'X-Men: The Animated Series' Intro Done With Action Figures Is Incredible

For children of the 1990s, X-Men: The Animated Series and action figure are two things that likely [...]

For children of the 1990s, X-Men: The Animated Series and action figure are two things that likely bring a powerful sense of nostalgia, but what if that feeling could be amplified by combining the two?

X-Men: The Animated Series just celebrated its 25th anniversary, making now the perfect time to look back a perfect, shot-for-shot, stop-motion recreation of the classic cartoon's opening sequence using action figures.

The video was created by director Kyle Roberts and Reckless Abandonment Pictures in 2012, when X-Men: The Animated Series was celebrating its 20th Anniversary:

"With the 20th anniversary approaching of Director Kyle Roberts' favorite cartoon growing up, he wanted to see if his team could re-create the 1992 X-Men cartoon animated intro using action figures and stop motion! With over 4,000 individual pictures taken, Roberts spent two months rotoscoping and animating all of the special effects.

Art director Nathan Poppe drew over 60 background images used in this project with his "doodle" style rad artwork. Colin Nance and Zach Zellar recreated the original theme from scratch and you can download on Colin's sound cloud."

Robert has an entire playlist of stop-motion animation videos like this one, including recreations of the openings of the Adam West Batman television series and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, as well as videos featuring characters like Wolverine and Deadpool.

While Roberts used some quality toys for his video, there was a time when tie-in merchandise nearly killed X-Men: The Animated, as series showrunner Eric Lewald explained in a retrospective interview.

"There was incredible pressure to change it around and make it younger, sillier, or give them a pet dog," Lewald recalled. "To dumb it down or make it younger. Luckily, everybody on the creative side banded together and had, 'No, you'll have to fire me' moments. [Marvel would say], 'Put toys in or give Wolverine some Wolverine curtains.' 'No we're not going to do that.' If you were a 30-something serious defender of right and justice in your world, would you be wearing pajamas of yourself or would you be calling yourself on your Wolverine phone? No, you wouldn't. He's a serious guy. This is not a toy show. Sorry. 'You'll have to fire me to change it.'"

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