The idea was not totally alien to the market. In marketing My Buddy, Hasbro hoped to pioneer a new toy category: a doll line for boys. The Cabbage Patch dolls were highly desirable among young girls boys gravitated toward the veiny, sword-wielding characters of the He-Man franchise.
Then there was My Buddy, which seemed to straddle the gender lines the other major toy companies had drawn. Masters of the Universe was Mattel’s hit, with both the action figures and ancillary products doubling the take of the Cabbage people.
Coleco’s Cabbage Patch Kids were a bona fide phenomenon, ringing up $540 million in sales the year prior. In 1985, toy stores were stocked to the brim with some of the most indelible properties of the decade. That was the case for My Buddy, an oversized doll first introduced by Hasbro in 1985 that failed to make waves on store shelves but informed the creation of the carrot-topped spree killer doll Chucky in writer Don Mancini and director Tom Holland’s 1988 film Child’s Play.
If your toy company's boy-oriented doll doesn’t set the world on fire, you might take comfort in the fact it partially inspired a series of slasher movies.
