Audiences fell in love with Tim Burton’s passion film, Beetlejuice, when it hit theaters in 1988. While he was working on finding the right script to create a Batman movie, he fell in love with David Geffen’s script, Beetlejuice. As various writers worked on ironing out the script, especially Larry Wilson, the film changed from a graphicly violent horror flick into a comedy with dark undertones.
Even though the film was called Beetlejuice, the titular character, played by Michael Keaton, was actually called Betelgeuse. They decided to use a phonetic spelling to make it easier for audiences to understand the name. Moreover, he wasn’t even the main character.
The film centered around Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis’s characters, the Maitlands who had recently died in a tragic car crash. As they found that their house was being sold to the Deetz family, they sought out a bio-exterminator to solve their issues. Betelgeuse became the man willing to take care of the Deetz, even though he had ambitions of marrying Lydia Deetz so that he could return to the living world. As the Maitlands grew close to Lydia, they decided to oppose Betelgeuse’s plans and instead live in harmony with the Deetz.
With the noteworthy success of Beetlejuice, Kenner decided to sign on the create a toy line. They produced several 4-5” action figures that mostly featured Beetlejuice. Since they noticed that the crafty ghost had a penchant for shape-shifting and shenanigans, they designed the toys to exaggerate these abilities. The toys also generated a side-line named the Neighborhood Nasties.
In addition to the standard action figures, Kenner produced a wide range of additional play options. They created a gigantic 16” talking Beetlejuice figure. They also created a collectors case to store toys in. There were two vehicles for the ghoul to ride around in, the Creepy Cruiser and the Phantom Flyer. Finally, there was a small playset that resembled Beetljuice’s grave, the Vanishing Vault, and a role-play toy, the Gross Out Meter.
Even though these toys had a cartoonish appearance, there were never any action figures that featured elements from the concurrently running cartoon show. However, prototypes showed that Kenner had plans to include the animated series if the toy line continued.
As for the animated series, it took on a life of its own and ran on television from 1989 until 1991. This series changed the basic plot of the show, removing the Maitlands completely, to instead focus on the friendship between Lydia Deetz and Beetlejuice. Their hijinks lasted for 94 episodes in total.
The cartoon’s popularity also inspired Burger King to include toys with their kids’ meals in 1990. There was also a short comic book series from Harvel Comics that ran from 1991 to 1992. Unfortunately, no company officially made toys for the cartoon series back in the 90s.
Over the decades, several companies have created Beetlejuice action figures and toys. Sideshow Collectibles made a 1/6 scale action figure of the titular character. Neca has created multiple iterations of Beetlejuice toys, including ones of the sandworms, since 2001. Funko has also included the movie’s character in their Pop! toy line. Recently, Loyal Subjects paid tribute to the cartoon series by producing three action figures of the main characters.
The ongoing popularity of Beetlejuice has kept rumors of a potential sequel alive throughout the decades. While Tim Burton had considered creating a film where Betelgeuse went to Hawaii, the idea has remained little more than a rumor for over thirty years. However, there has been one new piece of Beetlejuice entertainment, a musical that premiered in Washington, D.C. in 2018. It successfully transitioned onto Broadway in 2019.
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How to use the Identification Tool to find your action figures and toy lines
Do you have an old-school G1 Transformers toy you are trying to identify? Don’t know the name? No problem! I’ll help you use this identification tool. For example, just type in “jet” in the figure name field and hit search. You’ll see all the Transformers G1 Toys that are jets. Maybe try “car” and select the color “blue” and a list of Transformers matching those results will appear. Maybe you don’t know what the finished vehicle will make, so try searching by “red” only. Did you forget to remove “car”? Now search just the color “red”. Perhaps you know the name, but can’t spell it try “Wheljck” instead of “Wheeljack” and all the Wheeljack characters are listed for you.
We have all the G1 Transformers list of characters in our database. You can search by Transformers name, as well as just line or subgroup. You can identify Transformers that are all red or all the figures that are orange. The Transformers toy list can even be sorted by package type. You can identify which came with a sticker sheet, or which came without instructions. Want to know all the 1984 Transformers toys and none of the others from 1985-1990? No problem, just select the release year from “1984” to “1984”. Perhaps you just want to know the list of G1 Transformers “Autobots”, or just the “Decepticons”, our ID tool can do that.
Mostly we made this so you could see if your action figures were missing some accessories or parts. So you can see that too.
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