Ad for the Mighty Crusaders action figures from Remco circa 1984.
The Mighty Crusaders were the original MLJ Comics' (which changed its name to Archie Comics) superheroes from the 1940s. They were revived in the mid-1960s for the Archie Adventure line, but didn't last long.
Archie relaunched the Mighty Crusaders in 1983 with a new comic book published under the Red Circle Comics imprint. That title lasted 13 issues.
I never saw the comic, this ad, or the action figures because I was stationed in Europe at the time. The only comics I was able to get from the US military's Stars and Stripes bookstores/newsstands were from DC and Marvel. In addition, there were no K-Mart stores on that side of the Atlantic.
The toy line had all but disappeared by the time I was discharged and returned to the States. Whatever figures were left were relegated to bargain bins.
Even if there had been a K-Mart anywhere near me, and I happened to stumble across these figures, I'm pretty sure I would've passed them by. I had been unimpressed by Remco's figures of DC characters early in the 1980s (Warlord, Hercules Unbound, Arak) which were Masters of the Universe knock-offs. These Mighty Crusaders figures look (and, by all accounts, were) worse than those!
The Comet
The Web
The Fox
The Shield
About the only redeeming thing I can find about these DC Super Powers rip-offs is that the back of the cards the figures came attached to featured art by the one and only Steve Ditko!
