From the demented mind of Lloyd Kaufman. The Toxic Avenger is a multimedia low-budget superhero comedy splatter film franchise. The films generally follow the heroic exploits of Melvin Ferd, a weak and skinny janitor turned into the deformed and mutated superhero, the Toxic Avenger, or "Toxie", by exposure to toxic chemicals.
Melvin Ferd (Mark Torgl) is a stereotypical 98-pound weakling who works as a janitor at a health club in the fictional town of Tromaville, New Jersey, where the customers—particularly Bozo (Gary Schneider), Slug (Robert Prichard), Wanda (Jennifer Babtist) and Julie (Cindy Manion)—harass him constantly. His tormentors get more and more violent, even deliberately killing a young boy on a bike with their car and taking photos of the carnage afterward. One day, they trick Melvin into wearing a pink tutu and kissing a sheep. He is chased around the health club and out a second story window. He lands in a drum of toxic waste, which sets him on fire. After running down the street in a ball of flames, Melvin douses the flames in his bathtub. The chemicals cause him to transform into a hideously deformed creature of superhuman size and strength.
Melvin Junko (originally Ferd) has been transformed into the superhero known as the Toxic Avenger. He has made Tromaville a safe place again. However, with no more evil to destroy, Melvin has suffered depression until his blind girlfriend Claire (originally Sara) has gotten him a job at the Tromaville Center for the Blind. When the lunch bell rings, all of the residents enter the building when a mysterious limo pulls up. Inside the limo are the Chairman of Apocalypse Inc. and his number one, Malfaire. Apocalypse Inc. is a New York-based chemical company that finds Tromaville to be the perfect home for its new takeover site. However, they know all about The Toxic Avenger. The Chairman hires a member of his team disguised as a PUS deliveryman to deliver a bomb into the center. Claire escapes in time upon learning of the bomb, but everyone else is killed. However, when the deliveryman and an Apocalypse construction worker arrive to begin their takeover, the Toxic Avenger emerges from the rubble and kills the duo. This leads to an all-out assault by various members of Apocalypse Inc. with the Chairman and Malfaire watching. Toxie easily defeats the group of thugs, either killing them or in the case of one, making him run away. The only survivors of the explosion are Toxie, Claire, and a blind mom and her infant daughter.
At the Tromaville Video Store, a band of Apocalypse Inc. goons decides to hold everyone hostage and demand that the people inside the store begin watching their films rather than the likes of MGM, Warner Bros., and even Troma movies. After killing one video store customer, the goons shoot up the place. However, Melvin Junko, also known as the Toxic Avenger arrives. Posing at first as a life-size cardboard cutout of himself, Toxie is able to kill all the goons in various gruesome fashions including disembowelment, smashing one goon's face into a video eraser, and sticking another one's arm through a VCR, destroying it in the process before decapitating him. Declaring he is back, Melvin reveals the flashback story of how he had worked for the forces of evil.
When the notorious Diaper Mafia take hostage the Tromaville School for the Very Special, only the Toxic Avenger and his morbidly obese sidekick Lardass can save Tromaville. However, an explosion results in some unforeseeable consequences where it creates a dimensional tear between Tromaville and its dimensional mirror image Amortville. While the Toxic Avenger (Toxie) is trapped in Amortville, Tromaville comes under the control of the superhuman powered hero's evil doppelgänger the Noxious Offender (Noxie). With the citizens of Tromaville unaware of the switch, Mayor Goldberg decides to combat "Toxie" by calling in every superhero he can afford. Will Toxie return to Tromaville in time to stop Noxie's rampage or is he doomed to remain a second-class citizen in Amortville forever? How did Toxie's wife Sarah become pregnant with two babies from two different fathers? Will Tito, the Retarded Rebel, ever get over his teen angst and become a productive member of society?
The Toxic Crusaders was an animated series loosely based on Troma's blood and gore flick "The Toxic Avenger." The show aired in 1991, and only five of its 13 episodes were shown before the program was yanked off the air. The story is about a nerd, Melvin Junko, who falls into toxic sludge and becomes a hideously deformed creature of superhuman size and strength. He decides to do battle for justice and right the wrongs against pollution on our earth.
''Toxic Crusaders'' cleaned up Toxie's act considerably. Toxie was still a grotesque mutant endowed with superhuman powers, but underneath it all, he was a good-hearted, law-abiding citizen of the fictional town of Troma Entertainment#Tromaville, New Jersey (the setting of most of Troma Entertainment's films). Another change from the films was that the toxic waste also mutated his mop into a sentient being that would sometimes battle enemies by itself or motion to Toxie ideas on how to solve problems. The villains were still polluters, albeit polluters from a different world. Hailing from the planet Smogula, Czar Zosta, Dr. Killemoff, and Psycho wreaked ecological havoc with the help of Tromaville's corrupt Mayor Grody. Bonehead, a street punk who bullied Melvin, joins them in the first episode.