The golden days of D&D licenses – the 1980s

I don’t know what started me thinking about “the good old days” of D&D licensing today, but I think it kicked off when I found some accessories for Melf (aka Prince Brightflame – or Peralay, as his name was later changed to) from the old LJN line of AD&D action figures misplaced in a box of assorted odds and ends.

For a lot of younger gamers today, the idea that at some point in the long distant past (which we know as the 1980s) there were Dungeons and Dragons licensed products all over the place probably seems strange.

But the fact remains that while D&D was a fad in the late 1970s through the 1980s, TSR made sure that it was a well-marketed fad.

We had Dungeons & Dragons candy. Granted, it tasted absolutely terrible – like flavored chalk – but just think how cool it was! At the endcaps of the cash register lanes, right there with the trading cards and Snickers bars were little cheap boxes of real, honest-to-goodness D&D candy.

And we had 1979′s Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Coloring Album by Troubador Press. This was a mini-game suitable for solitaire play or for up to four players. The upper two thirds of each page told part of a linear story corresponding with the pictures to be colored. The bottom third of each page contained part of the mini-game. The center of the book (pictured to the immediate right) portrayed a dungeon map with numbered rooms. The reader simply proceeded through the maze, turning to entries corresponding with numbered rooms and resolving the encounters that took place in them. After each encounter, dice were rolled to see if the treasure that signaled victory had been found.

Yeah, at the end of the day it was little more than a 32-page excuse to milk moms out of even more money for the name Dungeons & Dragons – but it worked.

And there were Colorforms. These were paper-thin, die-cut vinyl sheet images and shapes that that were meant to be applied to a slick cardboard scene board, much like placing paper dolls against a paper backdrop.

The images stuck to the background via static cling and could be repositioned to create new scenarios.

Now, while these D&D Colorforms were pretty much of no real value to playing the actual game itself, they were neat. You got many of the LJN AD&D figures in paper doll form – and like a lot of boys at that time, if it came with Warduke, then you absolutely had to have it.

And speaking of Warduke – he was also a part of LJN’s Advanced Dungeons & Dragons action figure lineup.

22 articulated action figures, 7 creatures and 1 playset (the Fortress of Fangs, seen to the right) were produced over a little more than 2 years. The AD&D toy line also consisted of a non-articulated PVC toy line, a bendy toy line, and several wind-ups monsters. There were more than 45 different figures in the non-articulated assortment, which allowed imaginative kids to own an enormous amount of compatible fantasy figures.

And while we didn’t have Dungeons & Dragons online, we did have several licensed video games to spend our idle time with, like the 1982 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Intellivision game, which was the 2nd AD&D game to be officially licensed, preceded by the Dungeons & Dragons Computer Fantasy Game.

Fun fact: It was the first Intellivision cartridge to use more than 4K of ROM.

Contrary to popular belief, the first dungeon crawl video game was pedit5, written in 1974 by Rusty Rutherford for the PLATO system, making it older than Colossal Cave Adventure or Zork by 3 years.

Shortly after pedit5 was born, the D&D-inspired “dnd” and “Dungeon” games were created, but were not widely known and unlicensed by TSR.

It wasn’t until 1981 where we got our first licensed D&D game – but when faced with the (at that time) high cost of the Intellivision – $250 – there were not too many kids who were lucky enough to own the system. D&D computer / console games wouldn’t really take off until 1988′s very awesome Pool of Radiance.

Lastly, we got some really neat electronic stuff, like the Dungeons & Dragons Computer Labyrinth Game, an electronic board game released by Mattel in 1980.

This was an elegantly simple concept that tured into a very challenging game. The computer placed 50 walls randomly across the board, and then two players competed head to head or solitaire. Each player tried to hinder the other’s advances while searching each room for the treasure. If a player encountered the dragon, it would tear the warrior apart in just three strikes.

A lot of gamers will lament about what they feel is lost from the hobby as far as editions and rules and miniatures, but one of the things that I really miss most of all are the great licensed products that we had in the old days.

Do I think that D&D will ever really be mainstream? No. But I don’t want it to be, either. I kind of like it as it is. And despite the plethora of licenses that TSR put out in the 1980s, I’ve yet to see any evidence that it brought any new players into the hobby.

Even still, I miss it all the same. Just think about the neat stuff that we could have from Wizards of the Coast, being that their parent company is Hasbro (probably the best toy manufacturer in the world). So far, video games aside, we’ve gotten little more than a motion picture shitefest, a direct-to-video sequel, and a horrid animated adaptation of Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight.

But I suppose those days are gone. I’ll just shut up and game now.