The Era of X-Men Mania

As a kid growing up in the 90s, watching X-Men cartoons on Saturday, and disliking Jubilee for reasons I couldn’t quite understand, I loved the X-Men. At the time I had never read a comic about them, but their essence permeated my prepubescent brain as it did many of my peers. In short, X-Men pretty much won the 90s.

X-Men: The Animated series began in 1992 in the Fox Kids Saturday morning programming. For those of you who haven’t watched it, take a good long look at yourself and feel the shame of missing out on something awesome. The series followed Professor X and his men: Wolverine, Cyclops, Beast and Gambit. His women were there too: Jean Grey, Storm and southern belle Rogue. Other X-Men team members popped in and out of episodes, but the core team drew us kids in like the theme song heralded an ice cream truck filled with Ninja Turtle popsicles. (Okay, they’re not really popsicles, they’re more like ice cream on a stick, but you get the idea.)

The series is ranked by IGN as the 13th greatest animated show of all time, noting:

For the first time, Marvel Comics fans truly felt like they were seeing the stories they loved played out on television, and those who grew up with this series have fond memories to this day.

In case you wondered, The Tick ranked at 6, and Batman: The Animated Series is number 2. But they had Batmanuel and Mark Hamill, so that makes sense.

The cartoon brought in a legion of fans that weren’t altogether familiar with the comic books themselves, and gave very smart marketers and developers access to a new group. Trading cards came out in droves, and you can tell that the cool kids got them in piles from this ad:

He’s the epitome of 90s cool, and he owns the shiz-nit out of those trading cards. The New York Times ran a piece noting the boom in non-sports trading cards sales in ’92, citing that during the year, 160 series of trading cards were produced without sports players. And the team at Pro Set (producers of trading cards) said that 10-20% of their sales in the early 90s were non-sports. While that’s a broad market, X-Men cards were hugely popular and can still be found today. There are sellers with original trading cards, and those with Wolverine on them still sell the highest. (Though Jubilee on anything takes it down a peg or two.)

While trading card sales were booming, comic sales floundered in the 90s. In ’91, Marvel launched a second series, the adjective-less X-Men. Two forces formed, Blue Team with Cyclops in charge in X-Men and Gold Team with Storm leading in Uncanny X-Men. X-Force came out as well with a team led by Cable. Then came more x-treme x-ecutions of x-things: The X-Tinction Agenda, X-Cutioner’s Song, Generation X, Excalibur and X-Factor. Wolverine stayed front and center as anti-heroes came in throughout the decade. Artists leaned toward more realism in their heroes and villains, who were not just good or evil, and may have had less than altruistic reasons for fighting the “bad guys.” X-Men were the largest comic franchise to kick off the decade, but sales waned in the mid-90s, and Marvel declared bankruptcy in 1996.

Series were scaled back or eliminated all together, and general merchandise was reduced. And there was heaps of merchandise. The sales boom of the early 90s coupled with the cartoon’s success saw stores flooded with X-Men paraphernalia. Action figures were a huge item, as well as t-shirts, lunch boxes, pogs (I totally had X-Men pogs), pajamas, buttons, hats, etc., all in addition to the trading cards that were selling like gangbusters.

And let’s not forget about the video games (she says as she eyes her Game Cube impatiently). The X-Men are featured heavily in the current Marvel games (Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds and Marvel Super Hero Squad: Comic Combat sold well in 2011), and the Ultimate Alliance games are still top-notch. (Having Wolverine around is really helpful for someone who likes to run in and stab with no focus on their own character’s safety.)

The original The Uncanny X-Men for NES debuted in 1989, followed by games for Commodore 64 and PC. Things picked up in ’92 when X-Men hit the arcade with a side-scroller beat’em up. PlayStation and Xbox networks still offer this game, due to its overwhelming popularity. Nintendo, Game Boy and Game Gear games came out next, followed by SNES and Sega games. By the time 1999 rolled around, there were 13 X-Men titles for almost any console you could think of, and 2 more that were Wolverine-specific. They also hold the Guinness World record of X-Men: Ravages of the Apocalypse becoming the first superhero first person shooter.

And of course the excitement and purchasing power of the 90s also paved the way for the original X-Men movie (and thereby to Hugh Jackman as Logan). Without the audience garnered in the 90s, we might not have the numerous comic-based cartoons and video games, as well as X-2, one of the most fabulous films of all time. (Seriously Anna Paquin will never be “Sookie” to me, just Rogue with weird hair.)

X-Men were on comics, TV, arcade games, trading cards, backpacks, all over, and people wanted to recreate that with their own comic heroes. DC worked to expand on their Batman series (which was also doing incredibly well, of course) and Superman line. Marvel increased efforts on Spider-Man to spin off additional story lines. All of these characters are still very popular, of course, but none could match the volume (and some would argue: awesomeness) of the X-Men. Hell, most 90s kids still hope that one day their mutant gene will finally be triggered and they’ll get to put on that awesome costume. I know I do.