There are a few bits of nostalgic sweetness that I WILL get my hands on again.
I was one of those rare kids that didn’t lose all the little weapons and parts to my toys. This immensely helped my ability to enjoy Mighty Max.
In fact, even to this day I would probably have a respectable collection of Mighty Max, Monster in my Pocket, Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers and GI Joe, but some crack heads broke into our storage locker when I was 16 and took everything.
I hope they overdosed!
But anyway, Mighty Max was one of my favorites. For you younglings, these toys came on cases shaped like heads or other monster body parts. When you opened them, they were mini play sets.
They might have seemed an odd choice sitting next to a fully posable X-Men toy or Power Ranger, but these little worlds just sparked the imagination.
Each one was a little different. Max could battle an Egyptian mummy or invade a space ship. And each set offered so many little details. It wasn’t about missiles that really launched or vehicles with badass ejecting battering rams. Each of these toys presented several little ideas to lead you into making your own story.
What defeats the necromancer? Maybe one of those books by that chair. And one of those computer terminals in the space ship probably includes a self-destruct timer.
As the story went, Max found a magic cap that transported him to another dimension when he turned it sideways. The alternate worlds thing gave license to put Max in pretty much any setting imaginable. And each set came with a small comic depicting Max in whatever world (toy) came with the comic.
As Mighty Max got more popular, the lore expanded, adding guardians Norman and Virgil, and a big bad, The Skull King.
A cartoon evolved, and for a 10 year old in the 90s, it was pretty decent. But the ending was weird.
Max caught The Skull King in some mystical time loop that took him back in time to the first episode.
Wtf?
I found out years later that the writers got pissed. The company refused to let them end it. They wanted the kids to be able to watch the reruns without anything being different after they saw the last episode, so the writers deliberately made it as stupid as possible.
Fuck the company. Mighty Max deserved an ending.
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