25 Nights of Nineties Nostalgia: MASK Goliath

Welcome to the last MASK Monday, where we talk about one of the greatest forgotten toy-lines. Today we are taking a look at the Goliath! A toy that shows off Kenner’s continued ingenuity with regard to transforming vehicles.

"A transforming truck! How do we come up with these things?!" - Ballsy Kenner Executive
“A transforming truck! How do we come up with these things?!” – Ballsy Kenner Executive

The Goliath was a semi-truck that carried an F-1 racer. Both the car and truck sported dark blues, although the formula racer had a dash of yellow to make the set pop. While big trucks and race cars are great, we all know by now there is more than meets the eye to MASK vehicles. The semi turns into a dual weapons platform, having both a maned turret and a HUGE missile launcher with ammo the size of the car. The car itself converts into a fighter jet complete with its own set of guns and a design that really sells the idea that this thing really could fly. MASK was a line with just crazy awesome toys, so why isn’t it more memorable? Well, one big reason might be because of that race car.

It seems Kenner was doing alright with their line of transforming vehicles and action figures, but still weren’t close enough to the titans created by Hasbro. Kenner and its publicists decided that maybe all this action, adventure, and poking fun at your competition wasn’t enough to become top toy. So the idea was pitched that MASK would become a toy-line about racing! VENOM would enter into a race in order to win a prize or treasure, but would be dirty rotten cheaters that, you know, carpet bombed their competition. This would make it MASK’s job to step in and win the race so the bad guys didn’t get what they were after.

In an instant, the toy-line changed their focus to being about race cars or racetrack elements like billboards. The TV show was turned from a fun yet typical Saturday morning cartoon show about heroes beating the bad guys, to essentially, a supped up version of Whacky Racers without any of the comedy or charm. This stripped the figures and vehicles of the identity they had built up to this point, and it was not well received. The show was canceled, and while Kenner attempted another run of MASK toys after this, it never recovered.

About Al 28 Articles
Al Baldino is half bear, half owl-bear, which makes him some sort of terrible fraction no one wants to think about. He's a co-host on the Line Cutters every Wednesday at 7pm EST.