Ye cannae die, MacLeod: Highlander Toys Through the Years
Story By @GIJoeRepairShop
In the late 1980’s, I moved to the Scottish Highlands. I lived not far from the castle and other locations used in the film “Highlander.” It was a point of pride for the locals that such a high-budget Hollywood movie had been filmed there only a few years earlier. The movie itself is a crazy tale of the medieval Scottish Highlands and 1980’s New York. The main actor is French, playing a Scot. The actor playing a Spaniard has a broad Scottish accent, and the actor playing a 2,964-year-old marauder from the steppes of southern Russia looks like he hasn’t updated his fashion sense in nearly 3,000 years, until punk suddenly appeals to him. Unfortunately for them, “there can be only one.”
I don’t recall ever seeing a Highlander toy while growing up, or indeed, rarely since. Before hunting for Highlander toys, one must first ask which version of Highlander one is talking about. After a series of increasingly bizarre sequel movies, there was the television show. It was called “Highlander: The Series” and was an enormous success. This time, the actor playing the Highlander was English. The series ran for six seasons and one hundred nineteen episodes from 1992 to 1997.
To complicate matters even more, “Highlander: The Animated Series” ran from 1994 to 1996 in France. The animated series happens on a post-apocalyptic Earth, after a meteorite collision nearly wipes out all human civilization after setting off nuclear weapons.
So, which companies would actually make toys to capture the look and feel of a movie about ancient grudges and decapitation? The French were first. A line of figures from Highlander: The Animated Series hit stores in 1996. It would be another seven years before Sideshow Collectibles released deluxe figures capturing Duncan MacLeod from Highlander: The Series. They also made a special “Highlander: Origins” figure of Connor MacLeod from the original Highlander movie. A year later, in 2006, NECA Toys released a limited-edition box set featuring Connor MacLeod battling The Kurgan. For some reason, it’s labeled “Medieval Box Set.” Then, in 2022, ToyBiz released five-inch action figures of both Connor MacLeod and The Kurgan in their 1980’s clothing as part of Incendium’s “FigBiz” action figure line. These figures had twelve points of articulation.
Finally, in 2025, Iconiq Studios released their 1:6 scale ultra-realistic highlander figure of Connor in his New York street clothes, including cloth trenchcoat. While there are a few other products out there, such as bobble-heads, it seems that there are not a lot of toys centered around such an adult movie. That, I think, is a good thing.
