Being born in the mid-’70s and growing up in the ’80s, I got to live through one of the best decades for films ever. Over-the-top action flicks starring action staples like Arnie and Sly. Horror icons such as Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees doing their finest work. Raucous, adult-rated comedy films like Police Academy. Sci-fi classics such as Robocop, Aliens and The Terminator. We had some of the best of the best films through the 1980s and ones that have stood the test of time. However, it was also a bit of a bizarre thing going on where those adult-rated films had merchandise aimed at children.

It really was a strange era to live through. Let me take a look at Police Academy first. Just in case anyone has forgotten, Police Academy is a comedy film that contains nudity, swearing and even racism. There’s a scene in the film that features a prostitute giving a blow job to someone while hiding under a podium. One bit has a white police officer call a black trainee a “dumb fat jigabo”. There are a few “shits”, “assholes” and even “fuck”. Plus, a wee bit of titty action. The point is that Police Academy is not a film aimed at kids. So obviously, it made perfect sense to make a Police Academy kid’s cartoon.

It ran for two seasons, 1988-89, and had a total of 65 episodes. So exactly how do you adapt an adult comedy with tits, blow jobs and racism into a kid’s cartoon? Well, and to be fair, the cartoon (which is said to be canon) was released between Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol and Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach and the films had become more ‘family friendly’ by then anyway. What started out as adult entertainment became PG-rated films with an emphasis on slapstick and milder/sillier humour with the sequels. Even so, it is a bit strange that someone at Warner Bros. Television said: “You remember that film with the whore giving that old fella a blow job? Let’s turn that into a kid’s cartoon.” There was a live-action Police Academy: The Series too.

Even John Rambo was not safe from this bizarre practice. Just in case you need a reminder, John Rambo was the main character from the film (and novel) First Blood. Played by Sylvester Stallone, Rambo is a character suffering from PTSD following the Vietnam War and is prone to violent acts due to that PTSD. While the first film is pretty bloodless and has a very low body count, the sequels really do ramp up the violence, blood and dead bodies. As an example, First Blood has an onscreen body count of 1. Rambo: First Blood Part 2 has an onscreen body count of 75. In short, and unlike the Police Academy series, the Rambo films started out as adult films and remained adult films all the way. So why the fuck was there a Rambo kid’s cartoon? Called Rambo: The Force of Freedom, it only lasted one season in 1986… a year after the 75 onscreen kills of Rambo: First Blood Part II had been released.

It wasn’t just the carton either as the show had a kid’s toy tie-in range. Made by Coleco, there were two series of the toys and both featured plenty of PTSD-suffering John Rambo, other characters from the cartoon, vehicles, guns and all sorts of play sets. There were books, kid’s books. Some of them were book/tape sets where you could play the cassette (remember those kids?) and listen to the story – while flicking through the pages of the book for the visuals. I’ve not been able to track any of these down, but I really want to, just to compare the storytelling to David Morrell’s First Blood novel. There were even Rambo colouring and activity books, so you that could keep the kids occupied with dot-to-dots of John Rambo cutting down hundreds of enemies with an M60 machine gun.

From one ’80’s action movie icon to another, The Terminator. As Kyle Reese said in the film: “Listen, and understand, that Terminator is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop… ever, until you are dead!” or “You still don’t get it, do you? He’ll find her, that’s what he does, that’s ALL he does. You can’t stop him. He’ll wade through you, reach down her throat and pull her fuckin’ heart out.” Yup, that T-800 was pretty brutal, an unstoppable killing machine sent from the future. So… kid’s toys then? These were based on Terminator 2: Judgment Day rather than the original film. While T2 went for a more action-centric approach and was not as dark or as violent as the first film, it was still not what you would call ‘kid’s entertainment’. Even so, the film had a ton of kid’s toys. The toy range was made by Kenner, they did the original Star Wars toys too. There were loads of these Kenner T2 toys, figures, vehicles and play sets. There was one where you could put ‘flesh’ on a T-800 endoskeleton and then pull it all off.

Sticking with 1980s robots/cyborgs, let’s get Robocop in on the kid’s merchandise action. Much like Rambo, this overly violent character also had his own kid’s cartoon show… two of them, in fact. The first one was simply titled RoboCop and, just like the Rambo cartoon, this was toned down to suit a younger audience. Guns didn’t fire bullets, but lasers and the overall setting of a morally corrupt and gritty, crime-ridden Detroit was changed to a more sci-fi one. While the storyline was slightly altered, it was still about Alex Murphy being killed in the line of duty and brought back as a cyborg police officer, just far less Paul Verhoeven-like. The second cartoon was called RoboCop: Alpha Commando and it basically turned Robocop into Inspector Gadget as he is now equipped with roller skates and all sorts of asinine shit that made no sense. This one is far more slapsticky with stupid humour and such.

But, of course, there were toys too and from Kenner once more. This range had plenty to play with, various RoboCops, loads of strange villains, a pretty decent-looking ED-209, several vehicles and even a wearable Robo-helmet for the times that you want to cosplay as a really shit-looking RoboCop. To say that, it is rather perverse to see RoboCop go from shooting rapists in the dick and clotheslining robbers who scream “Fuck me. Fuck me. Fuck me” over and over… to him becoming a kid’s cartoon and toy range is an understatement. Even more funny is that RoboCop 3 kind of took a satirical swipe at exactly this kind of thing with the Johnny Rehab toy line ad. One of the very few things in Robocop 3 that wasn’t utter shit.

I’m not done with sci-fi yet because Aliens had a toy range too… Aliens. Much like Terminator 2 (also directed by James Cameron), this sequel was not as dark as the original film and went for a more action-based genre over the previous horror one, but it was still not suitable for kids. I bet you can’t guess what manufacturer was behind turning this adult-rated film into kid’s merchandise. Yup, Kenner again. I’m starting to think that the folks at Kenner were sadistic bastards. This Aliens toy line has all the usual gubbins that you’d expect now, various recognisable Maries and xenomorphs, play sets, vehicles and all that. It even had the power loader from the film. But, as I was researching the Aliens toy line, I found something that I didn’t know existed. There were toys for the first film, Alien… and that is, somehow, far more bizarre.

There was a xenomorph figure from 1979 and yes, Kenner was the company behind it. The figure was pulled from sale due to backlash from parents who complained that making a kid’s toy based on an adult-rated film was wrong… but everything else I’ve covered so far has been okay? As it was pulled from the market, a boxed and original 18″ Alien Kenner figure can go for quite a pretty penny these days. There was an Alien board game where you had to try and escape the Nostromo. There’s more with an Alien Movie Viewer. This was a little camera thing that you held up to your eye, turned a crank and a short version of the film would play, here’s a video of what the film looked like. Honestly, for kids in 1979, that would’ve been pretty intense as it does show some of the scarier scenes from the film.

I also found something called an Alien Chase Target Set. This was a kid’s dart gun with cardboard targets of the xenomorph that you could shoot. Another one was called Alien Blaster, which was similar, with a gun that fired ping-pong balls at a large xenomorph standee. Several Alien jigsaw puzzles, there was even one that came inside an alien egg, though it wasn’t a movie-accurate alien egg. I kind of fell down a vintage 1979 Alien toy line rabbit hole, and there may have been more that I’ve missed.

I need to slightly change tack now and quickly delve into horror to end on. There are most probably more adult-rated films/kid’s merchandise that I’ve not covered here, but this article is getting on in length and I don’t want to bore you too much.  A Nightmare on Elm Street had some kid’s merchandise. Now, bearing in mind that the main villain of the films is a child killer, both before and after death, isn’t it very strange to base goods for kids on a series of films where the main plot revolves around killing kids?

First up, there was A Nightmare on Elm Street board game. Yup, I know that adults can play board games, but this one from 1987 has an age rating of 12+. Still, if that isn’t good enough, there was a second board game released in 1989 and this one had an age rating of 8+. These were clearly marketed towards kids because if they weren’t, then surely they wouldn’t have low age ratings. There was something called a Freddy Krueger Squish’em, which was a soft and squeezable Freddy figure, and there’s no way that anyone will convince me that these were aimed at adults. A Freddy Krueger yo-yo, Freddy Krueger bubblegum, a Freddy Fright Squirter which was basically a water pistol in the shape of Freddy’s head… and it even has a kid playing with it on the front of the box. There was a Freddy dress-up figure that you could change from pre-burnt Freddy to post-burnt Freddy.

Honestly, there was a shit-ton of Freddy and Nightmare merchandise aimed at kids, especially during the late ’80s when Freddy-mania was in full swing. The awesome documentary, Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy mentions quite a lot of it. But, there was one particular item that is mentioned in that documentary that did kind of have me in a state of disbelief…

Those are actual and officially licensed Freddy Krueger pyjamas for kids. Just let that idea sink in for a while. In an early draft of the script for the first film, Freddy didn’t just kill kids, he raped them. This idea was dropped from the shooting script because of a real-life case in the news at the time and the producers didn’t want people to draw parallels between the film and what was actually going on with the trial. However, there are still some hints throughout the original film that Freddy did more than just kill children, it just became subtext. So, while not explicitly spelt out, Freddy Krueger sexually abused kids (this is made much more obvious in the sequels). So to summarise, we have a character from an adult-rated film who molested and killed children, who was killed by a bunch of pissed-off parents, who comes back from the dead and kills the kids of the parents who killed him as an act of revenge… in their sleep. And someone thought it would be a good idea to make kid’s pyjamas to wear for when they go to sleep based on this very character who kills kids while they sleep?

Okay little Johnny, time for bed. Just slip into your child rapist/killer pyjamas based on a guy that kills children in their sleep and get yourself off to bed. Sweet dreams.