Selects: A Partial History of Action Figures

Action figures have a long and glorious history. From GI Joes to Star Wars figures, these offshoots of dolls came along at just the right time to capture the hearts and minds of children everywhere. Learn all about the partial history of action figures in this classic episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey everyone, it's Josh and for this week's s Y
s K Selects, I've chosen a partial history of Action Figures,
our episode from November two thousand sixteen, and it is
a really, really in depth look at action figures. I mean,
we talked about different types of plastic molding for goodness sake,
but it's also chuck full with nostalgia and good feelings

(00:22):
and lots of warm memories between me and Chuck about
our childhood's playing with action figures. So I hope you
enjoy it. We certainly did, so you should too. Welcome
to Stuff you should know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,

(00:46):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry's right there to my immediate right,
and that makes this stuff you should know, the podcast,
the podcasts. That's right. I'm excited it about this particular
podcast Chuck put together this episode. I should say, well,
do you want to go ahead and announce the title

(01:07):
for the people that maybe didn't read it, it is, uh, well,
you you're going to select the title. It's the title.
Oh geez, I don't know, um everything you ever wanted
to know about. Actually some stuff about action figures that
you may already know, and some stuff that made the
light you well that's a working title. Huh yeah. Yeah,

(01:30):
but we're talking about action figures. That's the point of
of what I think that exercise just was. Yeah, I
was gonna say everything you wanted to know, but this,
I mean, we could do there. I'm sure there are
entire podcasts on action figures, for sure. And if you do,
if you have a podcast on action figures right in,
let us know, we'll we'll tweet it out for the
people whose boat this floated. This this one definitely follows

(01:54):
in the vein of um the Barbie episode, which I
have to say is one of my par Neil favorites.
I love the Barbie episode. Yeah, and Barbie actually makes
an appearance in this one. Do you like to play
with dolls? Uh? I like to play with action figures.
I played with barbies. I had older sisters, so like
I was, I played with Barbie's whether I wanted to

(02:15):
or not, So I made the most of it. But
I don't remember my sister having Barbies, but surely she did, right. Yeah,
she was a girl in America from the sixties on. Yes,
she had a Barbie. Oh no, my sister grew up
in the Soviet Union. Oh well, there you go. She
had um Martina. There probably wasn't Martina. But I mean

(02:37):
that was a pretty good episode. And this one's kind
of similar. It's it's got it all and like I said,
Barbie kind of pops up in the beginning. She actually
inspired action figures um like basically directly when when Mattel
I think it was Ruth Handler who invented the Barbie doll, right, yes,
and when she when she and Mattel released it. It

(03:00):
was just a huge, enormous hit. And one of the
big reasons Barbie was number one such a hit and
number two so appealing to toy companies was that when
you bought a Barbie, you're buying experience wasn't over. There
were always like more clothes and shoes, and like my
sister had the pool that you could hang out with
and it had like a shower that actually worked. There's

(03:21):
just a ton of extra stuff to buy, and so
when you bought a Barbie, you wanted all the other
stuff too, and toy companies wanted to figure out how
to do that with boys toys, but they just couldn't
quite figure it out because no one had ever come
up with a doll for boys. And that's kind of
what it required, was coming up with a doll for boys,
and no one had cracked that nut. But Barbie made

(03:45):
the whole thing all the more appealing. I guess. Yeah. Finally,
this dude name Stan Weston who actually knew Miss Handler
and uh, he was in the toy racket, and um,
I guess I shouldn't call it a racket. It's a
bit of a recket. It's a bit of a recket.
So he said, like you were talking about, like, you know,
there's tons of money to be made here. Uh. He

(04:07):
was a military history buff and so he had this,
you know, the light bulb went off over his head,
and he says, what if we could come up with
a soldier doll, or perhaps even a series of soldier dolls? Uh,
and maybe not call them dolls. Actually he didn't, he
didn't come up with the name. To be fair. His

(04:28):
boss at Hasbro VP Don Levine or Levine. Uh. In
nineteen sixty three, he was pitched this idea and he
went nuts over it. And he's the one that said
maybe we should call them action figures, right, yeah. Stan
Weston approached um uh uh yeah, Don Levine at like
that toy fair and said, I got a great idea,

(04:48):
and apparently he gave him a hundred thousand dollars just
for the idea, and then he he since he worked
with Hasbro, He's like, guys, I've I've got a good
idea here. So that roughly translates into about seven hundred
and eighty two thousand dollars in today money, which is
good though for an idea. But of course, anytime you're

(05:09):
the schmuck that comes up with the idea that you
sell for even seven hundred and eighty two grand and
it goes on to be like hundreds of millions of
dollar business, you probably always kind of feel like I
got taken for a ride a little bit. I'm sure
Stan Weston was like, I'll have millions of good ideas
like these that I can sell for seven hundred and

(05:30):
eighty thousand dollars a piece. I'm sure he may have. Yeah,
I don't know. It's certainly not one like G I Joe. Right, Well,
that's what we've been talking about. We've talked about G
I Joe a lot on this show, so, uh, it
feels appropriate that we sort of go down that rabbit hole.
We're gonna be talking about action figures. Well, so, well, yeah,
because G I Joe is the one that started, literally

(05:51):
started the action figure craze. Every action figure that's out there,
from like um Action Jesus to uh to the Marvel
Superhero Action figures to every action figure came from G
I Joe. And if you want to get feminist about it,
every action figure, including G I Joe, ultimately came from Barbie. Yeah,

(06:13):
it's a good way to look at it. So, uh,
all right, here's the deal that I never knew. G
I Joe uh debuted in nine before Christmas. It's almost
as if they had planned that. Uh the original. I
knew all this stuff. The original was twelve inches and
had twenty one moving parts. And the thing I did
not know was that G I Joe was the collective

(06:36):
name of all four of these Armed Forces dolls. You
didn't know that. I thought the guy was Joe. No,
the the for my era, the guy, the main guy
was Duke, and for your era, the main guy was Rocky. Well,
it depends on which one you had. Okay, so that
was that was Rocky was the Army and the Marines.

(06:59):
Skip Skip was the Navy guy, and Ace was the
Air Force guy, the fighter pilot. Right, So they they
ran out of names after name three, circle back to Rocky.
They ran out of names. And they all were identical
except for their clothing. Yeah, as far as I know, right, didn't.

(07:19):
Wasn't their head different? Was the same? Was it the
same face for each one? It was literally just their
clothes were different. You know, I don't know. I'm going
for my own memory, which is that they were all
the same dude, and they were all Franco Harris. Well, well, no,
well they came up with an African American when at
one point in the sixties I think, yeah, yeah, they

(07:40):
changed with the times. But to my recollection, those original dudes,
and maybe I got in on the second wave. Maybe
the original sixties ones were different, but I only knew
Franco Harris, I got you, So maybe I just had Rocky.
Maybe so Rocky or Rocky which one? Yeah, Rocky not Rocky.

(08:02):
So um, they come out with this this toy and
it's the first one of the big differences with G I.
Joe because there were toy soldiers before. But did you
ever have those like little plastic ones, a little plastic
green men. You dump them out of the bucket and
one had a bazooka and he was always the best one.
And but but they were on like little molded plastic

(08:23):
stands and you couldn't do anything with him except slide
them around or whatever does have been around forever. Well,
you could do a lot more with him if you
had imagination and uh, a lighter and a can of
hair spray. Actually was delighted. It was toy Story right
where they had those those guys come to life. Right. Uh,
that was like really really cool to me when I

(08:45):
saw that on screen. Uh, these because you know, like
you said, you can never move them, so you see
those little dudes actually come to life was pretty pretty awesome.
You were like, yeah, I've been dreaming of this day.
I kinda was thank you. Dream Works. That's where they
got the name. Was it dream Works or was that Pixar?
Is Pixar right, Probably got it wrong. That's all right,

(09:07):
it's a Pixar. We're still going to get emails anyway,
even though we just corrected. They're they're all working dreams,
So Um, I read this great article called geez what
was it called? Uh, Now now you know the history
of G I Joe and knowing it as half the
battle from Smithsonian dot com written by Jimmy stamp was

(09:29):
that his name the Stamper, the Stampster. So UM, I
didn't realize this, But you can't. You can't copyright a figure,
like a human figure. So that was sort of an
issue when people started to do knockoffs of G I Joe.
But apparently early on in the process, G I Joe

(09:51):
was well known for that scar on his face and
I didn't even know this. He had an inverted thumbnail.
And both of these were because of errors in p auction.
But those flaws were what allowed them to go after
people for copyright infringement. That's right, that's crazy. Yeah it is, UM,
And yeah, I guess they were. They were natural, like

(10:12):
they didn't plan them or anything like that, but they
just were happy accidents, I guess. Um. And actually over
it also elsewhere chuck that UM G I Joe was
so successful as we'll see that by the seventies, UM,
there were so many knockoffs that Hasbro released its own
line of knockoffs of cheaply made G I Joes to
compete with the knockoffs and and dilute their market share. Yeah,

(10:35):
it was called Defenders, and they were just these really
cheaply made versions of the big G I Joes. Well,
it was a huge hit though. Um it says here
that they accounted for almost sixty six percent of Hasbro's
profits in that's insane, That is nuts. And that was
the year it came out right yeah, like right out

(10:55):
of the gate. It was a really big deal. And
again one of the reasons why it was because you
had toy soldiers before, but this guy could move. He
had I think like or twenty nine moving parts, um
or different parts, and he was articulated so he could
lift up his hand in karate chop you. Although he
didn't get the kung fu grip until the mid seventies. Yeah,

(11:17):
that's where I came in. Okay, so he had kung
fu grip when you knew G I Joe, Uh, yeah,
very much, gotcha. It was so kung fu right, but
he still looked like Frank o' harris, but he still
looked like regulars. Yes. And then the other big innovation
was the was not an innovation at all. It was
following the Barbie model, but for boys it was it
was that this this doll, which no one called the doll.

(11:40):
In fact, um, I believe Hasbro wouldn't do business with
you if you were going to call it a doll.
As a retailer, they would just be like, well, you
don't get any g I Jos. This is an action figure.
But on the package itself. And I don't know if
you remember this or not. Um I don't because I
wasn't born yet. But there were pictures of the other

(12:01):
dudes and the other outfits you could get. So when
you bought one g I Joe, you as a kid
were made immediately aware, whoa, whoa, whoa, there's other g
I Joes out there, and I wanted to collect them all.
Some little kid came up with that collect them all
phrase just in his little brain. Yeah, some little kid
named middle age marketing executive Don Levine. So not only that,

(12:24):
but they had, you know, like Barbie, they had all
manner of um other things that you could collect them by. Um.
I had the had the jet pack, which um you
would attach to a string to simulate jet packing and
send flying like between two trees. Uh. And then I
had the uh, the submarine. It was like a sea wolf.

(12:46):
It was really cool. How big was the submarine? If
you're playing with twelve inch g I Joe's it was
um to take up the size of like the family room. Well,
this is not gonna mean anything that anyone at home,
but it's about the size of this lamp on our desk. Oh.
So it was like a one man sub Yeah, I
feel like it was. I can't remember exactly I feel
I feel like it was about the size of us. Um,

(13:09):
a little smaller than a bowling ball. How's that like
a child's bowling ball. Yeah, because he had to sit
in it, you're right. And he was a big dude,
even though you would you know, in a set of position,
he was smaller. Uh. And then I had the uh
six wheel or eight wheel, I can't remember all terrain vehicle.
Well that's nice, and that's about all that we were. Uh,

(13:30):
that's about all we could afford. That's but that was
probably quite an outlay from your parents. It was great.
And that was over time, you know, right, several Christmas
is right? Yeah, And this was, like I said, I
came in on the seventies. But um. In the sixties,
they actually, uh G I Joe did not do very
well because of the Vietnam War. Um, and it was

(13:50):
actually kind of I think it was actually went away
from production for a while. Yeah, it did. They just
they basically retired, and I think the Vietnam War hurt sales,
so they took him out a little bit, and then
they re released him again, um, and kind of rebranded him,
I think too, as rather rather than a soldier, they

(14:11):
rebranded him as an adventurer. Right, so this machete is
not for cutting off the hands of U Srpa who
leads us into danger. It's for um, you know, cutting
through vegetation and on a jungle adventure to save sherpas
who were for some reason live in the jungle. Now. Yeah,
and they, like you said, they called him adventurer or

(14:32):
the naval officer was called an aqua nat And I
very much remember that being the deal. Like, I didn't
think of him as a soldier. I thought of him
as you know, well, I thought his name was Joe
because I guess it was a dumb little kid. But
I guess Rocky the g I Joe adventure guy right

(14:52):
slash Franco Harris right, and G I Joe. Actually, I
was taken from a movie called the Story of G
I Joe. That's where that came from. Did you ever
see that? No? No No, have you? No? Okay, I'm just curious,
So chuck, G I Joe is Uh, he starts to

(15:13):
do kind of poorly because of Vietnam. They take him out,
they re release him, um, and he doesn't do very
well when they bring him back out, even though he's
an adventure right. Um, So G I Joe left. They
stopped making G I Joe's for a while, and it
created It left this big vacuum that was just waiting
to be filled, and it was filled by a little

(15:33):
company named me Go. And we'll talk about me Go
after this break. How about that sounds good? As watch
skuld know all right? Is it mego or mego? I've

(16:01):
been saying mego in my head just because I'm a
dumb American. No, well, I think mego is probably how
they say it in the UK. Was that where it
came from? No, they're American. I say mego to be honest,
I have no idea. I'm sure there is a right
way that Tommy Mego would love to tell you about
but or Tommy mego. But yeah, I I've said I've

(16:24):
said mego in my head, but I don't know which
one is correct to tell you the truth. All right,
well we'll just proceed Fussie, I'll say mego, you say mego.
Let's just call the whole thing off, So go ahead
with me go. So so, um g I Joe is gone.
But again this was you said. It accounted for like

(16:46):
six it hasbro sales just in the first year, and
he was a hit year after year after year for
many years. Right, um, And even when they brought him back,
sales were terrible compared to the initial stuff, but they
were still making money off of them. Um. So this first,
the world's first action figure made a huge impact. And
when the world's first action figure wasn't around anymore, well,

(17:09):
there was a void that was to be filled. And
this company called meg decided, and I think one or
nineteen seventy two, that a pretty good place to start
would be releasing a line of action figures that were
based on superheroes. And they released, um, a line of
superheroes called the World's Greatest Superheroes Action Figures, and I

(17:32):
think nineteen seventy two, and it was a pretty big hit,
like right off the bat. Yeah. And what they did
was they were super smart and kind of had a
lot of vision and said, I think where it's at
is not necessarily creating characters from whole cloth that kids
don't know of, but licensing very famous characters and selling them.

(17:52):
So they got a hold of licenses for uh, Spider
Man and the Hulk and Batman and Wonder Woman and
Iron Man and Cap in America. Yeah, and not just yeah,
if you'll notice that's DC and Marvel characters in the
same line, Like that's unheard of today. They did not
discriminate back, you know they did. It was a wonderful time. Uh.
And not only that, but they said, you know, we're

(18:15):
making money hand over fist selling these action figures. Um,
what if do you think kids would actually buy villains
like the Joker? And do you think they would buy
side characters like Robin and Bat Girl and other villains
like the Riddler and things like the Batmobile and the
Batcave play set. And before you knew it, they were
pumping out things like, uh, Bruce Wayne's Foundation building. I

(18:40):
know that was the real thing or what was The
other weird one the store, Oh they had they had
an exclusive with the Montgomery Reward store, so it wasn't
like it wasn't a store, but at the at Montgomery
Ward only, Oh, you could buy the non superhero versions
of superheroes like Peter Parker and Bruce Wayne, which is like,

(19:03):
all right, you sit there in your cubicle and that's
what you do. Well, the rest of us are saving
the world. That's what you do with that action figure.
All right, that makes much more sense. I thought they
had a Montgomery Ward play set. That's what I thought
at first. Two like Bruce Wayne worked there or something,
which of course he didn't even work. I don't know
what I'm thinking. So this gave orders. They were making

(19:23):
tons and tons of money. Um. In nineteen seventy three
they moved into movies with their Planet of the Apes line,
which was some plastic primates, and then the Astronaut that
was taller and that was a huge hit. Yeah. And
the other thing about me Goo to Um was that
all action figures have been like twelve inch twelve inches

(19:45):
tall up to that point, and Migo's line was eight inches,
So action figures are starting to shrink a little bit, now,
that's right. Uh. And the one uh, the one actually
had even though I have no idea why I had
the Star trek Um Enterprise Bridge and then I guess man,
I know I had Spock and Kirk and a couple

(20:07):
of others. But you know, I'm well known to not
have ever seen any Star Trek at all except for
maybe one movie or something, So I have no idea
why I got that. I mean, if it was a
cool action figure, had some weird I had a weird
wizard action figure when I was a kid. But you're

(20:28):
into weird wizards, you still are, well I am now
as a grown up. I wasn't as a kid. I
was like, what is this thing? Gotcha? Some weird wizard? Well,
I don't know why I had it. But the Star
Trek uh that their collection was that was another big hit.
So they were just they literally kind of uh I mean,
G I Joe and Barbie of course kind of spawned

(20:49):
this thing, but it seems like Mego really took it
to another level. Yeah yeah, um, they kind of they
kind of. Yeah, action figures were cool and G I
Joe had really started something, but Mi Goo um, yeah,
they just they established it forever, permanently, And they also

(21:10):
showed other companies to like, hey, man, go get yourself
a license and stick to it, like get creative, like
with the Star Trek license that they had. Clearly the
toy designers had actually watched Star Trek episodes because one
of the play sets was from Um, one of the
sets from an episode of Star Trek, the Apple episode. Um,

(21:33):
Like you don't necessarily see there. You didn't see that
before with action figures, it was more like, hey, you
you know this guy, just buy them. This is like
you're into Star Trek and so are we, and here
is some awesome play sets based on your love of
Star Trek. So Migo definitely broke the mold in that
in that sense as well. Um. But they also like

(21:56):
they were it for action figures, like nobody could compete
with me Go. Um. They would buy stuff from Japan
and then turn them into new stuff here. Um, there
was just no competing with me Go in the US,
even though a lot of people were. But they they
also dropped the ball in the most spectacular fashion anyone
could ever drop the ball in the action figure world. Yeah,

(22:17):
like they it's almost it's almost an elegant end of
the story because it literally makes you cringe when you
read it. And there's two different versions, but both of
them are like, oh man, yeah, I think there's really
only one version. I literally could not find a single
source other than this one guy's blog who claimed the
other version. But um, what we're talking about and if

(22:38):
you know action figures, you probably see this coming. Uh,
they declined the Star Wars brand and allowed Kenner to
pick it up. Yes, so how though, which story is true? Well,
the story that I think is true is that they
didn't want to invest and they said that, you know,
we're not going to throw our money at every little
thing that comes along to be a little more discerning. Yeah,

(23:01):
that one hurts. That hurts more than the other story.
The other version was that like, um, the people who
could sign the contracts were out of town when George
Lucas came by to offer him the franchise. And now
that I'm saying it out loud, like, yes, that's a
ridiculously dumb story. Them actually turning down the Star Wars
line is it's even better. It's even sweeter, Like, man,

(23:22):
what were you guys thinking? But I mean, there's lots
of stories like that because somebody lacking foresight, yeah them.
The other story is completed by the supposedly they weren't there.
So Lucas went to another uh, went to Kinner who
was in the same building in New York. And I
guess the people that could sign their name were there, right,

(23:43):
But I can't find that anywhere else except for this
one blog where this guy says it's true. But I
would love to hear from someone if they if they
have inside, like verifiable knowledge of that for sure, George Lucas,
just let us know, and I mean verifiable, not that's
what I heard. I read the same blog exactly. I
knew your nerd voice is going to come up in

(24:04):
this episode. Well sure of course. Um So if you
if you have a love of Mego or you just
want to know what we're talking about, also go check
out um the Mego Museum online m e g O Museum,
And it's just basically like this wonderful online museum dedicated
to everything that Migo ever put out. It's pretty cool.
I wasn't even around when these things came out, and

(24:26):
they still somehow make me nostalgic, you know, exactly, Alright,
So Uh, let's jump back a little bit to ninety six,
and um, we're gonna explain how they went from eight
inches even though they were still making the eight inches
after sixty six, how they eventually got down to the
three and three quarters inch. Uh. G I Joe was

(24:46):
licensing their stuff out to other countries all over the place.
That was a UK company who released it under the
name Action Man uh and eventually they licensed it to
Japan to a company called Takara. They went on to
create some action figures based on G I Joe, and
then due to the oil crisis in the early seventies,

(25:06):
they started developing smaller versions. Uh So at three and
three quarters inches they developed Microman released him in nineteen
seventy four, and that kind of led to this new thing,
which was smaller dudes three and kids didn't care. No, no,
not only did we not care. So now we're starting

(25:28):
to enter my wheelhouse. Not only did we not care.
These smaller ones are vastly superior to the older ones.
Oh you think, yeah, so a lot of stuff. But
I would say this is the one thing that divides
us more frequently than anything else, is whether the original
Big G I Joes or the second wave small g

(25:49):
I Joes are better? All right? Let me ask you, sir,
have you ever held in your hands and played with
a twelve inch G I Joe with a kung fu grip?
I would uh would not touch one, so you can't
even say that. Have you played with the small one? Yeah? Man?
I had tons of small action figures? Okay, all right?
Oh did you have the Star Wars stuff? So you

(26:09):
think the big one superior? Well, yeah, it's twelve inches,
it's articulates nineteen different ways. I like the small ones.
I always will, even after playing with the big one,
which I have not never will. I just know that
the small one is vastly superior. I don't know if
it's because I am nostalgic for the small ones and

(26:30):
the old ones seemed weird and dusty and moldy or
something like that, but the small one seemed better to me.
All right, At the very least you have to you
have to admit the wave of G I Joe's that
were released when I started playing with them, just the
line itself was better, regardless of the size of them. Right, Well,

(26:52):
let's go ahead and talk about thought. Because G I
Joe changed a lot um once it became a cartoon,
and we're going to talk about some really cool political
stuff that had no idea went into this. But um,
G I. Joe became a cartoon series. This was in
the early eighties, So this is when I had kind
of quit playing with action figures for the most part. Okay,

(27:14):
because eighty four I was like thirteen, and you know,
I was moving on to you know, check out this mustache.
Yeah I was. I was skateboarding by that point, and
I thought it was like Super Bowl skateboarder. Yeah. Uh,
maybe I still played a little bit. So your only
your neighborhood best friend knew about it, your school friends
did exactly. Uh so G I. Joe was a cartoon.

(27:36):
Then they for the first time basically it became a
commando team, an anti terrorist commando team that had all
kinds of characters and they had finally had a common enemy,
which was of course Cobra. Yes, led by Cobra commander.
And this was your right in your wheelhouse, correct. Yeah,
so in ninety three I was like seven, So yeah,

(28:00):
this was I was really just primed and ready. I
would just let's go Joe. And plus also the other
thing too. That I had that you didn't have was
the cartoon that not only like blew up the back
stories because each this new wave of G I. Joe
when they released it, um, they each character now had

(28:23):
its own name and it wasn't Rocky or Rocky. It
was things like um Duke or shipwreck or Blowtorch or
barbecue or Dusty um. And then the bad guys had
their own their own names to like Cobra Command or
Serpent or Tomax or z Mott um or uh, the

(28:45):
whole the whole gang, right toe cheese? Who was that?
Tomax and z Mott? They were evil twins? Who were
they were? Basically they were like, um, if if Cobra
Commander had hired Patrick Bateman and then owned him a
mirror version of him, it would be Tomax and z
A Mott Interesting and none of this stuff right right? Okay,

(29:08):
so I do because I grew up with it. But
but I also had it pounded into my head every
day after school watching the G I. Joe cartoon, And
that was the huge innovation that really just created this uh,
this other world for kids like me to just lose
yourself in with the action figures, because now you didn't
even need to use your imagination. You could just be like, oh,

(29:31):
I saw this on the G I. Joe cartoon today,
So let's act that out right. And none of this
would have ever happened had it not been for Ronald Reagan.
That's right, And that sounds weird, uh, But here's the story.
So in the late seventies, there was a lot of
concern about kids, uh, and advertising about advertising two children.

(29:54):
So the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, got a task
force together and they said, should we ban or regulate
this marketing to children? They put together six thousand pages
of testimony from sixty oh the oral testimony, sixty thousand
pages of expert testimony from all these experts on child

(30:14):
psychology and health and nutrition because I had to do
with you know, food and sugary candies and stuff like
that too. And the conclusion across the board was that
young children cannot they are cognitively unable to understand the
the intent of selling ads. They can't distinguish that from reality, right,
Like if you dress up a cartoon as an ad,

(30:36):
the kid is he just thinks it's a cartoon, she
does exactly. Or if the ad is a cartoon rather
than the kid doesn't know. They just think I'm still
watching cartoons on my TV. My brain hasn't made that switch.
But man, could I go for some Smurf cereal exactly.
So it was a big deal at the time. So
there were all these recommendations basically and how to regulate

(30:59):
and restrict advertising that were They basically said it was
unfair and deceptive to kids. UH. For older kids, they said,
they can tell the difference, but maybe we should have
uh warnings on the ads and disclosures saying that this
is a commercial message. And so what happens when you
do this in America? The private sector said no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

(31:22):
I want to be able to sell as much sugary
garbage to kids as I want. You can't restrict uh
free trade, free trade in business. And so we're gonna
raise a record at the time sixteen million dollars to
lobby against this. And well and they were helped out
in no small part by getting the right guy into

(31:43):
the White House. Right. So in one of the first
things Ronald Reagan did was he appointed a new chairman
of the Federal Trade Commission. And this, uh, this was
a move that basically said, you know what, there's gonna
be no regulation whatsoever, got to leave these markets for
you can do whatever you want. Uh, And that is
basically how all of these cartoons were born. G I Joe, Transformers, Smurfs,

(32:10):
care Bears, Rainbow Bright so very short, kid, you name it.
It basically became marketing and selling things and cartoons became
one and the same. Finally. Yeah, and one of the
other things that definitely helped G I Joe two was
the UM I don't know if it was formal or informal,
but there was basically a band on UM on warlike

(32:31):
cartoons and warlike toys that was brought back under the
same ease of restrictions by the ftc UM, so that
I think the percentage of warlike toys that was sold
in the early eighties went up like three d from
one year over the other from eighty four, I think. Um.

(32:53):
Whereas before it was like no, we don't G I
Joe's an adventure. Remember, It's like, no, G I Joe
was gonna cut Cobra's head right off. So that's a
nineteen eighty that's one of the first, uh, one of
the first big things Reagan did when he got in
office flashboard in November. One of the last things he
did was he vetoed a new measure because basically they

(33:13):
saw what was happening. All of a sudden, kids were
being bombarded with war cartoons and uh, just terrible sugary
packaged food all over the place. Like the restrictions were
nowhere to be found. So UH, Congress came back and said,
you know what, this is out of hand. Here's a
measure that will restrict once again and impost some some

(33:37):
legislation on this programming aimed at children. Uh. It passed
the House by seventy eight, passed unanimously in the Senate,
and Reagan vetoed it and said, uh, basically, what one
of the things they were trying to do. They were
trying to limit programming to uh advertising to ten point
five minutes an hour on the weekends and twelve minutes

(33:59):
an hour in the weekdays, and also provide, uh require
broadcasters to provide educational and informational programs as a condition
of renewing their licenses. So Reagan veto that and said,
no way, UH, we're not gonna do that. We're gonna
keep it as is People that were in favor of
this went crazy. Basically they were saying, like, how can

(34:19):
you guys say you're the party of the Children and
Education and then veto is something that is clearly going
to help protect our children. That was messed up. Man,
I had no idea about that one. Yeah, And not
only that, the what happened was along with this deregulation, UM,
the toy companies and the cartoons, they actually they kind

(34:43):
of got in bed together and they said, you know
what if you show, uh, if you schedule as a broadcaster,
UM our cartoons that sell toys, will give you a
profit on those toys. If you run these G I.
Joe cartoons, then we'll give you a little cut of
what we're selling. Plus also we'll buy ads on those
cartoons are on your network too, to sell those those

(35:06):
toys when you show these cartoons. I imagine you know, yeah,
because I remember watching G I. Joe Real American Hero
that cartoon, which I have to say it was created
in in large part to sell G I. Joe's true,
but it had it had great story arcs that had
overarching story arcs that went from episode to episode. Uh.

(35:29):
The individual ones were good, like, the voice acting was good,
the animation was pretty good. Same with Transformers to like,
it was pretty pretty good cartoon. So at least they
were putting time and effort and thought into this. But uh, yeah,
it's pretty despicable marketing to kids in general. Actually, I
read a blog. Um I'm certainly glad you were a

(35:49):
satisfied viewer, but I read this blog that basically said that,
um Man, I wish I could find it. Maybe i'll
post this when we release it, that that the de
regulation and killed the creativity and killed in children's cartoons,
and that they said that before you know it, they
were just like things were knockoffs of one another. They

(36:10):
didn't care about I guess. I mean, you were a kid,
so maybe you didn't realize it, but that was too
stupid to know it was going on. They said that,
you know, you can see a clear demarcation line between
really good storytelling and then storytelling that was clearly just
geared to sell things. I guess I don't. I'm trying
to compare like what cartoons were in the seventies, and
like they were great, they weren't high art though again,

(36:33):
I'll go back to that hair Bear bunch. Well, they
loved the hair bears. They were drug fueled, but there yeah, yeah,
that was a big one. But there, I mean, their
plots were pretty simple. It was the same plot that
you would see on a Yogi Bear cartoon or like
a Huckleberry Hound cartoon. Um, Scooby Doo was interesting and
it was pretty cool, but it was basically the same
storyline every single time, like what what Scooby Doo? And

(36:57):
I'm not trying to argue in favor of Corporate America
marketing to kids and ruining creativity, but like you don't
there weren't any overarching storylines aside from Scooby being crazy
for Scooby Snacks and Scooby Doo. And there definitely was
in G I. Joe, like when they went around the
world and took the d n A of all of
these great these great dictators and conquerors like Alexander the

(37:20):
Great and Um Napoleon and put them all together and
created serpent or Um who was actually the new guy
who was in charge of Cobra because Cobra commander was
a bit of a coward? Did you not know any
of this? How do you not know this stuff? But
I was I was trying to kiss girls in the
roller skating rink at this and you thought girls were gross. Still,

(37:41):
it's true, it's true, but I it definitely help shape me,
and I am nostalgic for it in that sense, and
I am appreciative. But Chuck, I propose that sooner than
later we do an episode on marketing to kids, because
this whole deregulation story is just fascinating. Yeah, I mean
I had I didn't really know anything about it because

(38:02):
I was still a dumb kid when this was going on.
But let's do it though, Okay, agreed. So that was
G I Joe shaped my Childhood's just the tad so uh.
But prior to G I Joe, the first three and
three quarter inch action figure in the US as far
as I know, was the Star Wars line, and the

(38:24):
Star Wars line again, when Migo passed it up, they
quickly realized that we really screwed up. They released like
a buck Rogers line, um, and uh, a black Hole line.
Remember that movie The Black Hole from Disney. It's really
creepy even still um. But so they tried to catch
up and they ended up going bankrupt in three basically

(38:46):
as a result of losing this Star Wars line, and
so Kenner and so Kenner picked it up, picked up
the Star Wars line instead, and they released them and
right out of the gate in which I believe was
the first year that they released these things is three
and three quarter inch Star Wars line of action figures UM.

(39:07):
In seventy nine, they made a hundred million dollars each
year from selling those. They sold about forty million units
a year. And from nineteen seventy eight to nineteen eighty five,
which I think was the whole run of the Star
Wars lines, the original run with Kenner, Kenner sold three
hundred million units. So if they're selling forty million a

(39:30):
year and making a hundred million each year from that,
they sold three hundred million total. So Kenner made some
serious bank off of Star Wars. Off of me and
my my lawnmowing fund, for sure, I had I feel
like I had at least doubles of most of the
major characters, many of the minor characters, the Tie Fighter,

(39:54):
the X Wing, the Death Star, Oh You Lucky, the
and Speeder. Um. I also had the uh, the big
dolls UM. I don't know if they were twelve inch,
but what is it with you? And maybe man they're huggable.
Uh yeah. I had the Big Luke and the Big

(40:18):
I think the Big Luke and the Big Vader, and
maybe like one other maybe Chewbacca, but not all of them.
And basically whatever I could either get for my birthday
or Christmas or save my allowance to buy, I would get.
And I was all in. I didn't know that these
were collectible. Of course, I ripped right into them to play,

(40:38):
to play with them like normal children do. Um. I
didn't put it like in a box on a shelf
to try and keep it in mint condition. But that's
weird to do though as a kid. Yeah, I don't know.
I mean maybe there were kids doing it. I didn't
know any. We all played with them, but I mean
that was originally the point. I think. It wasn't until

(40:59):
like much lay eater that it it became evident that
you could sell them to people who wish they had
them in the package still for a lot of money. Yeah.
And should we should we close later on with the
some of the more valuable ones, Yes, for sure. So
that's a tease. Okay, everybody, you take a break. We

(41:19):
should was that it about Star Wars. You think I
don't have anything else? Really, I mean there's a gazillion
other things we could talk about, I guess, But what
more do you need to know besides that they were
huge hits. That's it. Alright, We're gonna take a break.
We're gonna come back and talk a little bit about
the how these things are actually made as sk alright,

(42:00):
just to put a little bow on the action figure
thing before we get into how they're made. Um, you know,
Transformers came along, was huge throughout the nineties. Then you
saw U, Marvel and d C really come on the market.
Every movie you could think of had action figures. TV
shows started having action figures. Older popular movies started having

(42:21):
action figures, like for Nostalgias sake, Like I literally had
a scarface doll. Oh yeah, I've seen the scarface al
Pacino that I used to have in the office, and
did come with a mound of cocaine, a plastic amount
of cocaine, it did. Uh. And now you know, you
can find pretty much any kind of action figure you want,
from politicians to older movies and TV shows and like

(42:46):
things you wouldn't even imagine people would like welcome back
Carter action figures. Yeah, and I didn't realize this, but
apparently companies intentionally will release like a very limited run
of some where like they're missing their thumb or like
it's miss labeled on the package, to make these things, um,
to make them valuable for the aftermarket, the collector's market,

(43:08):
which seems really untoward to me, like gaming the the
collector's market by manufacturers. That's just it seems that's just
the opposite of what you're supposed to do. So that
is that verified? That sounds urban legendy to me. Well,
it was in one of the articles you sent and
I took it. The person who wrote the article sounded

(43:28):
like they knew what they were talking about. But was
that the same article from the guy who said that
that Kenner couldn't sign the contract because the right people
weren't there. I don't know, because the first thing I
think of is if they're doing that, then what's to
keep them from artificially manufacturing something that's going to be
valuable and just keeping a bunch of them themselves. Well,

(43:50):
most companies like money now rather than a little more
money later, so that would probably do it. You know,
all right, it's you want to talk about how these
suckers are made. Yeah, again, you found some good stuff
here when you put this together. Yeah, I thought this
is pretty interesting. So it starts with design, right right,

(44:12):
which I mean it's pretty sensible. You say, give us
a thor character, you sucker, and um, they're talking to
an artist a sculptor when they say that. So the
sculpture gets to work like creating um, like basically a
skeleton it's called armature out of wire and the wires
and basically a position. Thor likes to run holding his hammer,

(44:33):
so he'll be kind of like in a crouched running pose. Um.
And then they slap some clay around it, maybe bake
it a little bit to make it stiff, and then
they mold very very roughly the general body shape and
head shape of thor Um, and then they kind of
start to get to work from there. Yeah. Rough thorness

(44:54):
is what they look for early on. UM and this,
you know, it depends on the action figure you're There
are all different kinds that have varying levels of UH
of movement, and depending on what you're gonna end up
with is really going to inform the process. But let's
say your thor and you want to move your arms,

(45:14):
move those big pipes a little bit. Uh, they may
choose to sculpt the arms separately, or maybe the legs separately. Um.
They almost always do the head separately because it's got
all these this fine detail and you just want to
work on that by itself. Right when you're when you're
messing with the heads, you're just your wrist is like
going into the chest that you just finished, and yeah,

(45:35):
why do I always do this? Not to start over?
Pretty much, so they're working with this torso perhaps only
put him aside. Work on the arms, work on the hands,
work on the head, and eventually, uh, once you've got
this head and face like you want it, um, you're
gonna attach that back on, build a neck, and build

(45:55):
some hair. And if it's one that's completely play stick,
you're gonna do the clothes and everything in the suit.
Sometimes you have real cloth though, like in a cape,
you're gonna you're not gonna carve that out obviously, No, No,
they'll add that. They'll add that later. And sometimes like
an extra figure will come with like a breastplate or

(46:17):
boots or thor's hammer. Maybe they'll they gave thor kung
food grip, so they'll have to mold that also separately.
But then sometimes, and you'll know this already, probably as
the designer, they're gonna be like, no, we don't want
any of that weird cloth that's like a big g
I Joe and that's just weird people out. We want it.
We wanted plastic and molded. So they'll they'll basically carve

(46:39):
the clothing out of the original sculpture as well. Yeah,
and this all takes about two weeks on the Uh.
Of course it depends on who you're working with, but
two or three weeks to carve this this dude out
to its kind of rosst form. Yeah, I'm always incredulous
and stuff like that. It's like, you know, who does
it take two weeks? Is that really an average? Like

(46:59):
how many action figure sculptors did you pull to find
out that it was two weeks? They probably just talked
to someone in the company and they say how long's
it take and they say about two weeks. Yeah, that's
good enough for me. Then all right if they as
long as they spoke to somebody, all right, So now
you've got your little little dude, and uh, you're going
to use a plastic resin when it comes to the

(47:20):
actual materials of the thing itself. Uh, there's something called
a B S acra acrono. Wow, I thought I got it.
You let me to try it. Sure, I think it's
a crilla, nit trial, beauta dyne styrene, a B S
nice work. Three types of plastic and one that's right,

(47:40):
So that's the harder plastic. For the main body. They
may use something like polypropylene or polyethylene for the various
parts or pieces. You've got your fabrics, If you have
capes and things like that, well no, I mean even
the little small figures had had like the Jawa's had capes. Yeah,

(48:05):
not capes, but cloaks. I know, I remember that weird
to me out too, And I think, finally I understand
what it is that I don't like about the large
G I Jos. They had fabric clothing and that it
was ill fitting clothing to like, did you see I
don't know if you had it or not, but the
original G I Joe, like some of them, came with
a raincoat, but it didn't look like a raincoat. It

(48:26):
looked like he was wearing a sleeping bag that had
a draw string around his face. It wasn't a sleeping bag.
I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be a raincoat,
but I think that's what it was. Just creepy, you know,
that was all I guess it's not. Actually the size
is the creepy factor brought on by this clothing that
didn't fit quite right. Like you know, it's the kind

(48:48):
of clothing that you would make for a son who
was was a serial killer, but you didn't want to
turn him in, so you just keep them locked in
the basement and you gotta make his own clothes. Thing.
You have to make clothing for him. This is the
kind of clothing you would make him. That's I think
what creeps me out about it. Well, you're working through
some stuff, so I'll check in with you at the

(49:08):
end that we'll see exactly what it is you hate
about the So, uh, the manufacturing process. You got to
create the mold. Next, you want to master mold, or
maybe it might be more than one mold. And uh,
this requires the most time. They say in this article
about two thirds of the whole time is spent making
these molds. Yeah, which makes sense, and it takes a

(49:30):
few months. Again, is that arbitrary. Who knows, Yeah, this
guy is like probably just takes a couple and then
once you once you have the molds, and you also
have to make a decision when you're making the molds.
Do you want to um make the torso and the
legs together? Is he gonna move his arms? If so,
you probably want to do two different molds for the arms.

(49:52):
So there's a pretty decent amount of decision making work
that goes into just coming up with what molds you're
gonna make. And then one you make the molds, and yes,
you have to make the molds, you have to operate them,
and then you have to decide what kind of um uh,
what kind of um what's the word I'm looking for
where you actually make the plastic um figure molding which

(50:14):
I should have been able to come up with because
we were talking about molds at the time, that's right.
So there's different kinds. I looked up one kind called
rotational molding. I guess that's what Star Wars was going
to try at first, but they lost too much detail
on the figure, so they went to um, I think,
an injection molding process. But with rotational molding, you've got

(50:36):
a mold, and it's on this computerized arm, and this
arm just kind of spins around inside an oven, and
inside the arm is like powdered plastic resin, and I
guess it just melts it by kind of slowly spinning
it around. I don't understand what the problem is, but
I guess injection molding is far superior. Yeah, I guess so.

(50:57):
I mean the deal with injection molding, they pump it
into two pieces and then they apply pressure to those
two pieces to mold them together while it cools and hardens. Um.
But I think what you get there is, which is
why probably they wanted to use the rotational molding. Is
if you have those little Star Wars guys, or imagine

(51:19):
g I Joe, if they were injection molds. If you
if you look at their body from the side, it's
in two pieces, and sometimes you can see a little
seam on their head or on their arm or something,
or probably on their arm because those are separate. But um, yeah,
sometimes you can see the seam or where the two
halves were pressed together. They wanted that smooth look for

(51:40):
the uh for the rotational molding that that provides. But um,
I always I guess. The detail is the trade off.
So that's the that's the rotational moling. You don't have seams,
but you lose fine detail. With injection moling, you can
get the detail, but you can see the seams of
where the two sides of the mold came together, I guess.
But man, I mean, how bad could that detail of

(52:00):
ben Because when you look at those early Star Wars figures,
I mean the detail was not great, you know, Like
had I been Mark Hamillon had been like this is
what you think? My face looks like? Yeah, like they
I mean, they've gotten way better. Like the stuff they're
making today is just amazing, but it's almost too good,
you know what I mean, Like, yeah, there's some amazing
stuff out there, but it's that was one of the

(52:21):
great things about these, especially the three and three quarter
inch guys. They just they just they were they were
meant to be played with. They were meant to have
imagination bestowed on them, and little child's hands, not supposed
to sit on your desk at work or something like that,
and just as adornment like, they were meant to be
played with, and they were. They were subtly downgraded from

(52:45):
you know, the stuff that's out today. They were downgraded
to an upgrade. Yes, Like John Hodgman is literally screaming
right now into his earbuds because we're nostalgic about something
that was decidedly crappier. Sorry, but it's true though for me,
like I think that they were they were great. Have

(53:05):
I told you how I feel about the three and
three quarter inst g I, Joe, No, we should talk
about that some more. All right. So you've got this
mold now pressed together if it's injection, and then you
have to assemble it. If you have the arms separately
perhaps or um, basically anything else that doesn't come on
that original mold, you're gonna have to assemble it together. Uh.

(53:28):
Put all the little finishing details, maybe the clothing that
you hate so much, Um, maybe they're painted with a
little more detail that that detail that you hate so much,
and all the things that make a better action figure
that you hate so much. It's not that I hate it,
it's it's just I don't know, I'm not quite sure
how to put it. From just teasing. Yeah, yeah, So

(53:51):
it's I don't hate it, just really don't like it.
The final um, the final key to this whole thing
is packaging and shipping. So you think big deal was
a big deal with the package, but a lot of
thought goes into the packaging, like you were talking about
earlier with the the G I Joe actually advertising the
other dudes on the package, but that classic cardboard backed

(54:15):
uh clear plastic um casing. Yeah, the shell that was
sort of became the standard and what everyone came to
think of as an action figure package. Yeah. And and man,
that was another thing that with the wave of G
I Joes that I played with, that really put a
lot of time and effort and thought into the packaging.
Um and that I mean that was definitely part of it.

(54:37):
That really helps sell the action figures in a lot
a lot of ways. Yeah, you know, even pour right
into it. Like I said, I disregarded the package well.
With the later g I Joes, there was a card
on the back that had like their code name, their specialty,
their backstory, and like you clip them mountain and collect
those as well. Like it was definitely part of it.
I collected the Star Wars trading cards too. It's monny.

(55:00):
I went back and got all my old cards not
too long ago, and I didn't collect a ton of cards.
I thought like, oh, maybe there'll be some you know,
Ken Griffy Rookie card in here with five grand. So
foolishly I thought I had something of value, which I
did not. Um, But I went through and I had
some weird cards that I don't even remember collecting. Like

(55:22):
I had Welcome Back Carter cards. No. Oh, yeah, that's
twice that Welcome Back Cotter has made appearance in this episode.
I was not expecting either one. I like, I like
the show a lot, but I don't remember buying these cards.
I had Jaws the movie cards. I had lots of
Star Wars cards. UM, some weird like I mean, I

(55:43):
had football cards. I didn't even collect football cards. I
didn't think. I went through. I did the same thing
you did. I got all the boxes of baseball cards
from my dad's house, and I was like, I didn't
where did I get all these football cards? Who even
collects football cards? You know, it's unto it's weird. But
the cool thing about the seventies cards is just the

(56:04):
the look when you could like you know, you had
to back the camera off so you could fit the
afrow into the car, and all these like great haircuts
and hair dues that all these guys had back then.
It's pretty Why is he holding that fist aloft and
then chuck? After the packaging, it goes to the stores
and little kids like us buy it and love it.

(56:25):
That's right, that's the end of the manufacturing process. Wow,
what a journey. Yeah, that was something we went all
the way to China and back we did. I don't
think we pointed that out a lot of times. The
molding process is an asia. So that's one reason it
takes so long, because they put them on slow boats.

(56:47):
So you kind of tease this earlier. Um, the you
found a list of the rarest Star Wars figures. Yeah,
and you know, I looked at other lists and they
listed different figures. So I don't know if that's something
that changes a lot as far as which ones are
the most valuable, because I literally saw at least two

(57:07):
different ones that were described as the Holy Grail Star
Wars figures, So you know there can't be more than
one Holy Grail. No, So I do look forward to
hearing from those in the no. But instead of saying
these are the most valuable, let's just say we'll talk
about some that are pretty rare and fairly valuable. I

(57:27):
think that was pretty smart. So no one holds us
our feet to the flame. Yack Face. I had not
heard of yack face, had you know? So yack Face
was one of um Boba Fett's either guards or mercenaries.
But he worked for Boba Fette. No not, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry. Star Wars people, stop stop. He works for

(57:51):
Job of the Hut. He's not the same person you
just cause three car accidents, three toyo to prius is
just liberty mutual is going to be like this, Josh Clark,
we gotta work into our actual aerial tables. Uh. Yeah,
So he was part of the power of the force line.
Uh he was canceled. And you'll find here's a common

(58:14):
thread here is rarity is what makes something valuable. And
something can be a garbage figure and they don't make
many of them and then it becomes valuable, right, And
I think he wasn't necessarily a garbage figure. He was
just released at a time when, like Star Wars figures,
sales in general were waning. So they sent him over
to Europe. And this thing says that he was never

(58:37):
released in the States. I saw that he was, but
it was in for a very brief time and a
very limited run, and then they sent him to Europe,
I think, in where Return of the Jedi had just
come out, so they were crazy for anything that had
anything to do with Return to Jedi. America was already like,
who cares about Return of the Jedi? We were into

(58:58):
uh Temple of Doom? Oh, yeah, which I read an
article about that recently. Supposedly Temple of Doom was so
dark because both George Lucas and Steven Spielberg we're going
through breakups at the time that they were writing and
making it, So we said, what can we do here?
Why don't why don't you pull out his heart and
eat it? Right? That's what I feel like, because that's

(59:21):
what Tina did all right week way. So this is
another job of the Huts guards. Are you sure you
didn't get those confused? I specifically went and looked up
yeck face and he he works for a job of
the Hut. They even gave Job of the Huts full name,
and I just remember the job apart. Oh he had
more than that. Yeah, the Hut was he was a

(59:43):
member of the Huts, like the Race of Huts or
the tribe of Huts. So is jab of the Hut
like you know, Chuck the American gotcha? Well, I think
I'm on record as being like, I'm a big Star
Wars fan, love them, saw them many many times, collected
the things. But then it ended I'm not m of

(01:00:06):
the other half that really went down the rabbit hole,
Like who are still like into it as much as before? Yeah,
and even back then, like new things like the job
of the Huts full name. Oh yeah, Like I didn't
know that. I never knew that stuff and never read
the books or anything like that. Um. Oh, I did
have some of those comics though, I remember that now.

(01:00:27):
I never had the comics. I was aware of the books,
and there's a lot of books when there. Yeah, they
still write them too, I think, don't they Sure? Hey,
if it's a good thing, sure right? Is that good?
I think so? I think we have swashed the people
who are into the books, alright. So week Way is
another guard. Apparently it's not super rare, but there is

(01:00:48):
a limited edition version that is worth more so. The
carded mint condition the power of the forest line in
the nineties, um is worth a little bit more money.
I says, thirty five dollars. That's what it's worth. No, no, no,
that's what the normal one's worth. Okay, the one that

(01:01:11):
has a special freeze frame slide, which I don't know
what that is, got you. That one's worth ten times
that amount according to this guy. All right. I remember
the vinyl caped Jahwua was always worth a lot of money.
M because they came out with a cloth cape. I
know it's creepy. Uh So I'm gonna throw that in there,
just off the top of my head. There was also

(01:01:33):
a think of vinyl caped in a cloth caped Imperial guard.
Remember the Emperor's red cloaked guards, and I think Return
of the Jedi. Maybe Empire strikes back. I don't know.
I'm afraid to say anything out loud. Now let's just stop. Uh,
let's skip that next one and go straight to Bubba Fett.

(01:01:54):
How does that sound? Okay? Bubba Fett very famously um
in line, there was a Boba Fet that actually shot
a missile, which is every parent knows is a chokable?
Is the parents worst nightmare is that? Is that the
term a chokable chokable something you can choke on, is

(01:02:14):
that a real like parents term. Yeah, that's awesome. I
did not know. Yeah, supposedly anything smaller then a the
size of a toilet paper roll tube. What is it chokeable?
Smaller than that? Yeah, so like if you can fit
something through a toilet paper tube, then your kid can
choke on it. Gotcha, that's what they say. Who says that?

(01:02:39):
I don't know that. Today's show Dumb Dumb parenting blogs.
It makes sense, though, Yeah, I can't fit a football
through that can't choke on a football? That's correct. The
system where you could choke on a tiny football though,
I guess so the the chokable Boba fet um. Obviously,
they said this is a choke king hazard, so they

(01:03:01):
scrapped the plans and redesigned it. And so they did
eventually release uh the figure, but it had that and
I had this one, not the one that shot the rocket,
because they never released that one, right, I specifically remember
being in the same room with one that shot a rocket,

(01:03:21):
or it wasn't hacked. Here's the other possible um explanation.
Uh I saw it on an AD and a confusing
reality with television again, because it says here they never
released them in stores. I saw that too, But I'm like,
I swear I saw one of these things, or maybe
we were just playing with it. We're like, this thing sucks.

(01:03:42):
If it actually shot, the missile would be so much better,
and I imagine what that would be like, and then
accidentally formed of memory. Who knows, I'm forty years old now,
I can't remember what was going on when I was
seven or eight. Uh. As far as how valuable these
things are if you can get your hands on one,
I mean I've seen things all over the place. One
was sold for eighteen thousand dollars last year. But then

(01:04:04):
I also saw one where supposedly a hundred thousand dollar
offer at a Southby's auction was turned down. What so,
I have no idea the value of these dudes, but
it's it's a lot of dough. Is that the Holy
Grail one? Well, this is one of the holy grails.
Do you remember what another Holy Grail you saw was? Yeah?
The other one is is supposedly the most valuable is

(01:04:26):
the double telescoping lightsaber for uh, for Obi Wan, Darth Vader,
and Luke, and I think Luke's is the the most expensive. Um.
If you remember the little did you have any of these.
I had a couple. So the lightsaber guys had a
thing on the bottom of their arm, a little groove

(01:04:48):
cut out with a little, uh, a little you know,
plastic knob that you would uh shove up towards the wrist,
and a lightsaber would come out of the hand as
if it were turning on the double telescoping, because that's
a telescoping feature. A double telescoping means that you could

(01:05:08):
extend it even further out from the original telescope and
those supposedly are super rare and uh worth a lot
of dough. So that one I saw actually online. Um
oh man, I can't remember the site, but it was.
It's a it's great, it's a great Star Wars action
figure site. Um. And they had a picture of it.

(01:05:31):
Have you seen it? Yeah? I thought I had one,
but I can't find it, so I think I do.
Like the the regular lightsaber that they had was just fine,
but then the double telescoping part was just like this
extra thinner, pointy piece of plastic that hung down at
like a weird angle. It didn't keep going straight. Yeah,

(01:05:54):
they always kind of bent and it looked just it
looked broken. You know. Yeah, but even if I did
have one, it's well warned. So it's not like I mean,
I think all of these things, it's always like mint
condition in the package. It's worth this. Don't even talk
to me if it's not mint. Yeah, that's the that's
the slogan. So I would love some of this cleared

(01:06:14):
up by experts. Um. Oh, well we'll hear from them.
The Bubba fet matter. Yeah, I don't even know why
I'm asking the Bubba fet matter, the like which one
is truly the Holy Grail? Uh? What happened with the
Kenner or not Kenner? The me Go Star Wars deal? Right?
And did did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone? Yes? We
need answers people. You got anything else? I got nothing else.

(01:06:38):
This is a big overview. There's clearly many more stories
to be told. I got a couple a couple more.
I just want to give shouts out Yo Joe dot com. Okay,
if you were into g I Joe's and you want
to feel nostalgic, uh, go check that site out. It's amazing. Um.
And then I created a gallery a few years ago
called Hilarious Not huck Off Some good legs of beloved

(01:07:02):
toys and it's just like the slide show of toys
from around the world that are it's pretty obvious what
they're supposed to be, but they're not. Like the names
just a little off or um they they've they've tried
to come up with a new brand altogether, but it's
just some cheap version of something great. So go check
that out too. It's kind of cool. It was fun

(01:07:23):
to put together. And that's that's it, man, it's all
I got. Go watch the g I Joe p s
A S by Eric Fenzler again. They still hold up.
Do you remember those where it was like like just
weird dubs of those g I Joe p s as? Like,
now you know, and knowing is half the battle. You
haven't seen these, I don't think, So okay, I'll send

(01:07:46):
them to you. You're gonna die laughing good. Yeah, you'll
love him. You've been trying to kill me for years,
but this time I won't be wearing gloves coming at
your neck. Uh. That's it for me, man, Yeah, it's
it for me. Okay. Well, if you want to know
more about action figures, you can type those words into
the search bar of your favorite UM search engine. Since

(01:08:09):
I said search engine and didn't do any buzz marketing.
It's time for a listener mail. We're gonna plug Kiva,
which we haven't done in a long time. That's a
good idea. K I v A is a micro lending
website that we have been We've had a team now
the stuff you should know team for geez, how many years?

(01:08:30):
Six or seven? I think it was two thousand eight
or two two thousand nine, eight years, seven or eight years.
Been a while, all right, So this is from Jordan,
and then I'm gonna go over a little bit more
about how our team is looking. Hey guys. Once I
listened to podcasts where you promote a Kiva, I decided
google the Kiva donation thing and eventually found it correctly
as k I v a dot com. I immediately love

(01:08:52):
the site. It's the epitome of how to take the
globalized world and use that for good. So often donations
come in the form of awkward late night and commercials,
or five second quips at the grocery line where you
begrudgingly make an enemy out of the seventeen year old
clerk for saying, no, I don't want to give a
dollar to need e children. Uh. While all types of
donations are generally good, Kiva makes you feel even more

(01:09:14):
personal and once one can certainly give their money to
needs that are important to them, you probably get your
money back, which is great. But no way did that
motivate me to loan, and I suspect to most people
the use Kiva would also be happy to have their
money go to those in need without getting a return. However,
if I do decide to receive my money back, I
will certainly use those funds to circulate that Kiva site again.

(01:09:37):
In other words, re loan, that's fun of the keys.
I think I'm feeling preachy now for writing you an
email on the basis that I just loaned what amounts
to a small amount of cash. But I just want
to thank you guys for sharing that site and allowing
people like myself to make their lives better. As from
Jordan's bachelor who claims to be a US defector, you

(01:09:59):
he moved from the US. I can't remember where he
lives now. It's being cheeky. So we started this Kiva
team a long time ago, and um, right now we
have over nine thousand members and we are almost at
four million bucks. Dude, three million, nine thousand, three hundred

(01:10:20):
twenty five dollars loan. That is a hundred and forty
three thousand, one hundred and fifty five loans average of
sixteen loans per member. And just to give you an
idea of how it works, you donate money, you will
most likely get paid back, and then they say you
can check out and take your money back, or you
can roll that into another loan. Uh I started off

(01:10:41):
with a couple of hundred bucks way back when, and
that now, just because I keep reinvesting, it has grown
to one thousand, one hundred and twenty five dollars forty
seven loans and my default rate is only four. Nice. Yeah,
the default rate is not bad at all. It's not bad.
So you can take a little bit, You can take

(01:11:03):
twenty five dollars even and keep reloaning that and that
in a few years, five or six years can be
you know, hundreds and hundreds of dollars reloaned to people.
Um really makes a big difference. We did our research
on Kiva. They're not perfect, but we think they do
a really good job. And um, you know, we have
the stuff you should know team, so we would love

(01:11:24):
to see people sign up for it, push us over
that four million dollar mark, which is crazy. And yeah,
yeah we're not exclusive. We're not snobs, and neither is
anybody on our team. It's a very very welcoming group
of people who are really active on the board. Um
there lad unofficially but de facto by Glenn and Sonya
who have emerged to be these these great team leaders

(01:11:47):
that like just keep everybody going and motivated and moderate
and make sure everybody's on the up and up, and
they send us emails and reminders about how we're doing.
Hats off to those guys. Thank you guys for that. Yeah,
so Kiva dot org at the said dot com earlier, Um,
and just go to the team section search stuff you
should know. Join the team through somebody's way. You can

(01:12:09):
you can give to people that are doing things that
are close to your heart or maybe countries you've been
to that you want to help support. Uh. You can
give to women or men, and it's just really you
can really dial down and give very specifically how you
want to give. Yeah, and uh, if you want to
know even more about it, you can go listen to
our episode micro Lending and you can we've written a

(01:12:31):
couple of blog posts on it, and I think there's
someone HuffPo even that they published of ours. But it's
um I think like why we land on Kiva, and
it really addresses a lot of stuff that people have
raised and we've said, hey man, it's still totally worth it. Yeah,
good check it out, all right. Uh. If you want
to get in touch with us, you can tweet to
us at s y s K Podcasts. You can send

(01:12:53):
us an email the Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works
dot com. It has always joined us at our home
on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com mm hmmio.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
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