose identity was a central mystery in the series and added an element of suspense and intrigue.
Sales of the comic and toy line did not meet expectations. Even throwing Ghost Rider, Iron Man and Captain America into the mix didn’t seem to help. After Ideal shut down the toy line, Marvel later retconned the characters in an issue of the New Mutants. Professor X explains that Team America were mutants all along, and so they decide to don new costumes and rename themselves the Thunderiders, never really to be heard from again. As a younger reader, I never understood why they updated these characters. Now understanding the world of contractual joint partnerships, I get it. We suspect the re-naming of this team was more to legally clean up the rights to the characters at the end of Marvel’s partnership with Ideal. Rather than a pure editorial or creative choice, it just might have been legal bookkeeping. No matter the reason, we’re thrilled to now hold the rights to the Team America name and toys. Even if it was just a 1980s merchandising tie-in. We don’t hold the rights to the characters that became the Thunderiders, but who knows, maybe we can create a new story associated with this toy line. That will be a fun project for the future!
