Max Steel
| Type | Action Figures |
|---|---|
| Company | Mattel |
| Country | United States |
| Availability | 1997–present |
| Official website | |
Max Steel is a line of action figures produced and owned by the toy company Mattel. The figures are similar to the original 12-inch G.I. Joe toys, consisting almost entirely of different versions of Max Steel, the main character, and one or two of his enemies, a couple of vehicles and 2 or 3 special packages.
Max Steel was developed into an animated series of the same name, which originally aired from February 25, 2000, to January 15, 2002, followed by nine direct-to-video animated films, being released annually from 2004 to 2012. A reboot aired on Disney XD in the United States, where it had premiered on March 25, 2013.
A new Max Steel toy line accompanies the new TV series for 2013. The new toy line somewhat abandons the 1/6 scale of the original, however, 1/6 scale figures are still made. According to Mattel's American International Toy Fair presentation, the toy line is one of the best sellers in Latin America.
After Mainframe took control of the TV series, every new toy makes a brief appearance in the series or the movies. Also after the Endangered Species movie plot was included in the toy line, every new set of toys includes at least a couple of wild animals too. Waves 1 and 2 included exactly the same Psycho figure, with only minor changes in the box. Wave 3 changed Psycho's mechanic arm, while the rest of the body remained mostly the same.
Other figures of different lines retained their mission cards, however, later Max Steel figures had no mission cards at all.
Several large vehicles, including a mini jet, a boat and a couple of sport cars were released some time ago, at the beginning of the series. The jet is by far the largest toy ever produced on the line, followed a giant child-size Elementor figure. Despite of the constant presence of women in the series as main or supporting characters, no female figures were ever produced.
When the first Max Steel toys were released in 1997, Mattel distributed a free 12 page comic book titled Take it to the Max to introduce the character to children. The comic was written by Richard Bruning based on the sourcebook by Andy Hartnell, and penciled by Scott Benefiel with Tom McWeeney and Tommy Yune. Inkers were Jasen Rodriguez, Tom McWeeney and Lucian Rizzo. Until now there are four known language versions of this comic: English, Spanish, Italian and Greek. The English version was distributed mostly in America and United Kingdom, the Spanish version was largely distributed on Latin America and Spain, while the Italian one was obviously distributed in Italy and the Greek one in Greece, especially through the Modern Times superhero comics.
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