Since the early 1980s, Hasbro had been dominating a large part of the toy market with their ever popular toy line G.I Joe. Encouraged by the massive success of their line of 3.75 inch boys action figures, Hasbro set out to make something in the same vein but in the fantasy genre. Thus, in 1987, Visionaries: Knights of the Magical Light, was born.
Considering how popular G.I Joe had been, and the fact that wave 2 was 33% larger than wave 1, sales couldn't have been that awful. The property also had a Toy line, TV show, and comic series. It seemed that Visionaries was headed straight to the top, which leads to the question: what happened?
Contrary to popular belief, Visionaries wasn't cancelled due
to poor toy sales; it ended because of Hasbro not renewing their
contract with Marvel/Sunbow, the same event that also ended Jem and the
Holograms. It's hard to find numbers on how well the line was selling; could sales not being the best have led Hasbro to not care enough about
saving the line when they didn't renew their contract? Sure, it's
possible, but the size of the massive unproduced second wave actually
gives credit to the theory that the line was doing quite well.
The second wave was set to be released in 1988, and include fourteen figures, four vehicles which included an exclusive figure, two vehicles without a figure, a playset, and six small Sun Imps toys. Dang, we missed out on a lot of good characters and vehicles.
So if the contract between Hasbro and Marvel/Sunbow hadn't ended, or Hasbro decided to save Visionaries like they did with G.I Joe and Transformers, what could have come of the Spectral Knights and Darkling Lords? If Hasbro had continued to produce and sell large waves of figures and vehicles each year, and the cartoon had gotten a second season, Visionaries could have been one of the most prominent 80s toy lines, right up there with Masters of the Universe, G.I Joe, Transformers, and Tmnt. Had visionaries ever achieved this level of fame, the chances of a reboot being released at some point also would have been much larger.
Sadly, this wasn't the case, and Visionaries has been struggling to find its footing for the past thirty years. In 2009/2010 there was a pitch for a reboot called: Visionaries Reborn, and Hasbro filed for new trademark applications for several names in the series at this time, although nothing ever came of this. In 2013, despite no announcements of a new Visionaries reboot, Hasbro customer service (most likely accidentally) put out listings for eight 6 inch Visionaries action figures: Leoric, Cryotec, Galadria, Arzon, Darkstorm, Virulina, Cravex, and Cindarr. This led many fans to believe that a reboot was just around the corner, however, nothing ever happened and Hasbro removed the figure listings from their site without ever addressing them.
There was lots of talk about a Visionaries reboot coming to fruition through the Hasbro Cinematic Universe, and a movie was even confirmed at one point, with rumors that the movie was going to be set in present day earth, and the Spectral Knights and Darkling Lords would all be teenagers, but this too was eventually cancelled along with movies for several other Hasbro properties.
Visionaries finally reentered pop culture with the comic series Transformers vs Visionaries, which debuted in December of 2017 with little fanfare. Since then, there hasn't been much discussion of a reboot. Maybe one day the Visionaries will finally find their place in pop culture with a new TV series or toy-line, but for now, they're stuck in the 80s
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