RoboForce, the 1980s toy line recently bought up by Nacelle and given a straight-to-series order as a new cartoon, is set to debut sooner than you probably think. Speaking with ComicBook at Comic Con International in San Diego last month, Nacelle’s Brian Volk-Weiss told us that the current plan is to get the series out in the next few months, so that hopefully it drops sometime in 2024 (although he can’t actually confirm that).
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Created in 1984 by Ruby-Spears, the hope was always to make a multimedia franchise that could then sell more toys, which would move story in a long-running cycle, not unlike what shows like GI Joe and Transformers had done. Instead, there was one movie — Robo Force: The Revenge of Nazgar — which didn’t exactly set the world on fire. In fact, the only way to get the movie on an offiical release is to by the Challenge of the Go-Bots vol. 2 DVD from Warner Archive, and watch the Robo Force movie as a bonus feature.
Speaking with Chris Killian, he told us that “I can’t reveal” the exact release date but that it’s “highly likely” it will happen this year.
To celebrate the fifth anniversary of The Toys That Made Us, Volk-Weiss recently spoke with ComicBook.com about how the Robo Force toy line came to pass.
“Everything was organic. It wasn’t like Toys That Made Us came out, and then I’m sitting there three months later being like, now we can make toys. It wasn’t like that,” Volk-Weiss explained. “What happened was, somebody else saw Toys That Made Us. That guy called me, his name’s Michael Goodman. That guy called me and he was like, ‘Hey, your brand is so good. I bet we could work together and you and I separately would have better careers if we worked together, because I could make a lot with your brand.’ Usually this bites me in the ass, but this is one of the few times where it worked. I took a risk, and he was absolutely right. Because Toys That Made Us was so popular and everybody knew Nacelle had made it in the toy community, he was able to go to the guy that owns Robo Force and say, ‘Hey, I’m working with Nacelle, they want to buy your copyright.’ Those conversations wouldn’t have been possible without Toys That Made Us, and I would’ve never met this Michael Goodman without Toys That Made Us. What I think I’m demonstrating is there wasn’t a master plan; we just went with it and if we saw an opportunity, we took a swing, and it was all very lucky.”
Here’s the official synopsis for RoboForce:
RoboForce: The Animated Series is set in 2089. The latest version of Soraya Aviram’s RoboForce debuted with plans to assist a new intergalactic society on Earth. Unfortunately, the same day as the announcement, Soraya’s rival, Silas Duke, revealed his new Utopia Aegis 101 line of bots, which made RoboForce immediately obsolete. RoboForce split up and was forced into menial jobs for 15 years without hope of ever being heroes… Until mysteriously, a rogue code infected the Utopia Aegis 101’s to turn on humanity, and no one else besides Maxx 89 and the rest of RoboForce has a chance to stop them.
The series will be executive produced by Brian Volk-Weiss, who also is directing, alongside Cisco Henson, Matt Kravitsky, Michael Goodman, Tom Stern and Gavin Hignight for Nacelle. Dwayne Johnson, Dany Garcia, Hiram Garcia and Brian Gewirtz will serve as executive producers on behalf of Seven Bucks Productions.
