If you were a fan of Dragon Ball Z in the 90s or early 2000s in the U.S. or Canada, chances are you’ll remember these guys:
The DBZ bug bit me at some point in ’97 and finding anything Dragon Ball in stores proved to be nearly impossible. After lots of searching, there was only one small store near me in the city of Greensboro, North Carolina that carried these action figures at the time – Cosmic Castle. I still remember the anime posters, comic books, and other collectibles that lined the inside of that awesome comic shop and it made quite the impression on nine-year-old me.
Feeling nostalgic, I decided to do a little research on the story behind these action figures, and offer some perspective on the impact of these toys with respect to the growing interest in the Dragon Ball Z series during the late 90s.
Initially, Irwin Toys simply re-released Bandai and AB Toys figures. These were released in Irwin-branded packaging and were available in different series. Before I started watching DBZ in subtitled Japanese, I was, like many kids in North America, still on the Cartoon Network (Toonami) airing schedule. This meant that I was very puzzled by seeing Krillin with hair and was intrigued by characters like Trunks, Tapion, and Cell who hadn’t appeared in the series yet. I believe only the Saiyan Saga had aired in the U.S. at this point.
Irwin Toys featured 2-inch and 5-inch toys, as well as some shorter figures of younger characters like Gotenks, Goten, and Young Gohan. I personally never collected the very small figures, but I remember going to Cosmic Castle every couple of months to see what new characters they had in stock. Curiously, they never re-released the GT series of figures from Bandai, though this may have been due to licensing issues or concerns that there wouldn’t be a large market for the GT series in North America.
It wasn’t until the end of the 1999 that Irwin Toys started manufacturing their own original line of Dragon Ball Z figures. The first series was comprised of one of my personal favorites, Master Roshi, as well as Bulma, Nappa, Raditz, and Garlic Jr. (If you’ve only seen DBZ Kai, then note that Garlic Jr. was a ‘filler saga’ in DBZ after the Frieza saga, you can read about the sagas here). Irwin’s original line came with accessories like Dragon Balls, swords, medallions, and later, cards.
In addition to the standard line of figures, they also produced two other lines of figures in the late nineties to early 2000s. The first was a series called “Striking Z Fighters.” These figures, as their namesake suggests, had various actions they could perform, such as ‘punching’ or ‘kicking’ with boards to break apart, martial arts style.
The other line of figures, “Energy Blasters,” featured several characters that could shoot out ‘ki blasts’ with the push of a spring-loaded button in their backs or by pulling down their arm like a switch. I had the Vegeta and Piccolo from this series and the detail was better than their standard figures.
Beyond these lines, Irwin Toys also distributed exclusive runs of figures to stores like Electronics Boutique (EB Games). These figures were generally made from the same molds as previously released figures, but were available in different color schemes. Beyond this point in time, Irwin also released a few more sets of figures and packs, but the mid-2000s and later don’t represent the nostalgic ‘golden age’ for me, though I do plan on including more information about these lines as an update to this post in the future.
For me, these early runs of Irwin-distributed figures will always be closely tied to my nostalgic first-viewing of Dragon Ball Z itself. It was almost like a quest to find these figures early on, and I spent many hours staring at the back of the boxes to see what other cool characters were out there to find. The back of each of these early boxes would show the other figures available:
I was pleasantly surprised to find that most of these figures are still available with a quick search on eBay and Amazon. Adjusting for inflation, most of these aren’t that much more expensive than they were when they were new in the store.
Did you have any of these Irwin action figures in the past? Which one was your favorite?
