Vintage Toy Mall

In these articles, I’m going to highlight one toy or toy line that’s fairly hard to come by, but not really worth anything. Just because something is hard to find and is certainly cool, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to fetch a high price. Toy lines that are off the beaten GI Joe, Motu and Transformer path but deserve honorable mention.

For the first installment of Rare But Not Worth Much, I present you with Computer Warriors! Put out by Mattel in 1989. Before you had Bob the Guardian protecting Mainframe in the CG cartoon Reboot, you had Computer Warriors!

The story for this toy line is that evil computer viruses, led by Megahert, wanted to conquer the world. Their dastardly plan was to hide inside innocuous, household objects and then take over all computers. To thwart their efforts, there were the Computer Warriors, led by Romm. I think there was probably supposed to be a whole cartoon series for this line, but it only managed a pilot episode; Computer Warriors The Adventure Begins. Romm, Chip, Cursor and other heroic Computer Warriors would battle Megahert, Minus, Asynk and other evil, replicating viruses.

The toys themselves are actually pretty cool. The figures are about 2.5 inches tall and sport 4 points of articulation and gun accessories. The really neat part of Computer Warriors though, was their vehicles. Each one came with a transforming household object. A soccer ball would turn into a Radar Rover, computer PCBs would turn into cyber-space fighters, a flashlight would turn into a rocket ship etc. Something that made Computer Warriors even more unique was that some of the toys had a functionality component. If you had the pencil sharpener/Techno-Jet, you could really use it to sharpen pencils. Needless to say, if you had that at school to sharpen your pencils, you were the raddest kid in class.

While you most likely won’t stumble upon these gems at your local flea market, you can find them pretty easily on auction sites. People try to list and sell them for around $30+ for a carded figure/PCB, but don’t be fooled. They really only go for about $10-15. My guess is that you could complete the whole set including the desktop PC/Computer Warrior Base, Pepsi Can/Hyper Hover Jet and all the figures for under $250. While that’s not a price to scoff at, they won’t break the bank like some other toy lines do.

Article by Hey, I Remember Those – Vendor at The Vintage Toy Mall