Madballs is a series of toy foam balls originally created by AmToy, a subsidiary company of American Greetings (now Cloudco Entertainment) in the mid-1980s, later being revived by Art Asylum (2007–2008) and Just Play, Inc. (2017–2019).

The toyline expanded into a franchise with a comic book series, two direct-to-video animated cartoons, and a video game for the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, and Commodore 64.

"[4] All Madballs toys were conceived in the early 1980s by the creative team at American Greetings Properties, which was formally named Those Characters From Cleveland, or TCFC for short: Ralph Shafer, George Chanter, Mark Spangler, Jim Elliott, Kim Hammeren, and Vint Gonser.

[20] The main villains of the comic book were Dr. Frankenbeans, who was in many ways similar to Victor Frankenstein, and his bumbling assistant Schnivelitch, who resembled Igor.

Produced by Marvel UK in hardcover format, it reprints the comic book story of the creation of the Madballs by Dr. Frankenbeans and also features games and activities.

[22] Toy company Basic Fun Inc. took up the task of producing/selling the new Madballs[23] designed by artist James Groman, who worked on the original line.

The rebooted Madballs line was noted for its vastly more detailed sculpts;[citation needed] this was especially noticeable in the redesigned original characters.

[24] In 2009 European territories, including Italy and the UK, began receiving a series of 10 officially licensed miniature water-squirting Giraprendi Madballs.

In the UK, they are dispensed sealed in small semi-transparent plastic spheres from vending machines which also distributed Nintendo- and Disney-branded toys.

They are as follows: A video game based on the toy franchise, simply titled Madballs, was published in 1988 by Ocean Software for a variety of then-popular 8-bit home computers.

Released on the Madballs YouTube channel on March 1, 2017,[26] the cartoon features the six core characters – Skullface, Horn Head, Screamin' Meemie, Oculus Orbus, Dust Brain and Slobulus.