Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Action Figures Commercials 🐉
In 1983, LJN in partnership with TSR, released a series of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons toys. Not only were the toys amazing, but so were the commercials they released to support them.
In the 1980s, the popularity of the tabletop role-playing game Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) soared, and toys were quick to follow. LJN created a line of action figures, playsets, and accessories that were popular with younger gamers like myself.
LJN's AD&D toy line was launched in 1983 and featured a wide range of figures, from basic humanoid characters to dragons and other mythical beasts. Each figure was nicely detailed, and the action figures featured a decent range of articulation. This made them ideal for imaginative play and as props in role-playing sessions. Some of the most popular figures included the likes of Warduke, Strongheart, and Zarak, as well as monsters like the Neo-Otyugh and the Umber Hulk.
D&D could be played with or without miniatures, and I played it both ways. And I loved to have my little metal figures, but I had a problem. I had no talent for painting. So after attempting to paint a few, I just kept getting new ones, but never breaking out the paint. Getting these toys, was like a technicolor injection for my imagination.
Sadly, they didn’t catch on at the time and their marketing was very limited. I can only remember seeing these commercials once or twice at the time. When they came on, time froze, it felt like my beloved game was finally getting some mainstream exposure beyond the animated series. After seeing them, I remember telling my friends and not one of them believed me. Decades later, I would finally see these commercials again on YouTube. They are everything I remembered.
This first one starts with some great animation that would work well when paired with the original, and I believe first, D&D commercial. After that, it goes into a fairly standard eighties style toy commercial that features kids in a backyard setting playing with Strongheart, Warduke, Kelek, and Bronze Dragon.
Some fun play details:
Strongheart swings in on a string held by the kid.
The balls of foil that are supposed to be a pile of treasure.
The wizard on the cover of the revised 1983 printing of the Player’s Handbook is named Aldarr, and he is wonderfully animated and leaps off the cover in this next commercial. We then get some fun cross-cutting between the live toys and their animated versions, featuring Strongheart and Bronze Dragon vs. Warduke and Nightmare.
This animated Warduke/Nightmare pairing is like something out of my daydreams in 1983.
The final commercial is one I didn’t see back in the eighties. It has some kids in a very stylized dungeon setting, playing with their Shield Shooter and Battle-Matic figures. I never even saw these figures in stores, but the art direction in this ad is remarkable. I still smile when the “evil kid” rotates out of the wall at the end.
These commercials are everything I wanted them to be, and I thought the toys were great. Like many fans of the game, I overestimated the appeal of it in the mainstream. So I bought the toys, assuming they would continue to produce new products for years to come. Sadly, even though they were well-done, the LJN figures were short-lived, succumbing to the cresting of the original wave of D&D mania in the mid-eighties.
Those LJN figures were some of the best of the era if you ask me. Even though the articulation is a little limited when compared to some other lines, the design and coloring is amazing and so detailed. And each figure was so different from each other, similar to say the Super Powers line. They weren't copies from the same mold, like many of the He-man figures.
My brother gave me some of the ones he had saved from our childhood, my intention is to clean them up and repair what I can to make them display worthy.
You gotta love that cuddly neo-otyugh, my favorite.