The most memorable movies based on toys

While people on the internet, as people on the internet always do, killed some of the enthusiasm for “Barbie” with their unhealthy obsession with Greta Gerwig’s latest film, the fact remains that Gerwig gave us a movie with Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken. It’s a weird mix of creative endeavor and marketing, but the iconic doll is now the focus of a major motion picture.

“Barbie” is set in the world of Barbie, though she is still a toy in the film. “The Beanie Bubble” is set in our world but is about toys. Specifically, it’s about the brief time when Beanie Babies was a massive fad and an investment. Yes, that happened, and now it is being explored.

To go back to our original point, here is the third toy movies from 2023 alone. “Dungeons and Dragons” is still the quintessential RPG out there. While the first attempt to adapt it into a film was a massive flop, this second attempt went better. Casting Chris Pine helps.

There have been tons of films based on the American Girl dolls, but they are almost exclusively made for TV or direct to video. Maybe someday every doll from the series will have their own esoteric film. “Kit Kittredge: American Girl” was a theatrical release, though. The Great Depression doll is brought to life by none other than Abigail Breslin.

Bratz, the fashion dolls, are weird enough as is. “Bratz,” the film, lives up to that oddness. A bizarre movie, and a total flop, would you believe that Jon Voight plays the principal in “Bratz?” That’s not even the weirdest thing about it.

G.I. Joe, the toy, was turned into an iconic Saturday morning cartoon. Eventually, the military toy was turned into a live-action movie…sort of. In truth, the “G.I. Joe” of it all is effectively just a marketing tool for a generic action film. Somehow, they made a couple of sequels, but those also aren’t any good.

If “Masters of the Universe” doesn’t ring a bell, how about the names He-Man and Skeletor? He-Man is the key figure in the “Masters of the Universe” realm, so one is left to wonder why he wasn’t name-checked in this true flop that didn’t make back its budget. It did give us Frank Langella playing Skeletor, though.

Board games are toys as well. “Clue” has more to do with the board game, but it also functions as a film, and without the game, it would still be a solid murder mystery comedy. “Battleship” is perhaps the nadir of mining intellectual property for film. It’s a boring, generic sailors-versus-alien water battle that shoehorns “Battleship” stuff into the mix. Rihanna is there as well.

If you’re talking pure cash, Transformers is the toy line that has had the most box-office success in the world of film. Granted, it helps that there have been seven of them. After five Michael Bay movies, they have made a couple of prequel films to Bay’s five-film series, and those have been received better critically while still being successful commercially.

Now, if you believe in the power of the Ouija board, you may quibble with it being considered a toy. However, if you were ever one of a handful of kids trying to get the answers you wanted from an Ouija board, let’s be realistic here. It’s a toy, but it is tied to the supernatural, which makes it easy fodder for horror films.

There is a decent chance you were introduced to the Care Bears through their cartoon show. However, they actually began life in greeting cards, and then were sold as stuffed animals (death to calling them “stuffies”) before getting that cartoon. This led to a movie, and in fact three movies in time, with Mickey Rooney of all people serving as the narrator of “The Care Bears Movie.”

The dubiousness about a Lego movie went out the window for many when they saw “The Lego Movie.” What worked for a lot of people was the unknown twist, which was that the world of the Legos was a world being created by a kid, and we see the real world in the film. We don’t in “The Lego Batman Movie,” which is perhaps for the best because that is the best of the four big-screen Lego films thus far.

The first line of the Wikipedia page for GoBots charitably calls them “similar” to Transformers. Look, GoBots were Tonka’s Transformers knockoffs. There was, inevitably, a GoBots cartoon and then this film, which was fittingly the last film by its production company. In 1991, Tonka’s intellectual property was bought up by Hasbro, the creators of Transformers. We know who won that battle.

For you Gen Xers and Elder Millennials out there, Max Steel was a line of action figures that were introduced in 1999. Because of that, and because the Max Steel line went through several iterations before it was nixed in 2022, we can’t exactly parse the whole thing. We do know thanks to the log line of the movie that a teenager named Max joins forces with an alien named Steel, and we also know the film was panned and made $6.3 million worldwide.

Trolls, the toy, are basically just a delivery system for funny colorful hairdos. There is no substance to Troll dolls. Of course, where one may see a vacuum, others may see opportunity. Like, the chance to cast Justin Timberlake as the voice of a Troll and have him sing a song that earns an Oscar nomination. “Trolls” was a hit, and it actually got some critical praise as well. The sequel “World Tour” hit in 2020 – aka peak pandemic – but did well enough under the circumstances to lead to a third film.

Why “Toy Story 3?” All the “Toy Story” movies are about toys. True, though the first film is built around Woody and Buzz, two fictional toy brands, though with Mr. Potato Head in the mix. We landed on the third film because, in addition to the usual crew, both Ken and Barbie figure into the mix as well. Indeed, we’ve come full circle.