Is the Turbo Man action figure from Christmas comedy Jingle All The Way a real toy? Many popular Christmas movies are all about the warm and fuzzy feelings the festive season generates, but some actually explore the very real problems that Christmastime often poses too. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, for example, focuses on the chaos that ensues when extended family arrives for a festive visit, and Four Christmases explores the difficulty of having to divide the holiday season between multiple family members.
Jingle All The Way, meanwhile, is about a very relatable problem that many parents have faced at Christmastime; trying to track down a must-have, sold-out toy that their kid desperately wants. Directed by Beethoven helmer Brian Levant, this 1996 Arnold Schwarzenegger comedy cast the star and Sinbad as two fathers trying to find a popular action figure toy based on the title character from a TV show named Turbo Man. After unwisely leaving the task until Christmas Eve, the pair find every store sold out and soon form an intense rivalry as they set out to claim the last Turbo Man doll in town.
Jingle All The Way is a satirical take on the commercialization of Christmas and was inspired by real-life holiday shopping crazes that took place in the 1980s and 1990s for toys like Cabbage Patch Kids dolls or Toy Story tie-in merchandise. Nevertheless, when Jingle All The Way was released several critics accused the movie of being made just to sell toys based on Turbo Man but the reality of the matter wasn’t quite so cynical.
Thanks to Jingle All The Way’s swift production, distributors Fox didn’t have much time to develop a major merchandising line or secure tie-in deals before its late November release. As a result, the movie’s merchandise was limited to a relatively small run of just 200,000 talking Turbo Man action figures produced by toy manufacturer Tiger Electronics. So, Jingle All The Way wasn’t the cynical marketing ploy critics accused it of being after all.
Funnily enough, it wasn’t until 2021 that a Jingle All The Way Turbo Man action figure became more widely available. To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Christmas movie, toy manufacturer Funko released a reproduction of the Turbo Man doll produced by Tiger Electronics back in 1996 alongside a range of Jingle All The Way movie-inspired Funko Pop figurines. Of course, the Funko toys didn’t generate quite the hype that a line of more widely available Turbo Man action figures might’ve done back when the movie was released but they were a must have for nostalgic fans of Jingle All The Way.