The Holodrome Iron Mountain Playset
By Dave Mapes | In Concept Artwork | 7 Nov 2015, 4:34 p.m.
Of all the Visionaries toys the Holodrome remains the Holy Grail for Visionaries fans and collectors. For years fans pondered how far the Holodrome made it through production, with some unsubstantiated claims that the playset, and Season 2 characters, were released in parts of Europe. Could this be true, could the fabled Season 2 toys be out there? The answer is a simple no. We spoke to some of the team at Abrahams-Gentile, the original designers of and owners of the Visionaries brand, and they confirmed that the Holodrome and Season 2 figures did not make it to full production, although engineering pilots had been completed. The steel tools, used to cut the moulds, were manufactured and last seen in a factory in China in the 1980s. A handful of Engineering Pilots for Season 2 characters were produced for Hasbro, and it is believed they remain to this day in their archive facility. As for the Holodrome, it too made it to a completed Engineering Pilot stage (with a few examples bei…
Darkling Lords' Headquarters
By Dave Mapes | In Concept Artwork | 20 Sep 2015, 5:11 p.m.
Darkling Lords' Headquaters
In the Visionaries cartoon and comic book series, Darkstorm's castle is the Darkling Lords' headquarters in an un-named area of Prysmos. The castle design had similarities to the Mollusk, the animal totem of Darkstorm (leader of the Darkling Lords). Whilst vehicles were produced for Season 1, with more planned for Season 2, only one playset base made it through from the design phase into production, the Holodrome Playset, yet even that was did not see a public release. This was not the only playset that was designed for the Visionaries line. The Darkling Lords' were also going to get a “home”.
One concept for the Darkling Lords' Headquarters was that of a giant Dragon Lair based upon the Dragon Totem used for the Darkling Lords' faction. This would have been a nice touch as neither the Spectral Knights' Unicorn nor Darkling Lords Dragon feature in any of the Visionaries designs.
The Dragon Lair was to feature a slide so characters could enter from the …
Visionaries The Game
By Dave Mapes | In Concept Artwork | 11 May 2015, 8:48 p.m.
Visionaries: The Game
Planned for release by Milton Bradley in Year 2 of Visionaries, Visionaries: The Game was a 2 dimensional board game where the premise of the game was to move your Visionaries characters around Prysmos in order to reach the Magical Light. The tagline to the Visionaries series is Knights of the Magical Light, and although the light is mentioned once in the cartoon series, the Magical Light is never mentioned in name (it is merely assumed that this light is the magical power which Merklynn bestows on the successful knights). In Visionaries: The Game the magical light was actually going to appear as some sort of crystal or light source and the end of the game, we assume indicating that your Knight then gains their power (or some other sort of power). The image below shows an early concept of the Magical Light at the end of the game. Interestingly the image below shows a trap, activated by your hand, pushing the knight away.
The game was to feature 3D piece…
Visionaries Toy Adverts
By Steve Mapes | In Advertising | 4 Jan 2015, 5:45 p.m.
Much like other Hasbro Inc brand of the 1980s the Visionaries action figures had a series of TV Adverts, or TV Spots, created to promote the toyline. The spots were produced by global advertising agency Griffin-Bacal who were as subsidiary of Sunbow Productions until they merged with Moss Dragoti in 2001.
Griffin-Bacal Advertising
Hasbro Inc. were one of Griffin-Bacal's first clients and are best known for producing the toy adverts for the Hasbro franchises G.I. Joe: Real American Hero and Transformers. As Hasbro Inc's client, Griffin-Bacal also shot the spots for most of their other brands, and worked closely with Hasbro Inc and Sunbow Productions on the supporting TV series to go with which ever line they would be shooting spots for. Griffin-Bacal mainly show from studios based in Amsterdam and Arizona, though some of their latter TV spots were shot in studios in Vancouver. The Amsterdam studio was used as the primary location for the more successful brands, whilst those with …
Visionaries Reborn
By Steve Mapes | In General , Visionaries Reborn | 28 Dec 2014, 6:45 p.m.
Visionaries Reborn, what is it?
Visionaries Reborn is the name of the pitch that was created by Abrams Gentile Entertainment Incorporated around 2009 - 2010 and sent out various companies as they looked to relaunch the Visionaries brand.
The Pitch
Visionaries Reborn pitched a new Visionaries property aimed at a 3D Movie release or a TV / Web series. AGE Inc.’s hope would be a live action movie franchise along the lines of Transformers, G.I.Joe and Lord Of The Rings. In fact the company has been pushing for a return of Visionaries since the days of the X-Men and Lord of the Rings trilogies, around 2001. The pitch outlines a base setting of the Visionaries universe as well as talking about how the property is ready made for a new generation of fans using the latest in technology.
Out of respect for both AGE Inc., and Hasbro Inc., as the project is still in development, we have decided not to publish specific details from the pitch at this time, though we will update this article…
Cyclor 2-up Hardcopy Wand
By Dave Mapes | In Hardcopy , Series 2 Figures | 5 Sep 2014, 10:20 p.m.
For a few years this was one of a couple of unidentified Visionaries 2-Up resin hard copy pieces which we own, that was until we purchased additional paperwork to track down who Madricain was.
We purchased this wand with some other series 2 hardcopy shields and this, along with one other item, were items we we could tie up to any paperwork we owned or published marketing material. All we knew was that the resin 2-up appeared to be a wand and like some of the other Hardcopies from Visionaries series 2 which we own, it included a product code assigned to it (in this case on an external label rather than written on to it. The label included the following mysterious information
- The text VIS, MADRICIAN which indicate to us that the item was indeed intended to be a wand and not some early version of Cryotek's mace. The word Madrician we thought may well be a deliberate misspelling of magician, although it could be something else or an early name of a figure (such as Cavedweller was …
Hasbro Marketing Book
By Steve Mapes | In Concept Artwork , Marketing Guides | 27 Nov 2013, 4:38 p.m.
An official piece of Hasbro marketing material, not intended for public viewing, the Hasbro Visionaries Marketing book was given out to licencees to ensure that any and all Visionaries products were made to exact specifications to insure brand recognition.
The pages included box art imagery, line art, colour images, bios / information and colour charts. These would then be taken and use on official merchandise such as watches, lunch boxes, stickers etc.
The guide includes instructions to all licence holders on what they had to do to in order to comply with Hasbro's specifications, in order to get their products signed off before production took place.
Here are some of the interesting facts contained in the book
- A Visionaries logo should appear on all panels of the packaging
- The typesetting is Benguiat for all product names and logos
- Exact PMS colours for all characters along with the gold and silver for the Spectral Knights and Darkling Lords, as well as the black are specified …