Movies Based on Toys and Games, Ranked Worst to Best

by Jason Dietz, Metacritic Features Editor – July 22, 2023

Greta Gerwig's new Barbie film may be getting all of the attention this month, but it's far from the first film to attempt to bring a children's toy line to the big screen. While some of those adaptations have been dismissed as nothing more than feature-length toy commercials, others have been successful in spite of their origins. In the gallery on this page, we rank over three dozen such films from worst to best according to their Metascores, which represent the consensus views of leading professional film critics.

All of the films are based on pre-existing toys—including tabletop games and trading cards—though we have omitted any films for franchises that were already well established as television shows (or comics) prior to becoming toys. In addition, we have also excluded any films with fewer than four reviews from critics (our minimum required for calculating a Metascore)—a group that mainly includes direct-to-video features (including, by the way, most of the previous Barbie movies).

8 of 46 photo by Clubhouse Pictures

30 #38: GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords

Sure, you thought that Telly Savalas, Margot Kidder, and Roddy McDowall never worked together on the same film, but let us disabuse you of that silly notion. They are among the voices heard in the 1986 Hanna-Barbera animated film GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords, the first and only film based on Tonka's robot toy line that was a rival to the extremely similar (but ultimately more enduring) Transformers line that also originated (out of Japan) in the early 1980s.

Released following the demise of the TV cartoon series Challenge of the GoBots, the GoBots movie was also designed in part to showcase the Rock Lords, a new toy line first introduced in the film. (Rather than robots that transformed into machines and vehicles, the Rock Lords were "living rocks" that transformed into bulky robots with weapons—except for the ones that were just furry puffballs. We miss the '80s.) Though it was first out of the gate, Battle of the Rock Lords performed even more dismally than the rival Transformers animated film released just five months later—in retrospect, a strong signal that the GoBots wouldn't be around for much longer.

“Unfortunately, the story, script, voice actors and animation all prove less flexible than the toys, and the film never turns into entertainment. GoBots are more fun to play with than they are to watch.” —Charles Solomon, Los Angeles Times

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