SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: 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 right here.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
How do everybody. I hope everyone is having a loving
and warm December with your friends and family. I'm here
to introduce a classic episode for our twelve Days of
Christmas Toys playlist. And this was pretty good if I
remember correctly, it is a partial history of action figures.
We all love action figures, and if I'm not mistaken,

(00:21):
we might argue once again about the superiority of the tall,
full sized gid Joes that I grew up with the
little action figures that Josh grew up with. Let us
know who's right. Thanks everybody, hope you love it.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from HowStuffWorks dot com.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
Hey, 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 podcast that's right. I'm excited about this
particular podcast, Chuck, I put together this episode.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
I should say, well, do you want to go ahead
and announce the title? For the people that maybe didn't.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
Read it, it is, uh, well, you you're going to
select the title. What's the title?

Speaker 1 (01:16):
Oh? Geez, I don't know everything you ever wanted to
know about. Actually some stuff about action figures that you
may already know, and some stuff that may delight you.

Speaker 3 (01:29):
Well that's a working title. Huh yeah. Yeah, but we're
talking about action figures. That's the point of what I
think that exercise just was.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
Figures for sure. Yeah, and if you do, if you
have a podcast on action figures right in, let us know.
We'll tweet it out for the people who's boat this floated.
This one definitely follows in the vein of the Barbie episode,
which I have to say is one of my perennial favorites.
I love the Barbie episode. Oh yeah, yeah, and Barbie

(02:05):
actually makes an appearance in this one.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
Do you like to play with dolls?

Speaker 3 (02:10):
I like to play with action figures. I played with Barbie's.
I had older sisters, so like I was, I played
with Barbie's whether I wanted to or not, So I
made the most of it.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
But I don't remember my sister having Barbies, but surely
she did, right.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
Yeah, she was a girl in America from the sixties
on Yes, she had a Barbie.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Oh no, my sister grew up in the Soviet Union.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
Oh well, there you go. She had a Martina.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
There probably was a Martina.

Speaker 3 (02:38):
But I mean that was a pretty good episode, and
this one's kind of similar. It's got it all and
like I said, Barbie kind of pops up in the beginning.
She actually inspired action figures, like basically directly when Mattel.
I think it was Ruth Handler who invented the Barbie doll, right, yes,

(02:58):
And when she and Mattel released it, it 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, your buying experience was an over There were
always like more clothes and shoes, and like my sister

(03:18):
had the pool that you could hang out with and
it had like a shower that actually worked. There's 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.

(03:40):
It was coming up with the doll for boys, and
no one had cracked that nut. But Barbie made the
whole thing all the more appealing. I guess.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
Yeah. Finally, this dude named Stan Weston who actually knew
Miss Handler, and he was in the toy racket, and
I guess I shouldn't go at a racket.

Speaker 3 (04:01):
It's a bit of a racket.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
It's a bit of a racket. So he said, like
you were talking about, like, you know, there's tons of
money to be made here. He 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, and maybe not

(04:23):
call them dolls?

Speaker 3 (04:24):
Actually a big one.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
He didn't come up with the name, to be fair.
His boss at Hasbro VP Don Levine or Levine 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.

Speaker 3 (04:42):
Right, Yeah, Stan Weston approached. Yeah, Don Levine at like
that toy Farens, I got a great idea, and apparently
he gave him one hundred thousand dollars just for the idea,
and then he since he worked with Hasbro, he's like, guys,
I've got a good idea here.

Speaker 1 (04:59):
So that rough translates into about seven hundred and eighty
two thousand dollars in today money, which is good dough
for an idea. But of course, yeah, anytime you're 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,

(05:21):
you probably always kind of feel like, uh, I got
taken for a ride.

Speaker 3 (05:24):
Yeah, a little bit. I'm sure Stan Weston is like,
I'll have millions of good ideas like these that I
can sell for seven hundred and eighty thousand dollars a piece.

Speaker 1 (05:32):
I'm sure he may have.

Speaker 3 (05:34):
Yeah, I don't know. It was certainly not one like
gi Joe.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
Right, Well, that's what we've been talking about. We've talked
about Gijo a lot on the show, so it feels
appropriate that we sort of go down that rabbit hole.
If we're going to be talking about action figures.

Speaker 3 (05:49):
Well so, well, yeah, because Gijoe is the one that started,
literally started the action figure craze. Every action figure that's
out there, from like Action Jesus to the Marvel Superhero
action figures, every action figure came from Gi Joe. And
if you want to get feminist about it, every action figure,

(06:11):
including Gi Joe, ultimately came from Barbie.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
Yeah, that's a good way to look at it.

Speaker 3 (06:15):
Yeah, so.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
All right, here's the deal that I never knew. Gi
Joe debuted in nineteen sixty four before Christmas. It's almost
as if they had planned that 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 Gi Joe was the collective name of

(06:39):
all four of these Armed Forces dolls.

Speaker 3 (06:43):
You didn't know that.

Speaker 1 (06:44):
I thought the guy was Joe.

Speaker 3 (06:45):
No, for my era, the guy the main guy was Duke,
and for your era, the main guy was Rocky.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
Well depends on which one you had. Okay, so there
was Rocky was the Army and the Marines Skip Skip
was the Navy guy, and Ace was the Air Force guy.
The fighter pilot.

Speaker 3 (07:08):
Right, So they they ran out of names. After name three,
they ran out back. Let's circle back to Rocky.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
They ran out of names. And they all were identical
except for their clothing. Yeah, as far as I know, right.

Speaker 3 (07:20):
Didn't wasn't their head different or was that the same?
Was it the same face for each one? It was
literally just their clothes were different.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
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 Frank o'haris.

Speaker 3 (07:36):
Well, no, well they came up with an African American
one at one point in like what your great sixties?

Speaker 1 (07:41):
I think, yeah, yeah, they 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 Frank o'harris.

Speaker 3 (07:54):
I got you. So maybe I just had Rocky, maybe
so Rocky or Rocky which one?

Speaker 1 (08:01):
Yeah, I had Rocky, not Rocky.

Speaker 3 (08:04):
So they come out with 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 Bazuka and he was always the best one. Yeah,
but they were on like little molded plastic stands and

(08:26):
you couldn't do anything with them, ex up, slide them
around or whatever. Those have been around forever.

Speaker 1 (08:31):
Well, you could do a lot more with them if
you had imagination.

Speaker 3 (08:34):
And a lighter in a can of hair spray.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
Actually was delighted. It was Toy Story right where they
had those those guys come to life, right. That was
like really really cool to me when I saw that
on screen. These because you know, like you said, you
can never move them, so I see those little dudes
actually come to life was pretty pretty awesome.

Speaker 3 (08:54):
You were like, I've been dreaming of this day. I
kind of was, thank you. Dream Works.

Speaker 1 (09:01):
Oh that's where they got the name.

Speaker 3 (09:03):
Was it DreamWorks or was that Pixar? Was Pixar? Right?
Probably I got it wrong. That's right, it's one hundred
percent Pixar. We're still gonna get emails anyway, even though
we just corrected.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
They're all working dreams. So I read this great article
called geez what was it called? Now you know the
history of g I Joe and knowing it as half
the battle from Smithsonian dot.

Speaker 3 (09:28):
Com written by Jimmy stamp was that his name the Stamper,
the stamp Stick.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
So 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 was well known for that scar on
his face and I didn't even know this. He had

(09:57):
an inverted thumbnail. And both of these were because of
errors in production. But those flaws were what allowed them
to go after people for copyright infringement.

Speaker 3 (10:07):
That's right, that's crazy, Yeah it is. And yeah, I
guess they were natural, like they didn't plan them or
anything like that, but they just were happy accidents, I guess. Yeah.
And actually I've read also elsewhere Chuck that G I.
Joe was so successful as we'll see that by the
seventies there were so many knockoffs that Hasbro released its

(10:30):
own line of knockoffs of cheaply made GI jobs to
compete with the knockoffs and dilute their market share. Yeah,
it was called Defenders, and there were just these really
cheaply made versions of the Big Gi Jos.

Speaker 1 (10:43):
Well, it was a huge hit though. It says here
that they accounted for almost sixty six percent of Hasbro's
profits in nineteen sixty four.

Speaker 3 (10:52):
That's insane, that is nuts. And that was the year
it came out right.

Speaker 1 (10:56):
Yeah, like right out of the gate. It was a
really big deal.

Speaker 3 (10:59):
And again one of the reasons why was because you
had toy soldiers before. But this guy could move. He
had I think like twenty eight or twenty nine moving
parts or different parts, and he was articulated so he
could lift up his hand and karate chop you. Although
he didn't get the kung fu grip until the mid seventies.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
Yeah, that's where I came in.

Speaker 3 (11:19):
Okay, so he had kung fu grip when you knew
Gi Joe.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
Yeah, very much, gotcha.

Speaker 3 (11:25):
It was so kung fu, right, but he still looked
like frank O Harris.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
But he still looked like frank Gohers. Yes.

Speaker 3 (11:31):
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 doll,
which no one called the doll. In fact, 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 Gi Jos.
This is an action figure, that's right, but on the

(11:54):
package itself. And I don't know if you remember this
or not. I don't because I wasn't born yet. But
there were pictures of the other dudes and the other
outfits you could get. So when you bought one Gi Joe,
you as a kid were made immediately aware, whoa, whoa, whoa,
there's other Gi Joe's out there, and I want to
collect them all. Some little kid came up with that

(12:16):
collect them all phrase just in his little brain.

Speaker 1 (12:19):
Yeah, some little kid named middle age.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
Marketing executive Don Levine.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
So not only that, but they had, you know, like Barbie,
they had all manner of other things that you could
collect and buy. I had. I had the jet pack,
which you would attach to a string to simulate jet
packing and send flying out like between two trees.

Speaker 3 (12:41):
Gotcha.

Speaker 1 (12:42):
And then I had the the submarine. It was like
a sea wolf. It was really cool.

Speaker 3 (12:49):
How big was the submarine if you were playing with
twelve inch Gi jos It was to take up the
size of like the family room.

Speaker 1 (12:57):
Well, this is not going to mean anything to anyone
at home, but it's about the size of this lamp
on our desk.

Speaker 3 (13:02):
Oh. So it was like a one man sub.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
Yeah, I feel like it was. I can't remember exactly
I feel I feel like it was about the size
of us, A little smaller than a bowling ball.

Speaker 3 (13:13):
How's that like a child's bowling ball.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
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 seated position, he was smaller. And
then I had the six wheel or eight wheel I
can't remember all terrain vehicle. Well that's nice, and that's
about all that we were. That's about all we could afford.

Speaker 3 (13:33):
That's but that was probably quite an outlay from your parents.

Speaker 1 (13:36):
No, it was great. And that was over time, you know.

Speaker 3 (13:38):
Right, several Christmases.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
Right, Yeah, And this was, like I said, I came
in on the seventies, but in the sixties they actually
g I Joe did not do very well because of
the Vietnam War. Yeah, and it was actually kind of
I think it was actually went away from production for
a while.

Speaker 3 (13:56):
Yeah, it did. They just they basically retired him. I
think the Vietnam War hurt sales, so they took him
out a little bit, and then they re released him
again and kind of rebranded him, I think too. Rather
than a soldier, they rebranded him as an adventurer. Right,
So this machete's not for cutting off the hands of

(14:18):
a sherpa who leads us into danger. It's for you know,
cutting through vegetation and on a jungle adventure to save
sherpas who were for some reason live in the jungle.

Speaker 1 (14:30):
Now, yeah, and they, like you said, they called them
adventurer or the naval officer was called an aquaat 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

(14:52):
right slash Franco Harris.

Speaker 3 (14:55):
Right and G I Joe. Actually it was taken from
a nineteen forty five movie called the Story of G
I Joe. That's where that came from.

Speaker 1 (15:04):
Did you ever see that?

Speaker 3 (15:05):
No? No? Have you?

Speaker 1 (15:08):
No? Okay, I'm just curious.

Speaker 3 (15:11):
So Chuck, G I Joe is, Uh, he starts to
do kind of poorly because of Vietnam. They take him out,
they re release him, and he doesn't do very well
when they bring him back out, even though he's an adventurer. Right,
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

(15:33):
it was filled by a little company named Mego. And
we'll talk about Migo after this break. How about that
sounds good? As watched? Why s k s he should know?

Speaker 1 (16:01):
All right? Is it migo or Mego? I've been saying
mego in my head just because I'm a dumb American.

Speaker 3 (16:06):
No, well, I think mego is probably how they say
it in the UK.

Speaker 1 (16:10):
Oh was that where it came from?

Speaker 3 (16:12):
No, they're American. I say Migo to be honest, I
have no idea. I'm sure there is a right way
that Tommy Migo would love to tell you about. But
uh huh or Tommy Mego. Uh? But yeah, I say
I've said migo in my head, but I don't know
which one's correct to tell you the truth.

Speaker 1 (16:29):
All right, Well we'll just proceed fussly. I'll say mego,
you say mego, Let's just call the whole thing off,
So go ahead with Migo. So so g I.

Speaker 3 (16:43):
Joe's gone. But again, this was you said. It accounted
for like sixty six percent of Hasbro's sales just in
the first year, and he was a hit year after
year after year for many years. Right, And even when
they brought him back, sales were terrible compared to the
initial stuff, but they were still making money off of them. Right,
So this first, the world's first action figure, made a

(17:06):
huge impact. And when the world's first action figure wasn't
around anymore, well, there was a void that was to
be filled. And this company called Migo decided in I
think nineteen seventy 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 a line of superheroes called the World's Greatest Superheroes

(17:31):
Action Figures and I think nineteen seventy two, and it
was a pretty big hit, like right off the bat.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
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. So they got a
hold of licenses for Spider Man and the Hulk and

(17:58):
Batman and Wonder Woman and an Iron Man and Captain America.

Speaker 3 (18:02):
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.

Speaker 1 (18:08):
They did not discriminate.

Speaker 3 (18:10):
I know they did.

Speaker 1 (18:10):
It's a wonderful time. And not only that, but they said,
you know, we're making money handover fist selling these action figures.
What if do you think kids would actually buy villains
like the Joker? And uh, do you think they would
buy side characters like Robin and Batgirl and other villains

(18:31):
like the Riddler and things like the Batmobile and the
Batcave play set? And before you knew it, they were
pumping out things like Bruce Wayne's Foundation building.

Speaker 3 (18:41):
I know that was a real thing.

Speaker 1 (18:44):
Or what was the other weird one? The store?

Speaker 3 (18:46):
Oh, they had they had an exclusive with the Montgomery
Ward 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, all right, you sit
there in your cubicle and that's what you do. Well,

(19:09):
the rest of us are saving the world. That's what
you do with that action figure.

Speaker 1 (19:12):
All right, that makes much more sense. I thought they
had a Montgomery Ward play set.

Speaker 3 (19:16):
That's what I thought at first too, like Bruce.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
Wayne worked there or something, which of course he didn't
even work. I don't know what I'm thinking.

Speaker 3 (19:22):
No, so just gave orders.

Speaker 1 (19:24):
They were making tons and tons of money. 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.

Speaker 3 (19:40):
Yeah. And the other thing about Migo too was that
all action figures have been like twelve inch twelve inches
tall up to that point, and Migo's line was eight inches.
So action figures are starting to shrink a little bit.

Speaker 1 (19:53):
Now, that's right. And the one I actually had, even
though I have no idea why, I had the Star
Trek Enterprise Bridge, and then I guess, man. I know
I had Spock and Kirk and a couple of others,
but you know, I'm well known to not have ever
seen any Star Trek at all, except for maybe one

(20:17):
movie or something, So I have no idea why I
got that.

Speaker 3 (20:22):
I mean, if it was a cool action figure, I
guess some weird I had a weird wizard action figure
when I was a kid.

Speaker 1 (20:29):
But you're into weird wizards, you still are.

Speaker 3 (20:33):
Well, I am now as a grown up. I wasn't
as a kid. I was like, what is this thing?

Speaker 1 (20:37):
Gotcha?

Speaker 3 (20:38):
Some weird wizard?

Speaker 1 (20:39):
Well, I don't know why I had it. But the
Star Trek that their collection that was another big hit.
So they were just they literally kind of I mean,
g I, Joe and Barbie of course kind of spawned
this thing, but it seems like Mego really took it
to another level.

Speaker 3 (20:54):
Yeah, yeah, they kind of. They kind of. Yeah, action
figures were cool and ged Joe had really started something,
but Migo, Yeah, they just they established it forever, permanently.
And they also showed other companies too, like hey, man,
go get yourself a license and stick to it, like

(21:17):
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 playsets was from one of
the sets from an episode of Star Trek, the Apple episode. Like,
you don't necessarily see there, You didn't see that before.

(21:37):
With action figures. It was more like, hey, you know
this guy, just buy him. This is like you're into
Star Trek and so are we, and here is some
awesome playsets based on your love of Star Trek. So
Migo definitely broke the mold in that sense as well.
But they also like they were it for action figures,

(21:58):
like nobody could compete with They would buy stuff from
Japan and then turn them into new stuff here. There
was just no competing with Migo 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,

(22:19):
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.

Speaker 1 (22:29):
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 what we're
talking about, and if you know action figures, you probably
see this coming. They declined the Star Wars brand YEP
and allowed Kenner to pick it up.

Speaker 3 (22:47):
Yes, so how though, which story is true?

Speaker 1 (22:50):
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. It can't be a little more discerning.

Speaker 3 (23:02):
Yeah, that one hurts. That hurts more than the other story.
The other version was that like 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. Yeah, them actually turning down the Star Wars
line is it's even better. It's even sweeter, Like, man,

(23:23):
what were you guys thinking? But I mean there's lots
of stories like that, just somebody lacking foresight.

Speaker 1 (23:30):
Yeah, the other story is completed by the supposedly they
weren't there. So Lucas went to another toy, went to Kenner,
who was in the same building in New York and
I guess the people that could sign their name were there, right,
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 have inside,

(23:52):
like verifiable knowledge of that.

Speaker 3 (23:54):
Oh for sure, George Lucas, just let us know.

Speaker 1 (23:57):
And I mean verifiable, not that's what I heard.

Speaker 3 (24:01):
I read the same blog exactly. I knew your nerd
voice is gonna come up in this episode.

Speaker 1 (24:06):
Well, sure, of course.

Speaker 3 (24:08):
So if you have a love of Migo or you
just want to know what we're talking about, also go
check out the Mego Museum online Mego 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 they still
somehow make me nostalgic, you.

Speaker 1 (24:29):
Know, exactly. All right, So let's jump back a little
bit to nineteen sixty six, and we're going to 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
Gia Joe was licensing their stuff out to other countries

(24:50):
all over the place. That was a UK company who
released it under the name Action Man, and eventually they
licensed it to Japan to a company called Takara, and
they went on to create some action figures based on
Gi Joe, and then due to the oil crisis in
the early seventies, they started developing smaller versions. So at

(25:11):
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.

Speaker 3 (25:26):
No, no, not only did we not care. So now
we're starting to enter my wheelhouse. Not only did we
not care, These smaller ones are vastly superior to the
older ones.

Speaker 1 (25:36):
Oh you think, yeah, so We've heard me out.

Speaker 3 (25:39):
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 Gi Joe's or the second
wave small Gi Jo's are better.

Speaker 1 (25:51):
All right, let me ask you, sir, have you ever
held in your hands and played with a twelve inch
Gi Joe with a kung fu grip?

Speaker 3 (25:58):
I would would not touch one.

Speaker 1 (26:01):
So you can't even say that.

Speaker 3 (26:03):
Have you played with the small one?

Speaker 1 (26:05):
Yeah? Man, I had tons of small action figures.

Speaker 3 (26:07):
Oh okay, all right, Oh did you have the Star
Wars stuff?

Speaker 1 (26:09):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (26:10):
Yeah, So you think the big one's superior.

Speaker 1 (26:12):
Well yeah, it's twelve inches. It's articulates nineteen different ways.

Speaker 3 (26:17):
Now, I like the small ones. I always will, even
after playing with the big one, which I have not
and 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 the old ones
seem weird and dusty and moldy or something like that,
but the small ones seemed better than me. All right,

(26:41):
at the very least you have to you have to
admit the wave of Gi Joe's that were released when
I started playing with them, just the lion itself was better,
regardless of the size of them.

Speaker 1 (26:53):
Right, Well, let's go ahead and talk about the thought
because Gi Joe changed a lot 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
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,

(27:15):
because eighty three eighty four, I was like thirteen, and
you know, I.

Speaker 3 (27:19):
Was moving on to you know, check out this mustache.

Speaker 1 (27:22):
Yeah I was. I was skateboarding by that point, and
I thought it was like super cool skateboarder.

Speaker 3 (27:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:27):
Uh, maybe I still played a little bit.

Speaker 3 (27:30):
So d your only your neighborhood best friend knew about it.
Your school friends didn't exactly.

Speaker 1 (27:36):
So GID Joe was a cartoon. 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.

Speaker 3 (27:51):
Yes, led by Cobra commander.

Speaker 1 (27:53):
And this was your right in your wheelhouse. Correct.

Speaker 3 (27:56):
Yeah, So in nineteen eighty three I was like, so yeah,
this was I was really just primed and ready. I
would just get it now, 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

(28:16):
up the backstories because each this new wave of g
I Joe when they released it, they each character now
had its own name, and it wasn't Rocky or Rocky,
it was things like Duke or shipwreck or blow torch
or barbecue or Dusty. And then the bad guys had

(28:38):
their own their own names too, like Cobra Commander, sirpentor
Tomax or Zaymot or the whole, the whole gang, right tochies,
Who was that? Tomax and Zaymot they were evil twins?
Who were they were? Basically they were like if if
Cobra Commander had hired Patrick Bateman and then cloned him

(29:01):
a mere version of him, it would be Tomax and
Zey Mott.

Speaker 1 (29:06):
Interesting none of this stuff.

Speaker 3 (29:09):
Right, right? Okay, so I do because I grew up
with it. But I also had it pounded into my
head every day after school watching the Gi Joe cartoon.
And that was the huge innovation that really just created
this other world for kids like me to just lose
yourself in with the action figures, because now you didn't

(29:29):
even need to use your imagination. You could just be like, oh,
I saw this on the Gi Joe cartoon today, so
let's act that out right.

Speaker 1 (29:37):
And none of this would have ever happened had it
not been for Ronald Reagan, That's right, and that sounds weird,
but here's the story. So in the late seventies there
was a lot of concern about kids and advertising, about
advertising two children. So the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission,

(29:58):
got a task force together and they say, 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 psychology and health and nutrition because it had

(30:18):
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 intent of selling ads. They can't distinguish that
from reality.

Speaker 3 (30:34):
Right, Like if you dress up a cartoon as an ad,
the kid is he just thinks it's a cartoon, she.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
Does, exactly, Or if the ad is a cartoon, right,
rather than the kid doesn't know. They just think I'm
still watching cartoons on my TV.

Speaker 3 (30:50):
My brain hasn't made that switch. But man, could I
go for some smurf cereal?

Speaker 1 (30:54):
Exactly. So it was a big deal at the time.
So there were all these recommendations basically on how to
regulate and restrict advertising that were They basically said it
was unfair and deceptive to kids. For older kids, they said,
they can tell the difference, but maybe we should have
warnings on the ads and disclosures saying that this is

(31:15):
a commercial message. And so what happens when you do
this in America? The private sector said no, no, no, no, no,
no no no. I want to be able to sell
as much sugary garbage to kids as I want. You
can't restrict free trade, free trade in business, yep. And
so we're going to raise a record at the time

(31:36):
sixteen million dollars to lobby against this.

Speaker 3 (31:40):
Well, and they were helped out in no small part
by getting the right guy into the White House.

Speaker 1 (31:46):
Right, So, in nineteen eighty, one of the first things
Ronald Reagan did was he appointed a new chairman of
the Federal Trade Commission. And this was a move that
basically said, you know what, there's going to be no
regulation whatsoever. Got to leave these markets free. You can
do whatever you want. And that is basically how all
of these cartoons were born, right Gi Joe, Transformers, Smurf Bears, care.

Speaker 3 (32:11):
Bears, rainbow, bright, strawberry.

Speaker 1 (32:14):
Shortcase, Yeah, you name it. It basically became marketing and
selling things, and cartoons became one and the same finally.

Speaker 3 (32:21):
Yeah, And one of the other things that definitely helped
G I. Joe too was the I don't know if
it was formal or informal, but there was basically a
ban on on warlike cartoons and warlike toys. Yes, that
was brought back under the same ease of restrictions by
the FTC, so that I think the percentage of warlike

(32:44):
toys that was sold in the early eighties went up
like three hundred and fifty percent from one year over
the other, from like nineteen eighty three to eighty four,
I think whereas before it was like no, we don't
Gjo's an adventurer. Remember, It's like, no, G I. Joe's
going to cut right off.

Speaker 1 (33:02):
So that's in nineteen eighty That's one of the first
one of the first big things Reagan did when he
got into office. Flash forward to nineteen eighty eight. In November,
one of the last things he did was he vetoed
a new measure because basically they saw what was happening
all of a sudden, kids were being bombarded with war
cartoons and just terrible sugary packaged food all over the place,

(33:25):
like the restrictions were nowhere to be found. So Congress
came back and said, you know what, this is out
of hand. Here's a measure that will restrict once again
and impose some legislation on this programming aimed at children.
It passed the House by three twenty eight to seventy eight,

(33:45):
passed unanimously in the Senate, and Reagan vetoed it and said, basically,
one of the things they were trying to do, they
were trying to limit programming to advertising to ten point
five minutes an hour on the weekends and twelve minutes
an hour in the weekdays, and also provide require broadcasters
to provide educational and informational programs as a condition of

(34:09):
renewing their licenses. So Reagan vetoed that and said, no way,
we're not going to do that. We're going to keep
it as is. People that were in favor of this
went crazy. Basically, they were saying, like, how can you
guys say you're the Party of the Children and Education
and then veto something that is clearly going to help
protect our children.

Speaker 3 (34:30):
Yeah, that was messed up. Man. I had no idea
about that one.

Speaker 1 (34:34):
Yeah, and not only that. What happened was along with
this deregulation, the toy companies and the cartoons, they actually
they kind of got in bed together and they said,
you know what, if you show, if you schedule as
a broadcaster, our cartoons that sell toys, will give you

(34:55):
a profit on those toys. Nice if you run these
g I Joe cartoons, then we'll get a little cut
of what we're selling.

Speaker 3 (35:01):
Plus also we'll buy ads on those cartoons or on
your network too, to sell those those toys when you
show these cartoons. I imagine you know, yeah, because I
remember watching Gi Joe, a real American hero the cartoon,
which I have to say it was created in large
part to sell Gi Joe, It's true, but it had

(35:24):
it had great story arcs. It had overarching story arcs
that went from episode to episode. The individual ones were good,
like the voice acting was good, the animation was pretty good.
Same with Transformers too. Like, it was pretty pretty good cartoon.
So at least they were putting time and effort and
thought into this. But yeah, it's pretty despicable marketing to

(35:46):
kids in general.

Speaker 1 (35:47):
Actually, I read a blog. I'm certainly glad you were
a satisfied viewer. Yeah, but I read this blog that
basically said that, man, I wish I could find it.
Maybe I'll post this when we release it. That that
the deregulation killed the creativity and killed in children's cartoons.
Well yeah, and that they said that before you know it,

(36:09):
there were just like things were knockoffs of one another
they didn't care about I guess. I mean, you were
a kid, so maybe you didn't realize it, but.

Speaker 3 (36:16):
That was too stupid to know it was going on.

Speaker 1 (36:18):
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.

Speaker 3 (36:26):
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 I'll go back to
that Hairbear bunch. Well they were loved the hair Bears.

Speaker 1 (36:38):
They were drug fueled, but they're yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (36:40):
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. Scooby Doo was interesting and it
was pretty cool, but it was basically the same storyline
every single time, like with Scooby Do. And I'm not
trying to argue in favor of Corporate America marketing to

(37:01):
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 Gi Joe,
like when they went around the world and took the
DNA of all of these great these great dictators and
conquerors like Alexander the Great and Napoleon and put them

(37:24):
all together and created Sir Pentor, who was actually the
new guy who was in charge of Cobra because Cobra
Commander was a bit of a coward. Huh did you
not know any of this? How do you not know
this stuff?

Speaker 1 (37:37):
I was I was trying to kiss girls in the
roller skating rink at this point, and you thought girls
were gross.

Speaker 3 (37:41):
Still, It's true, it's true, but it definitely helped shape me,
and I am nostalgic for it in that sense, and
I am appreciative butt, Chuck, I propose that sooner than
later we do an episode on marketing to kids, because
this whole deregulation story is just fascinating.

Speaker 1 (38:00):
Yeah, I mean, I hadn't. I didn't really know anything
about it because I was still a dumb kid when
this was going on.

Speaker 3 (38:05):
Let's do it though, Okay, agreed. So that was Gi
Joe shape my childhood. You don't say it's just a
tad so, but prior to Gi 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 Star Wars line again, when Migo passed it up,

(38:29):
they quickly realized that we really screwed up. They released
like a Buck Rogers line and a black Hole line.
Remember that movie The black Hole I do from Disney.
It's really creepy even still. But so they tried to
catch up, and they ended up going bankrupt in nineteen
eighty three basically as a result of losing this Star

(38:49):
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 nineteen seventy eight,
which I believe was the first year that they released
these things is three and three quarter inch Star Wars
line of action figures. In nineteen seventy eight nineteen seventy nine,

(39:11):
they made one 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 year and making

(39:32):
one hundred million each year from that, they sold three
hundred million total. So Kenner made some serious bank off
of Star.

Speaker 1 (39:40):
Wars, off of me and my lawnmowing fund. Yeah, h
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, the X Wing, the
Death Star, Oh you Lucky had the land Speeder. I

(40:03):
also had the big Dolls. I don't know if they
were twelve inch, but what is it with you and
big dolls, man, They're huggable. Yeah. I had the Big
Luke and the Big I think the Big Luke and
the Big Vader and maybe like one other, maybe Chewbacca,

(40:24):
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 pay to play with them
like normal children do. I didn't put it like in
a box on a shelf to try and keep it

(40:46):
in mint condition.

Speaker 3 (40:47):
But that's weird to do though as a kid.

Speaker 1 (40:50):
Well, yeah, I don't know. I mean maybe there were
kids doing it. I didn't know any.

Speaker 3 (40:54):
We all played with them, sure, but I mean that
was originally the point. I think it wasn't It's so
like much later that it became evident that you could
sell them to people who wish they had them in
the package still for a lot of money.

Speaker 1 (41:08):
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.

Speaker 3 (41:20):
Yeah we should. Was that it about Star Wars?

Speaker 1 (41:22):
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
there were huge hits.

Speaker 3 (41:33):
That's it, all.

Speaker 1 (41:34):
Right, we're gonna take a break and we're gonna come
back and talk a little bit about the how these
things are actually made as why why s K.

Speaker 3 (41:46):
You should know?

Speaker 1 (42:01):
All right, So just to put a little bow on
the action figure thing before we get into how they're made.
You know, Transformers came along, was huge throughout the nineties.
Then you saw Marvel and DC 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

(42:22):
action figures, like for nostalgia sake, Like I literally had
a scarface doll.

Speaker 3 (42:28):
Oh yeah, I've seen the.

Speaker 1 (42:29):
Scarface al Pacino that I used to have in the office.

Speaker 3 (42:32):
Did it come with a mount of cocaine? It did,
plastic mount of cocaine?

Speaker 1 (42:36):
It did. 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 things you
wouldn't even imagine people would like Welcome Back Cotter action figures.

Speaker 3 (42:51):
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 mislabeled on
the package. To make these things, to make them valuable
for the aftermarket, the collector's market. Yeah, which seems really
untoward to me, like gaming the collector's market by manufacturers.

(43:17):
That's just it seems that's just the opposite of what
you're supposed to do.

Speaker 1 (43:22):
So that is that verified? That sounds urban legendy to me.

Speaker 3 (43:26):
Well, it was in one of the articles you sent
and I took it. The person who wrote the article
sounded like they knew what they were talking about. Really,
But was it that the same article from the guy
who said, though I don't know that Kennard couldn't sign
the contracts because the right people weren't there.

Speaker 1 (43:38):
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.

Speaker 3 (43:51):
Well, most companies like money now rather than a little
more money later, so that would probably do it.

Speaker 1 (43:58):
Yeah, that's true, you know, all right, So you want
to talk about how these suckers are made.

Speaker 3 (44:04):
Yeah, again, you found some good stuff here when you
put this together.

Speaker 1 (44:08):
Yeah, I thought this was pretty interesting. So it starts
with design, right.

Speaker 3 (44:13):
Right, which mean's pretty sensible. You say, give us a
Thor character, you sucker, And they're talking to an artist
a sculptor when they say that, So the sculptor gets
to work like creating 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, so he'll be

(44:35):
kind of like in a crouched running pose, 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, and then they kind of start to get
to work from there.

Speaker 1 (44:54):
Yeah, rough thorness, right is what they look for early on.
And this, you know, depends on the action figure. There
are all different kinds that have varying levels 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, move those

(45:16):
big pipes a little bit. They may choose to sculpt
the arms separately, or maybe the legs separately. They almost
always do the head separately because it's got all this
fine detail and you just want to work on that
by itself.

Speaker 3 (45:31):
Right, And when you're messing with the head, you're just
your wrist is like going into the chest that you
just finished, and yeah, why do I always do this?
Not have to start over?

Speaker 1 (45:39):
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, once you've got this
head and face like you want it, you're going to
attach that back on, build a neck, and build some hair.
And if it's one that's completely plastic, you're gonna do

(46:03):
the clothes and everything in the suit. Sometimes you have
real cloth though, like in a cape, so you're gonna
you're not gonna carve that out obviously.

Speaker 3 (46:13):
No, No, they'll add that. They'll add that later. And
sometimes like an action figure will come with like a
breastplate or boots or Thor's hammer. Maybe they'll they gave
Thor kung fu 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

(46:33):
big g I Joe and that's just weird people out.
We want it. We want it plastic and molded. So
they'll they'll basically carve the the clothing out of the
original sculpture as well.

Speaker 1 (46:44):
Yeah, and this all takes about two weeks on the uh.
Of course it depends on who you're working with, but
sure two or three weeks to carve this this dude
out to its kind of rawest form.

Speaker 3 (46:55):
Yeah. I'm always incredulous of stuff like that. It's like,
you know, who does it take two weeks? Is that
really an average? Like how many action figure sculptors did
you pull to find out that it was two weeks?

Speaker 1 (47:06):
They probably just talked to someone at the company and
they say how long does it take? And they say
about two weeks.

Speaker 3 (47:10):
Yeah, that's good enough for me. Then all right if
they as long as they spoke to somebody.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
All right. So now you've got your little little dude,
and you're going to use a plastic resin. When it
comes to the actual materials of the thing itself, there's
something called abs acra acro leno. Wow, I thought I
got it.

Speaker 3 (47:32):
You want me to try it. Sure, I think it's
a Kryla Nitrial beautidyene styrene abs.

Speaker 1 (47:39):
Nice work.

Speaker 3 (47:40):
Three types of plastic in one.

Speaker 1 (47:41):
That's right. 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 got your fabrics if you
have capes and things like that so weird, well no,
I mean even the little small figures had had like

(48:03):
the Jawas had capes. Yeah, not capes, but cloaks.

Speaker 3 (48:08):
I know, I remember weird to me ow too. And
I think, finally I understand what it is that I
don't like about the large Gi Jo's. They had fabric
clothing and it was ill fitting clothing too, 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 looked like he was wearing a sleeping bag that

(48:29):
had a draw string around his face.

Speaker 1 (48:31):
Are you sure it went that sleeping bag?

Speaker 3 (48:32):
I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be a raincoat,
but I think that's what it was.

Speaker 1 (48:36):
It's just creepy, you know, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (48:39):
That was all. I guess it's not actually the size,
it's the creepy factor brought on by this clothing that
didn't fit quite right. Like you know, it was the
kind of clothing that you would make for a son
who was a serial killer. But you didn't want to
turn them in, so you just keep them locked in
the basement and you got to make his own clothing.

(49:01):
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.

Speaker 1 (49:07):
Well, you're working through some stuff, so I'll check in
with you at the end. We'll see exactly what it
is you hate about the tall calls.

Speaker 3 (49:14):
All right, cool.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
So 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 this requires the most time.
They say in this article about two thirds of the
whole time is spent making these molds.

Speaker 3 (49:30):
Yeah, which makes sense.

Speaker 1 (49:31):
And it takes a few months again is that arbitrary?
Who knows?

Speaker 3 (49:37):
Yeah, this guy's like probably just takes a couple and
then once you have the molds, and you also have
to make a decision when you're making the molds. Do
you want to make the torso and the legs together?
Is he going to move his arms? If so, you
probably want to do two different molds for the arms.
So there's a pretty decent amount of decision making work

(49:57):
that goes into just coming up with what mold you're
gonna make. And then once you make the molds, then yes,
you have to make the molds, you have to operate them.
Then you have to decide what kind of what kind
of what's the word I'm looking for where you actually
make the plastic figure molding, which I should have been
able to come up with because we were talking about

(50:19):
molds at the time.

Speaker 1 (50:20):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (50:21):
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 I think an
injection molding process. But with rotational molding, you've got a
mold and it's on this computerized arm, and this arm

(50:42):
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.

Speaker 1 (50:58):
Yeah, I guess so. I mean 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. 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

(51:20):
imagine g I Joe, if they were injection molds, if
you look at their body from the side, it's in
two pieces, and sometimes you can see a little seam
ye on their head or on their arm or something,
or probably not on their arm because those were separate,
but yeah, sometimes you could see the seam or where
the two halves were pressed together. They wanted that smooth

(51:41):
look for the for the rotational molding that that provides.
But I always I guess the detail is the trade off.

Speaker 3 (51:49):
So that's the that's the rotational molding. You don't have seams,
but you lose fine detail. With injection molding, you can
get the detail, but you can see the seams of
where the two sides of the mold came together, guess.

Speaker 1 (52:00):
But man, I mean, how bad could that detail have been?
Because when you look at those early Star Wars figures,
I mean the detail was not great.

Speaker 3 (52:06):
No, you know, like had I been Mark Hamill who
had been like this, this is what you think my face
looks like?

Speaker 1 (52:11):
Yeah? Like they I mean, they've gotten way better. Like
the stuff they're making today is amazing, but.

Speaker 3 (52:17):
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 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 in little child's hands. Yeah,
not supposed to sit on your desk at work or

(52:38):
something like that, and just as adornment like, they were
meant to be played with, and they were. They were
subtly downgraded from you know, the stuff that's out today.

Speaker 1 (52:49):
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 Sorry, John decidedly crappier.

Speaker 3 (53:01):
Sorry, but it's true though for me, like I think
that they were they were great. Have I told you
how I feel about the three and three quarter inch
g I Joe.

Speaker 1 (53:10):
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 basically anything else that doesn't
come on that original mold, you're gonna have to assemble
it together. Put all the little finishing details, maybe the

(53:31):
clothing that you hate so much, maybe they're painted with
a little more detail, that detail that you hate so much,
and all the things that make a better action figure
that you hate so much.

Speaker 3 (53:44):
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 back.

Speaker 1 (53:50):
I'm just teasing.

Speaker 3 (53:51):
Yeah, yeah, So it's I don't hate it, I just
really don't like it.

Speaker 1 (53:56):
The final the final key to this whole thing is
packaging and shipping. So you think a 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 g I Joe. Actually advertising the other
dudes on the package, but that classic cardboard backed, clear

(54:17):
plastic casing the shell. Yeah, the shell that was sort
of became the standard and what everyone came to think
of as an action figure package.

Speaker 3 (54:27):
Yeah. And man, that was another thing that with the
wave of G I. Joe's that I played with, that
really put a lot of time and effort and thought
into the packaging and that I mean, that was definitely
part of it. That really helps sell the action figures
in a lot of ways.

Speaker 1 (54:43):
Yeah, you know, even though I tore right into it,
like I said, I disregarded the package well.

Speaker 3 (54:48):
With the later G I. Jo's, there was a card
on the back that had like their code name, their specialty,
their backstory, and like you clip them out and collect
those as well. Like it was definitely part of it.

Speaker 1 (54:58):
I collected the Star Wars trading cards too. It's funny.
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 worth five grand. So
foolishly I thought I had something of value, which I
did not. Yeah, But I went through and I had

(55:19):
some weird cards that I don't even remember collecting, Like
I had Welcome Back Codder cards.

Speaker 3 (55:25):
No, oh, yeah, that's twice that Welcome Back Codder's made
an appearance in this episode. I was not expecting either one.

Speaker 1 (55:32):
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, some weird like I mean,
I had football cards. I didn't even collect football cards.
I didn't think.

Speaker 3 (55:48):
Yeah, 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?

Speaker 1 (55:57):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (55:57):
Who even collects football cards? You know? It's untowared.

Speaker 1 (56:01):
It's weird. But the cool thing about the seventies cards
is just the look when you could like, yeah, you know,
you had to back the camera off so you could
fit the afro into the card, and all these like
great haircuts and hairdoos that all these guys had back then. Yeah,
it's pretty good.

Speaker 3 (56:17):
Why is he holding that fist aloft?

Speaker 1 (56:18):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (56:20):
And then chuck. After the packaging, it goes to the
stores and little kids like us buy it and love it.

Speaker 1 (56:27):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (56:27):
That's the end of the manufacturing process.

Speaker 1 (56:30):
Wow, what a journey.

Speaker 3 (56:31):
Yeah, that was something we went all the way to
China and back.

Speaker 1 (56:34):
Well he 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.

Speaker 3 (56:43):
Right, because they put them on slow boats.

Speaker 1 (56:47):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (56:48):
So you kind of tease this earlier the you found
a list of the rarest Star Wars figures.

Speaker 1 (56:57):
Yeah, and you know, I looked at other lists and
they 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
different ones that were described as the holy Grail of
Star Wars figures. Yeah, so you know there can't be
more than one holy Grail. No, So I do look

(57:19):
forward to hearing from those in the know. 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.

Speaker 3 (57:29):
I think that was pretty smart.

Speaker 1 (57:32):
So no one holds us our feet to the flame,
right yak face.

Speaker 3 (57:38):
I had not heard of yak face, had you?

Speaker 1 (57:40):
No?

Speaker 3 (57:41):
So yak Face was one of Boba Fett's either guards
or mercenaries. But he worked for Boba fet No not,
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Star Wars people, stop, stop. He
worked for Joba the Hut. He's not the same person.

Speaker 1 (57:56):
You just caused three car accidents, three Toyota priuses.

Speaker 3 (58:02):
Just liberty mutual is going to be like this, Josh Clark.
You got to work them into our actuarial tables.

Speaker 1 (58:10):
Yeah, So he was part of the power of the
force line. He was canceled. And you'll find that here's
a common 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.

Speaker 3 (58:26):
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 released in the States. I saw that he was,
but it was in for a very brief time, in
a very limited run, and then they sent him to Europe.
I think in nineteen eighty five, where Return of the

(58:49):
Jedi had just come out, So they were crazy for
anything that had anything to do with Return to the Jedi.
America was already like who cares about Return of the Jedi?
Were into 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 were

(59:12):
going through breakups at the time that they were writing
and making it.

Speaker 1 (59:17):
So we said, what can we do here't Why don't
he pull out his heart and eat it? Right, That's
what I feel like, because that's what Tina did, all right?
Wee kway, So this is another Job of the Huts guards.
Are you sure you didn't get those confused?

Speaker 3 (59:32):
I specifically went and looked up Yak face and he
works for Job of the Hut. They even gave Job
of the Huts full name, and I just remember the
job apart.

Speaker 1 (59:41):
Oh he had more than that.

Speaker 3 (59:42):
Yeah, the hut was he was a member of the Huts,
like the race of Huts or the tribe of Huts.
So it was Joba the Hut, like you know, Chuck
the American gotcha.

Speaker 1 (59:56):
Well, I think I'm on record as being like I'm
a big star Wars fan loved them, saw them many
many times, collected the things, but then it ended. I'm
not on of the other half that really went down
the rabbit hole.

Speaker 3 (01:00:13):
Like oh, who are still like into it as much
as before?

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
Yeah? And even back then, like new things like Joba
the Huts.

Speaker 3 (01:00:20):
Full name Oh oh oh yeah yeah, like.

Speaker 1 (01:00:22):
I didn't know that. I never knew that stuff and
never read the books or anything like that.

Speaker 3 (01:00:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:26):
Oh I did have some of those comics though, I
remember that now.

Speaker 3 (01:00:29):
I never had the comics. I was aware of the books,
and there was a lot of books when't there.

Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
Yeah, they still write them too, I think, don't they.

Speaker 3 (01:00:36):
Sure? Hey, if it's a good thing, sure right?

Speaker 1 (01:00:40):
Is that good?

Speaker 3 (01:00:41):
I think so? I think we as swashed the people
who are into the books.

Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
All right. So Weakway is another guard. Apparently it is
not super rare, but there is a limited edition version
that is worth more so. The carded mint condition Power
of the forest Line in the nineties is worth a
little bit more money. He says, thirty five dollars. That's

(01:01:07):
what it's worth.

Speaker 3 (01:01:08):
No, no, no, that's what the normal one's worth.

Speaker 1 (01:01:11):
Oh okay, the one.

Speaker 3 (01:01:12):
That has a special freeze frame slide, which I don't
know what that is. Ah, gotcha, that one's worth ten
times that amount according to this guy.

Speaker 1 (01:01:21):
All right, I remember the vinyl caped Jahwa was always
worth a lot of money. Mm because they came out
with the cloth cape.

Speaker 3 (01:01:29):
I know it's creepy.

Speaker 1 (01:01:30):
Uh so I'm going to throw that in there, just
off the top of my head.

Speaker 3 (01:01:34):
There was also I think a 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.

Speaker 1 (01:01:46):
I don't know. I'm afraid to say anything out loud.

Speaker 3 (01:01:48):
Now, Yeah, let's just first stop.

Speaker 1 (01:01:52):
Uh, let's skip that next one and go straight to
Bubba Fet. How does that sound okay? Bubba fat the
very famously, in nineteen seventy nine, there was a Bubba
Fet that actually shot a missile, which, as every parent knows,
is a chokeable. Is it the parent's worst nightmare? Is that?

(01:02:13):
The term a chokeable chokable something you can choke on?

Speaker 3 (01:02:16):
Is that a real like parents term? Yeah, that's awesome.
I did not know.

Speaker 1 (01:02:19):
Yeah, supposedly, anything smaller than a the size of a
toilet paper roll tube. What is it chokeable?

Speaker 3 (01:02:31):
Smaller than that?

Speaker 1 (01:02:32):
Yeah, so like if you can fit something through a
toilet paper tube, then your kid can choke on it.

Speaker 3 (01:02:36):
Gotcha, that's what they say. Who says that?

Speaker 1 (01:02:40):
I don't know the Today Show, dump dumb parenting blogs.

Speaker 3 (01:02:44):
It makes sense, though, Yeah, can't fit a football through that.
Can't choke on a football, That's correct the system. You
could choke on a tiny football though, I guess so.

Speaker 1 (01:02:54):
All right, yeah, the chokable Bubba fet. Obviously, they said
this is a joking hazard, so they scrapped the plans
and redesigned it, and so they did eventually release 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.

Speaker 3 (01:03:16):
I specifically remember being in the same room with one
that shot a rocket.

Speaker 1 (01:03:23):
Or sure it wasn't hacked.

Speaker 3 (01:03:24):
Here's the other possible explanation. I saw it on an
ad and am confusing reality with television again.

Speaker 1 (01:03:34):
Because it says here they never released them in stores.

Speaker 3 (01:03:36):
I saw that too, But I'm like, I swear I
saw one of these things, or maybe we were just
playing with it and we're like, this thing sucks. If
it actually shot the missile. It'd be so much better,
And I imagine what that would be like, and then
accidentally formed a memory. Who knows, I'm forty years old now,
I can't remember what was going on when I was
seven or eight.

Speaker 1 (01:03:56):
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 I also saw one
where supposedly one hundred thousand dollars offer at a Sotheby's
auction was turned down. What so, I have no idea
the value of these dudes, but it's a lot of dough.

Speaker 3 (01:04:19):
Is that the Holy Grail one?

Speaker 1 (01:04:20):
Well, this is one of the holy grails.

Speaker 3 (01:04:22):
Do you remember what another Holy Grail you saw was?

Speaker 1 (01:04:25):
Yeah? The other one is supposedly the most valuable is
the double telescoping lightsaber for Obi Wan, Darth Vader, and Luke,
And I think Luke's is the most expensive. If you
remember the little did you have any of these?

Speaker 3 (01:04:42):
I had a couple.

Speaker 1 (01:04:43):
So the lightsaber guys had a thing on the bottom
of their arm, a little groove cut out with a little,
you know, plastic knob that you would shove up toward
the wrist and a lightsaber on would come out of
the hand as if it were turning on the double telescoping,

(01:05:06):
because that's a telescoping feature. A double telescoping means that
you could extend it even further out from the original telescope,
and those supposedly are super rare and worth a lot
of dough.

Speaker 3 (01:05:20):
So that one I saw actually online. Oh man, I
can't remember the site, but it was it's a great
Star Wars action figure sight and they had a picture
of it. Have you seen it?

Speaker 1 (01:05:35):
Yeah? I thought I had one, but I can't find it,
so I think I do.

Speaker 3 (01:05:40):
Like 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.

Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
Yeah, they always kind of bent.

Speaker 3 (01:05:57):
And it looked just it looked broken, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:06:01):
Yeah. But even if I did have one, it's well worn.
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.

Speaker 3 (01:06:10):
Don't even talk to me if it's not mint. Yeah,
that's the that's the slogan.

Speaker 1 (01:06:14):
So I would love some of this cleared up by experts.

Speaker 3 (01:06:18):
Oh, well, we'll hear from them.

Speaker 1 (01:06:19):
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?

Speaker 3 (01:06:27):
What happened with the Kenner or not Kenner? The Migo
Star Wars deal?

Speaker 1 (01:06:32):
Right? And did did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone?

Speaker 3 (01:06:35):
Yes? We need answers. People. You got anything else?

Speaker 1 (01:06:39):
I got nothing else. This is a big overview. There's
clearly many more stories to be told.

Speaker 3 (01:06:44):
I got a couple couple more. I just want to
give shouts out, all right, Yojoe dot com. Okay, if
you were into g I Joe's and you want to
feel nostalgic, go check that site out. It's amazing. And
then I created a gallery a few years ago called
Hilarious Knockoffs and Legs of Beloved Toys, And it's just

(01:07:05):
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 name's just a little off,
or 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 to.

Speaker 1 (01:07:25):
Put together, I bet.

Speaker 3 (01:07:27):
And that's that's it, man, it's all I got. Go
watch the g I Joe PSAs by Eric Fenzler again.
They still hold up. Oh yeah, you remember those where
it was like a like just a weird dubs of
those G I Joe PSA's like, now, you know, annoying
is have the battle? You haven't seen these, I don't think,
so okay, I'll send them to you. You're gonna die laughing.

Speaker 1 (01:07:50):
Good.

Speaker 3 (01:07:51):
Yeah, you'll love them.

Speaker 1 (01:07:52):
You've been trying to kill me for years. That's a
delightful way to do it.

Speaker 3 (01:07:55):
But this time I won't be wearing gloves coming at
your neck. That's it for me, man, Yeah, that'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 search engine. Since I said
search engine and didn't do any buzzmarketing, it's time for
a listener mail.

Speaker 1 (01:08:17):
We're gonna plug Kiva, which we haven't done in a
long time.

Speaker 3 (01:08:20):
That's a good idea.

Speaker 1 (01:08:21):
Kiva 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? Six or seven?

Speaker 3 (01:08:34):
I think it was two thousand and eight or two thousand.

Speaker 1 (01:08:36):
And nine, eight years, seven or eight years? What?

Speaker 3 (01:08:38):
It's been a while?

Speaker 1 (01:08:39):
All right, So this is from Jordan, and then I'm
going to go over a little bit more about how
our team is looking. Hey guys, once I listened to
a podcasts where you promote a Kiva I've decided to
google the Kiva donation thing it eventually found it correctly
as kiva dot com. I immediately love the site. It's
the epitome of how to take the globalized world and
use that for good. So often donations come in the

(01:09:00):
of awkward late night infomercials or five second equips 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 needy children. While
all types of donations are generally good, Kiva makes you
feel even more personal and once one can certainly give
their money to needs that are important to them, you

(01:09:22):
probably get your money back, which is great. But no
way did that motivate me to loan, and I suspect
to most people who 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. Yeah, in other words, reloan.

Speaker 3 (01:09:40):
That's one of the keys.

Speaker 1 (01:09:42):
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 Batchelor, who claims to be a US defector, you can
moved from the US. I can't remember where he lives now.

(01:10:03):
He was just it's been cheeky. So we started this
Kiva team a long time ago, and right now we
have over nine thousand members and we are almost at
four million bucks.

Speaker 3 (01:10:17):
Dude, it is insane.

Speaker 1 (01:10:19):
Three million, nine hundred and ninety three thousand, three hundred
and twenty five dollars loan. That is one 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.

Speaker 3 (01:10:40):
For sure.

Speaker 1 (01:10:41):
I started off with a couple one 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 percent.

Speaker 3 (01:10:59):
Nice. Yeah, the default rate is not bad at all.

Speaker 1 (01:11:02):
It's not bad. So you can take a little bit,
you can take 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
re loan to people, right, really makes a big difference.
We did our research on Kiva. They're not perfect, but
we think they do a really good job.

Speaker 3 (01:11:21):
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:11:22):
And you know, we have a stuff you should know team,
So we would love to see people sign up for it,
push us over that four million dollar mark, which is crazy.

Speaker 3 (01:11:31):
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.
They're led unofficially but de facto by Glenn and Sonya yep,
who have emerged to be these great team leaders that
like just keep everybody going and motivated and moderate and

(01:11:52):
make sure everybody's on the up and up.

Speaker 1 (01:11:54):
And yep, they send us emails and reminders about how
we're doing.

Speaker 3 (01:11:57):
Hats off to those guys. Thank you guys for that.

Speaker 1 (01:12:00):
Yeah, So kiva dot org I think I said dot
com earlier and just go to the team section, search
stuff you should know, join the team, throw twenty five
dollars somebody's way. You can yep. 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. You can give to women or men, and

(01:12:20):
it's just really you can really dial down and give
very specifically how you want to give.

Speaker 3 (01:12:25):
Yeah, and 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 couple of blog posts on it,
and I think there's something on HuffPo even that they
published of ours, but it's I think, like why we
land on Kiva. Yeah, and it really addresses a lot
of stuff that people have raised and we've said, hey man,
it's still totally worth it. So yep, yeah, go check

(01:12:47):
it out.

Speaker 1 (01:12:48):
All right.

Speaker 3 (01:12:49):
Uh, If you want to get in touch with us,
you can tweet to us at sysk podcast, or you
can hang out with me at josh um Clark. You
can hang out with Chuck on Facebook at Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, or you can visit our official Facebook page
at Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know. You
can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at HowStuffWorks
dot com. It has always joined us at our home
ONWN the web, Stuff youshould Know dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:13:17):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
HowStuffWorks dot com.