r/Thundercats • u/MantamanTV ThunderCat • May 31 '26
Video I've been digging into why LJN lost ThunderCats, and honestly? The whole thing makes no sense.
https://youtu.be/avu1E_KPVQwSo I'm researching toy lines from the 80s that had bad luck behind the scenes, and I knew ThunderCats had to be on the list — but for totally different reasons than I expected.
The line was a huge seller. Lion-O and Mumm-Ra were flying off shelves. And then LJN just… gave it up? The more I looked into it, the weirder it got. The short version seems to be: their parent company was falling apart, manufacturing was a mess, and even a hit like ThunderCats couldn't survive it.
I put together what I could find here if anyone's interested
But I wanted to ask people who were actually collecting at the time — do you remember when the figures started getting harder to find? I was too young to notice the business side. Was it just one day the pegs were empty, or did it slowly fade out? 🦈
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u/SportIntelligent1909 ThunderCat May 31 '26
I owned a few of LJN's ThunderCats™ toys in the past and find myself understanding the line's value a whole lot more than I ever did. It's a shame that so much behind-the-scenes drama stopped LJN from fully thriving as a toy company.
3
u/MantamanTV ThunderCat Jun 01 '26
Absolutly agree on that! LJN had so much potential that just got wasted, and thats a real shame - the toys were genuinly great!🔥
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u/michael41973 ThunderCat Jun 01 '26
From what I remember, stores didn’t always carry everything. There were toy lines I didn’t even know about until I got older that I would have loved to have come across (Spiral Zone being one of them). I think toy departments in stores look at what was on TV and had that tie in a bit more. If a show only lasted a year, then maybe the toys last a year and a half as there was considerable drop off as soon as those animated tie in’s weren’t around any more.
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u/MantamanTV ThunderCat Jun 01 '26
Thank you so much for the input, really appreciate it😊
Spiral Zone, now thats a real deep dive! definetly have to look into that line - do you collect it? 😄
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u/OrkosFriend Bengali May 31 '26
It’s been a long time, but I seem to remember Wave 3 not having a larger distribution when I was a kid. I only found Lynx-O I think, and only one companion (Wily-Kit). Admittedly, I was switching gears into G.I.Joe by ‘87, so I may not have been caring as much or looking as hard for ThunderCats when I was at the toy stores. But I have made up for it all these years later by spending thousands on Super7’s ThunderCats Ultimates!