Bash Toys

Bash toys are Interactive Toys built to be shot: a sculpted figure planted in the line of fire that registers the hits, doing the work of a bank of Standup Targets in the shape of the game’s villain, monster or mascot.

This was a late-1990s Williams and Bally staple — the genie of Tales of the Arabian Nights (1996, Williams),^[1] the pair of gophers on No Good Gofers (1997), whose ramp entrances lift to expose the bash targets behind them,^[2] the flying saucer of Attack from Mars (1995, Bally) that shakes and flashes above its targets as the player batters the Martian fleet^[3] — and it never went away: Optimus Prime serves as the bash toy on both of Stern’s Transformers games, Transformers (2011) and Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye (2026),^[4][5] and an interactive Leatherface bash toy hangs on the kill door of Spooky Pinball’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.^[6]