Mattel's A Bug's Life Toyline (1998)

Pixar's Feature Films A Bug's Life
#1

Considering how overlooked this film is now, it received a decent toyline with a couple of action figures and playsets. Obviously, Flik received the most in the standard 6" line and other figures were made for Hopper, Princess Atta, and other characters. What’s interestimg, is how it is marketed to be a battle between the ants and the grasshoppers. This design caused them to move the focus from the Circus bugs to the ants; they released packs that included generic ants fighting the standard grasshopper goon. Here are some examples of the figures in the line:











My least favorite part of Mattel’s handling of the line was the shift from the more colorful characters to the generic good guys vs. bad guys method. Any thoughts?

#2

I’ve always been very impressed with the ABL toys from back in the day, at least perhaps because of how much variety they had (and I only say this because, well, compared to the amount of ABL toys available today…). I hadn’t actually seen some of these toys before. It’s definitely unusual why they ended up putting as much focus on the ants vs. grasshoppers thing. But I suppose it’s all a matter of what they believed their audience would want. Perhaps because they figured more boys would be into bug toys? IDK… just wish they made more merch for this movie these days in general! And in even higher Thinkway-level quality!

#3

^ I agree. The problem with most movie-based toylines is that they want to establish who the hero is (by giving them multiple repaints) and the villain. Even Thinkway had this problem in their original Toy Story line.

#4

I remember these toys. I remembered having the Inventor Flick, Princess Atta, and the Kicking Hopper one as a kid.

#5

Just saw those action figures mentioned above…not too long ago on my recent Amazon searches.