Armed Force

The Wheeled Warriors

  The Wheeled Warriors is a case study in questionable toy marketing. Mattel designed a solid line of vehicle-based toys and dubbed them the Wheeled Warriors. Presumably the designers had some outline of a narrative, but the toys were initially released with a generic “good guys versus bad guys” story, evidenced by the first commercials:

Mattel then decided to give the humble Wheeled Warriors the full media treatment (complete with cartoon, coloring books, board games, pencil cases, etc), reverse-engineering an elaborate mythology to explain the toys. Thus was born “Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors”. Even with character-based designs, the toy-first, story-second method rarely produces successful results. The idea of kitted-out trucks fighting each other is pretty thin gruel for a story, and the cartoon was a thoroughly mediocre product. The whole endeavor promptly flopped, and today is barely remembered, even by die-hard eighties nostalgia-junkies. The toys, however, were great fun. Using a Micronaut-like system of interchangeable parts, the Wheeled Warriors provided impressive play value.

Armed Force

The Jayce & the Wheeled Warriors story, such as it was, concerned the efforts of Jayce and his band of heroes to thwart the galaxy-dominating ambitions of the Monster Minds, a plant-based gang of baddies led by Saw Boss. Armed Force was the vehicle piloted by Jayce himself.

Armed Force, like all of the toys, came as a kit of easily assembled parts.

Each set consisted of a body with operable cockpit, a chassis, wheels, and assorted weapons, including a unique signature weapon for each vehicle. Armed Force’s signature weapon was an articulated claw. The good guys all came with a small driver (1.5″), minimally articulated.

What’s this? STACK ATTACK!