Before its current form, the Chaotic Trading Card Game had several names and versions. Starting in Denmark, Dracco Heads was a children's collectors product featuring plastic figurines of strange creatures. In 2000, a trading card game called Grolls & Gorks was published featuring characters and creatures from Dracco Heads. The next year, the game was redesigned by Bryan C. Gannon, and renamed Chaotic: Now or Never! This version of the card game had many characters and cards on which the current version of the Chaotic game and the television series are based.
Dracco Heads
Dracco Heads was a kids' collectors' product sold by Dracco Company Ltd. Dracco Heads featured small plastic figures shaped like heads of strange creatures. A few of these Dracco Heads were given both names and purposes for game play. Dracco Heads were very similar to Crazy Bones.
Over time, Dracco Company Ltd. started making new sets for the Dracco Heads Collection, such as Jumbo Dracco Heads, Baby Dracco Heads, and the Dracco Heads 2nd Edition. The Jumbo Dracco Heads were identical to the originals except for being three times as large, while the Baby Dracco Heads were smaller versions that aimed to be more charming than the originals.
The third Dracco Heads expansion set was called Dracco Heads 2. This set featured 41 entirely new Dracco Heads divided into two factions, the Gorkovi and the Grollovi; in the current Chaotic mythology, these groups would correspond to the Underworlders and the Overworlders. The expansion also introduced the Dracco Stone, which corresponds to the Cothica.
Beyond the lack of Danians and Mipedians, the most significant difference between the current Chaotic mythology and the Dracco Heads 2 mythology is their origin stories. In Dracco Heads 2, the Grollovi's spaceship had crash landed on a planet inhabited by the Gorkovi, and in the process, the ship's cargo, the Dracco Stone, was lost. The Gorkovi, upon finding out about the stone, wanted to find it so that they could use it to rule the universe; the Grollovi, on the other hand, simply needed it to give their spaceship enough power to return to their home planet.
Grolls & Gorks
In 2000 a TCG known as Grolls & Gorks was born. In this trading card game (TCG) the creatures on the cards were mostly from the Dracco Heads 2nd edition, though Location cards were a new addition. Grolls & Gorks was not only a TCG but it was also a Coin Game. It featured plastic coins that had the faces of the Grolls & Gorks creatures on them.
In the Grolls & Gorks TCG, the words GROLLOVI and GORKOVI refer to the creature types. GROLLOVI are the OverWorlder creatures and GORKOVI are the UnderWorlder creatures.
Chaotic: Now or Never!
In the year 2001 the Grolls & Gorks TCG was turned into Chaotic: Now Or Never! It still featured some of the original creatures from Grolls & Gorks, such as Screamer, TwinHead, Gork, Pingo, Wakko (now known as Yokkis), Clapper (now known as Klasp), and many others. There were also some creatures in the Chaotic: Now Or Never! TCG that came directly from the first edition of Dracco Heads, such as Diablo (now known as Chaor) and Mr. Muscles. Mr. Muscles's name was soon turned into Muxsle, which in 2007 was again changed to Stelgar.
Now or Never! storyline
The story of Chaotic: Now Or Never! is the epic tale of two boys, Tom and Kazdan, and their adventures in Perim, a volatile land where fierce battles are fought trying to capture The Chaos Rock and the control of Perim.
One day, Tom, a smart and curious 12-year-old, finds a pair of rings in his back yard. The rings, Athala and Na'arin (the Ring Of Na'arin is a Battlegear card in the new Chaotic game), are really magical portals to a clandestine realm known as Perim. However, before Tom has the chance to uncover the secret of the rings, the school bully, Kazdan, shows up. Kazdan is a strong 14-year-old boy who is Tom's never-failing rival. Kazdan spots Tom examining one of the rings and manages to steal it from him. Kazdan is unaware of the other ring that is in Tom's backpack. Shortly thereafter, both boys discover that putting on the rings enables them to enter Perim.