Intermission - ReBoot merchandise (Seasons 1 and 2)

Around the time of the first two seasons of ReBoot were airing, a range of different merchandise and promotional tie ins were made available. The majority of this consisted of the toy line, which was produced by the Canadian company Irwin Toys. This toy line was made up of several waves of 5.5 inch action figures and a few vehicles and playsets. 

The first wave of action figures had 7 figures of the principal characters; Bob, Dot, Enzo, Megabyte, Hexadecimal, Hack and Slash. While Bob, Dot, and Enzo don't exactly have the best likenesses of their TV counterparts and the amount of articulation varied between figures, these are all fun figures with some great play features and accessories. Bob has various Glitch accessories that attach to his forearm, Dot comes with Cecil, Enzo comes with a zip board that is compatible with Bob, Megabyte has detachable legs, a moving jaw and retractable claws on one hand, Hexadecimal comes with interchangeable masks, and Hack and Slash explode when you press down on them. There was also a limited edition figure of Bob in his Jet Ball outfit from Talent Night that was also released in this wave.

All of the figures in this wave came with a pink 'delete disk' that was compatible with the Bob's Car vehicle. This playset seats two figures (every figure other than Megabyte, Hack, and Slash can be seated inside), has an opening bonnet which contains the disk launcher, a boot that opens revealing an interchangeable vid window (which can be changed to feature either Enzo or Megabyte), and it also has a rumble feature similar to the scene in Medusa Bug when it wouldn't start.

There was also a range of non articulated 3 inch figurines. This range included Bob (standing and on zip board), Dot, Enzo (with and without package), Megabyte (with and without a gun), Hexadecimal, Hack, Slash, Phong, and Frisket. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find decent pictures of these online, but I owned all of these when I was younger, and their likenesses weren't the best asides from Hack, Slash, Frisket, and Phong. 

There was also a small range of micro playsets in a similar vein to the Mighty Max playsets released by Mattel/Bluebird in the early to mid 90's. These were in the shape of a character's head, and opened up to reveal the playset and all the figures inside of it. Three of these were produced, Megabyte's Throne Room, Hexadecimal's Lair, and Hack and Slash's Vehicle Bay (the latter being my introduction to the series, as stated in my introductory post at the start of this retrospective). All playsets came with delete disks that could be fired from the detachable disk launchers that came with the playsets. These ones were distinguishable from the ones that came with the action figures since they were green rather than pink. 

Three more waves of figures were released by Irwin for the show's second season. The first of these waves had six figures that all come packaged with a small binome figure. The figures in this wave were Bob (with Old Man Pearson) and Dot (with a repainted 3 inch Phong) in their prison guard uniforms from The Tiff, Enzo in his Season 2 '10' outfit (with Mike the TV), Frisket (with a repackaged Cecil), Medusa Bug Infected Megabyte (with Cyrus), and Web Creature Infected Hexadecimal (with Skuzzy). The likenesses of Bob and Enzo are greatly improved from the previous wave, and it's great to have alternative versions of the characters as well as Frisket who hadn't been released in this scale, even if this wave and the next two are incredibly rare in comparison to the first wave.

The next wave was made up of 7 figures, and these ones all changed colour when cooled. Bob appears to be in his outfit from The Great Brain Robbery, Dot is in her wizard outfit from Wizards, Warriors, and a Word from our Sponsor, and Enzo is in his outfit from Racing the Clock. Megabyte, Hexadecimal, Hack, and Slash all have different coloured splatters on them. Again, it's great to have alternative outfits for the heroes, although the colour change feature is more of a gimmick.

The last wave of figures came with a CD Rom that contained trivia on the show and a tour of Mainframe amongst other things. These were all alternative forms of the characters not seen in figure form at that point. Bob is wearing his Mad Max outfit from Bad Bob, Dot is wearing her dress from Talent Night, Enzo is in his Guardian Cadet uniform given to him by Bob in Web World Wars, Frisket is an interesting one since he's taking the form of a 'Hell Hound' which doesn't appear until next season, Megabyte is in his Web Infected form seen in Nullzilla and Gigabyte, and Hack and Slash have their fists replaced with guns. This is an interesting wave of figures, and it's great to see these new versions of the characters represented in figure form. 

Another vehicle was released alongside these waves, this one being Dot's Exo Skeleton from Infected. While this was a very cool looking toy, it unfortunately wasn't incredibly sturdy, so it was prone to breaking.

As well as this, there was a small expansion to the Micro Playsets range. Two mini vehicles were produced, an ABC vehicle that fired two missiles and Mouse's Submarine from The Great Brain Robbery that had movable claws. There was also a larger playset of Megatruck from Bad Bob that was 5 playsets in one. Unfortunately, the Mouse's submarine playset features the only figure released of Mouse.

The catalogue pages below show that there were some toys produced that never made it to store shelves. These include a range of micro vehicles, two different plush toys of Frisket in different scales, and a five in one toy of Glitch. Prototypes were definitely produced for these toys, but unfortunately they never made it to market. However, the one existing plush Frisket prototype is known to be in the possession of ReBoot Co Creator Ian Pearson. Another interesting note about these pages is that the Dot in the Binome wave of figures appears to come with a Captain Capacitor Binome instead of the repainted 3 inch Phong that the actual figure came packaged with.

There were also toys produced for various promotions with food companies. Kellogg's had a range of exclusive micro playsets and foil stickers. These playsets were smaller than the Irwin ones, and featured one or two plastic figures and double sided cardboard figures to fill out the cast of characters available. The playsets in this promotion were Megabyte's Throne Room, Hexadecimal's Lair, Bob's Apartment, and Dot's Diner.

In the UK, ReBoot's broadcast on CITV was sponsored by Skips crisps, who did a small range of bendable figures that were free with Skip's Tokens. They also had limited edition donut and pizza flavours which had ReBoot characters on the packets. The UK also had a range of 'Megabyte Biscuits'.

Outside of the toys, there was a wide range of other merchandise available. For instance, a range of Choose Your Own Adventure books where you guide the characters on an adventure by navigating from section to section. Most of these were original adventures, but there was also one based on the episode 'Racing the Clock'. HTML versions of these books can be played here: http://purplemagpie.0catch.com/reboot/adventure/?fbclid=IwAR1QCwQ9h7XAryph1GN5xE6hmUZmaL5QxuaVDwdVjG5oNgf0HVza3juL4UE.

Two different board games were released (both confusingly called 'Mainframe Game'). The first is more of a strategy game, whereas the other appears to be a more typical kids board game. There was also an LCD handheld game similar to those produced by Tiger Electronics around the same time.

Trading card company Fleer Ultra produced a series of ReBoot Trading Cards which featured stills from the show and information about the characters, and a series of ReBoot Pogs was also produced (ReBoot Pogs is probably the most 90's thing ever).

There was also a ReBoot duvet set, lampshade, colouring book (and crayons), bubble bath, and toothbrushes produced as well as a Bob dressing up costume complete with a creepy looking mask that barely resembles Bob.

There was a lot more merchandise out there than this, but I just thought I'd point out some of the more interesting examples as well as overview the toy line which was the main focus of this post. Some more examples can be found on Haku's ReBoot Museum, which is where I took some of the pictures used in this post: http://haku.co.uk/ReBootMuseum/index.html

Nowadays, this merchandise is interesting to look back on based on how much was released and the variety of different items as well. The toy line was fun although it would have been nice to have seen figures for Mouse and AndrAIa. However, the action figure line ended up remaining dormant until 2001, around the time of the Fourth Season, but that's a story for another day.

Next week: We take a look at the first Imax Ridefilm, 'ReBoot: The Ride'