Gaming Ads: Playmates Interactive Entertainment

Hong Kong-based Playmates Toys was founded as Playmates Industrial in 1966 and originally it primarily produced dolls as a contractor for U.S. and European toy companies. In 1978 it opened a Boston office in the U.S. to market its own line of toys called Li'l Playmates and in the mid-'80s opened a distribution center in California. The Cricket doll was its first big success in North America, though I know it best for releasing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toys in 1988 and its Star Trek action figures in the '90s. Playmates Interactive Entertainment was established in 1994 as a subsidiary of the U.S. toy division.

It published a variety of games, some based on other properties, such as Star Trek, Exo Squad, Skeleton Warriors, Doom Troopers, and Jim Lee's WildC.A.T.S. The two most popular original properties it published were created by Shiny Entertainment: MDK and Earthworm Jim. The anthropomorphic earthworm even spawned a cartoon and a toy line from Playmates. While the toy company is still in business today, the video game division shut down in 1998. This is yet another company that makes no mention of video games on its website's corporate history, and it doesn't even list the Earthworm Jim toys on its toy timeline that jumps from 1992 to 1997 with five years of nothing.

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