"Max, my boy. You are earth's only hope!" He's the miniature adventurer with the spirit of Jonny Quest, the stature of Danny DeVito and a magical red hat. Created by British toy manufacturer, Bluebird Toys, Mighty Max was the company's attempt to cash in on a young male demographic as its girl-centric Polly Pocket line of micro-doll fashion sets did several years prior with young females. Did it work? Oh yeah.
As mentioned previously, I received my very first Mighty Max miniature playset alongside a pack of Monsters in My Pocket action figures and ever since the two toy brands have really been inseparable to me. Pocket monsters aside, though, Max had a pretty good run of his own that included a toy line (of course), a kick-ass animated series and even scored a video game on both the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. So yeah, you could say he got around.
While the video games were ludicrously confusing and not fun at all, the toys and cartoon series were surprisingly phenomenal and well developed. In fact the toy/tv tie was so well done that I would wager that it bordered on a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles level of execution, only grittier. Truth be told some of the elements in both the Mighty Max playsets and animation were borderline PG-13 material (which to a 9 year old is a BIG plus).
My favorite of the multi-series toy line has to be Horror Heads which featured a grue gallery of (essentially) severed monsters heads complete with blood, bugs, dislodged eyeballs, zombies and yes, even a mutant/zombie clown. Quite a few of them are still available through online auctions (ie. ebay), though they are IMO way overpriced and unfortunately the cartoon has yet to see its official debut on DVD. Luckily you can still find a few decent episodes on Veoh.
My younger brother was at the right age to be into Might Max, so I only experienced the toys through him. I remember being fairly impressed by the detail of the adventure sets but much less impressed by Max's uncanny ability to disappear. He was soooooo small that if you inhaled sharply you just might accidentally swallow him.