Promotional Superheroes: The Top 5

Promotional Superheroes: Each Sold Separately

Marketing isn’t an easy job. You need every trick in the book to make your product stand out from the pack. That becomes even harder with toys which have a lot of competition for parents’ paychecks. How do you get a wide audience to know about your toy and want to buy it? One trick is to build a TV show around it.

Promotional series are meant to get kids interested in merchandise that already exists. Something is made, then featured in a cartoon or comic to draw attention to it. Don’t mix this up with toyetic superheroes like the Power Rangers where toys were made after appearing on a TV show. So which promotional superheroes did best at conquering your wallets? Let’s find out.

Our criteria this time: The adaptation must be about the product being sold, not an ad appearing in something else like Superman teaming up with the Nesquik Bunny.

#5 Promotional Superheroes: Kingdom Hearts

Promotes: Disney, Final Fantasy
Voice Cast: Haley Joel Osment, David Gallagher, Hayden Panettiere, Tony Anselmo, Bill Farmer

The Merchandise: Kingdom Hearts has a unique spot on this list because the merch it sold wasn’t its own. It was made to promote Disney’s classic movies and Square-Enix’s Final Fantasy. The companies settled on an original story with a Final Fantasy-esque hero traveling through Disney worlds to save the multiverse.

Kingdom Hearts featured many Disney movies and led to profitable redesigns of Final Fantasy heroes. The series formed its own lore and marketable characters across a dozen games, comics, and other adaptations. 

The Series: A boy named Sora and his friends prepare to go on an adventure. The night before they leave, their island is destroyed by monsters called The Heartless. Sora discovers a magic sword called The Keyblade and is sent to another world.

Sora meets court mage Donald Duck and royal knight Goofy, who have been charged by a missing King Mickey to protect the Keyblade’s wielder. Sora searches for his friends while protecting several planets from Heartless invasions. His greatest power is easily befriending legendary heroes, including Hercules, Peter Pan, and Cloud Strife

Fun Fact: Kingdom Hearts almost had a TV show in the Aughts. Eight Crazy Nights’ Seth Kearsley made a promotional pilot with the game’s cast, but Disney rejected it because they didn’t want to interfere with the game director’s plans. Disney is rumored to be considering an adaptation for Disney+.

#4 Rom: The Space Knight

Promotes: Rom: The Space Knight

The Merchandise: Rom: The Space Knight was an action figure made by Parker Bros. in 1979. The company wanted to cash in on electronic toys, but made Rom as cheaply as possible. A terrible commercial didn’t help, suggesting that kids could imagine what his tech did instead of hyping him up. Rom’s toy was a flop.

Comics were his salvation. Marvel was commissioned to produce a Rom comic series that fleshed out the character, gave him a supporting cast, and created villains called The Dire Wraiths. Even stranger, the story and everything made for it is still canon in the Marvel Universe, directly tying into a few characters’ pasts.

The Series: Galador was a peaceful world until it was invaded by the Dire Wraiths, a magical-focused offshoot of the Skrulls. Galadorian warriors called the Space Knights transformed themselves into cyborgs to fight the Wraiths. Their greatest champion, Rom, hunted Wraiths on Earth. Unfortunately, he was mistaken for a rampaging robot vaporizing innocent people.

Rom fought many heroes and villains due to misunderstandings. He unintentionally caused X-Man Rogue to become a hero after she copied his innate nobility. A device used to counter the Wraiths later depowered Storm. Rom eventually exposed the Dire Wraiths and led an army of superheroes to banish them from Earth forever.

#3 Dungeons and Dragons

Promoting: Dungeons and Dragons

The Merchandise: Dungeons and Dragons is a pen and paper RPG series. All you need are the rulebooks and a few (dozen) dice. Additional rulesets and lore for various settings were released over time, including four full “editions” each intrinsically changing the game.

Beyond the rules, Dungeons and Dragons loves selling monster figurines. Dozens of novels have been released, following the adventures of Drow Ranger Drizzt Do’Urden, lich god Vecna, and other major characters. Many video games have also been released. The award-winning Baldur’s Gate 3 will soon be adapted as an HBO show.

The Series: This is tricky. There is no definitive Dungeons and Dragons story, so we’re gonna hit the lightning round with the three best known.

CBS’ Dungeons and Dragons followed several children from Earth who were inexplicably transported to The Realm. A mysterious mentor called Dungeon Master gave them powerful magical items and cryptic advice. They searched for a way home while being pursued by dark lord Venger.

Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves has a Bard who unwittingly helped the Big Bad steal a relic that could doom a city. He assembles a party of fellow misfit adventurers to steal it back, assuming they don’t kill each other first.

Critical Role is the most popular Dungeons and Dragons series. A group of famous voice actors have played through three gargantuan campaigns and currently are making a fourth. The first two have been adapted into Amazon shows: The Legend of Vox Machina and The Mighty Nein. Check out our reviews while you wait for Bells’ Hells and the fourth campaign to be adapted.

#2 Promotional Superheroes: Transformers

Promoting: The Transformers
Voice Cast: Peter Cullen, Dan Gilvezan, Christopher Collins, Frank Welker

The Merchandise: The Transformers were an adaptation of Japanese toys called Diaclone and Microchange. They were recolored and had their lore changed from being piloted machines to living robots. Hundreds of toys were released, including crossovers with other franchises. If you want giant robot versions of The DeLorean, Ecto-1, or a Death Star that turns into Darth Vader, you’ve come to the right place.

The Transformers followed Rom to Marvel for their own promotional comic. The final issue boasted about being the one-hundred and twentieth in a four-issue limited series. They’ve had a few dozen more runs at various comic studios. Some focus on the run-up to the war, others on its fallout. 

The Story: Cybertron was a world populated by robots called Cybertronians. A revolutionary called Megatron rose against the corrupt government, forming a militant faction called the Decepticons. They battled against the Autobots, defenders of Cybertron. Both factions forgot the war’s origins over millions of years, leaving the Autobots as heroes fighting an endless war against the evil Decepticons.

Dwindling resources caused both factions to leave Cybertron. They crashed on Earth and copied vehicles, which they mistook for the dominant lifeforms. The Autobots’ messianic leader, Optimus Prime, fell in love with Earth and swore to protect it from the Decepticons.

#1 Pokemon

Promoting: Pokemon

Voice Cast: Veronica Taylor, Rachel Lillis, Eric Stuart, James Carter Cathcart, Maddie Blaustein

The Merchandise: Pokemon is a series of video games about children travelling the world, capturing magical creatures, and having them battle each other. It spawned dozens of sequels, trading cards, models, toys, anything you can think of, and probably a few things you can’t.

Pokemon was the only option for the greatest promotional series. It’s the most profitable franchise of all time, having raised $115 billion. That’s almost double Mickey Mouse’s #2 earnings.

The Series: Ash Ketchum leaves home to become a Pokemon Master. He’s given a stubborn, lightning-shooting rat named Pikachu who is more of a danger to him than other Pokemon. Ash entered the Gym Leader Challenge for a shot at the championship.

Ash frequently caught new Pokemon and spent a lot of time with others, all helpfully named for kids by his Pokedex. Friends and rivals joined Ash on his journey, which helped a lot after villainous Team Rocket began hunting his unusually powerful Pikachu.

What Promotional series was your favorite? Do you still have any of your old merch? Sound off in the comments.

Image: Nicholas Galitzine stars in MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE. © 2026 Amazon MGM Studios Content Services LLC

Jared Bounacos

Jared Bounacos has written for Movie Rewind since 2016.