Toybiz X-Men Bishop 1996

ToyBiz was in business for a long time. Before they started kicking articulation's ass, however, they produced more basic lines. It seems like they made about 25,000 X-Men figures in the 1990's, but it could have been a few less than that. Bishop here was released in 1993. This was the fourth series of their X-Men line, and Bishop was joined on the shelf with Apocalypse, Omega Red, Strong Guy (no, seriously, that's his name.. it's a long story..), Tusk (he didn't age well), Wolverine in black, Wolverine in blue, and Wolverine in green, produced for the no-longer-existent KayBee Toys. Let's just say it wasn't hard to buy a Wolverine figure in 1993.This figure is actually the repaint, "Bishop II" from 1996, but the paint was the only real change that was made.

McFarlane Toys - Badrock

1992 was a pretty exciting time for comics. X-Men and Spider-Man had enjoyed relaunches that were hugely popular, largely because of speculators planning on getting rich twenty years later, and stories were becoming more gritty and "extreme." And then Marvel lost almost all of its most major talent.

Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane, Erik Larsen, Jim Valentino, Marc Silvestri, Whilce Portacio, and Chris Claremont decided to form their own company in the interest of owner's rights, and founded Image Comics. Each of the creators would have their own company underneath the umbrella Image logo, and would control their own creations exclusively (although Portacio and Claremont did not create their own companies, ultimately). Easily the two most popular out of the gate were Rob Liefeld with Youngblood and Todd McFarlane with Spawn, although Jim Lee's Wild C.A.T.S. and Erik Larsen's Savage Dragon would be close in the running. McFarlane would soon create a toy line to capitalize on his creations (and not being happy with what existing toy companies could do for him) and later branched out to include some of the more popular Image characters. And that's how Badrock ended up in toy form.