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):
Welcome to you Stuff you should Know from house Stuff
Works dot com. 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

(00:24):
excited about this particular podcast Chuff put together this episode.
I should say, well, do you want to go ahead
and announced the title for the people that maybe didn't
need it, it is, uh, well, you you're going to
selected title. It's the title. Oh geez, I don't know. Um,
everything you ever wanted to know about actually, some stuff

(00:46):
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, but we're talking about action figures. That's
the point of what I think that X size 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. Yeah. And if

(01:10):
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 and this this
one definitely follows in the vein of UM the Barbie episode,
which I have to say is one of my perennial favorites.
I love the Barbie episode. Yeah yeah, and Barbie actually
makes an appearance in this one. You'd like to play

(01:32):
with dolls? Uh? I like to play with action figures.
I play with Barbies. 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. 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

(01:54):
in the Soviet Union. Oh well, there you go. She
had um a Martina. There probably wasn't Martina. But I
mean 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

(02:15):
when Mattel I think it was Ruth Handler who invented
the Barbie doll, right, and when she 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

(02:37):
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 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

(02:58):
just couldn't quite figure it out because one had ever
come up with a doll for boys. And that's kind
of what it required, is coming up with a doll
for boys, and no one had cracked that nut. But
Barbie made 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,

(03:23):
I guess I shouldn't call it a racket. It's a
bit of a racket. 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. Uh. 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? Uh,

(03:46):
and maybe not call them dolls. Actually he didn't, he
didn't come up with the name. To be fair, His
boss at has Bro VP, Don Levine or Levine uh
in nine 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

(04:07):
approached um uh uh yeah, Don Levine at like that
toy fairents I got a great idea, And apparently he
gave him a hundred thousand dollars just for the idea,
and then he he since he worked with HASPO, 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

(04:29):
in today money, which is good though for an idea.
But of course, 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. 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

(04:51):
have millions of good ideas like these that I can
sell for seven hundred and 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 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,

(05:14):
because G I Joe was the one that started, literally
started the action figure craze. Every action figure that's out there,
from like UM Action Jesus to UM 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,

(05:38):
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 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

(05:59):
was that G I. Joe was the collective name of
all four of these Armed Forces dolls. You didn't know that.
I thought the guy was Joe. No, that 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

(06:20):
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. Right, So they ran out
of names after name three, circle back to Rocky. They
ran out of names. And they all were identical except

(06:42):
for their clothing. Yea, as far as I know, right, didn't.
Wasn't their head different? And was it 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 from 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 one at

(07:03):
one point in like sixties, 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
Franco Harris, I got you. So maybe I just had
Rocky maybe so Rocky or Rocky which one? Yeah, I

(07:25):
had Rocky, not Rocky. 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 that they

(07:46):
were on like little molded plastic 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 them if you had imagination and a
lighter and a can of hairs. Right, Actually, I was delighted.
It was toy story right where they had those those
guys come to life. Uh. That was like really really

(08:09):
cool to me when I 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 kind of was
thank you. DreamWorks. Oh that's where they got the name?
Was the dream Works or was that Pixar? Is Pixar right?

(08:30):
Probably got it wrong. That's right, 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

(08:52):
written by Jimmy Stamp. Was that his name the Stamper
the stamps there, So, um, I didn't realize this. But
you can't you can't copyright a a figure, like a
human figure. So that was sort of an issue when
people started to do knockoffs of g I Joe. But

(09:14):
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 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. That's right, that's crazy, Yeah, it is,

(09:34):
um And yeah, I guess they were they were natural,
like 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 has Bro released its
own line of knockoffs and cheaply made G I. Jos

(09:57):
to compete with the knockoffs and and de Luke their
market shure. Yeah, it was called Defenders, and they were
just these really cheaply made versions of the big G. I. Joe's. Well,
it was a huge hit though. Um it says here
that they accounted for almost sixty six of Hasbro's profits
in that's insane. That is nuts. And that was the

(10:18):
year it came out right yeah, like right out 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. Yeah, I
think like or twenty nine moving parts. Um are different parts.
And he was articulated so he could lift up his
hand in karate chop you, although he didn't get the

(10:39):
kung fu grip until the mid seventies. Yeah, that's where
I came in. Okay, so he had kung fu grip.
When you knew G I Joe, Uh, yeah, very much.
It was so kung fu right, but he still looked
like Frank o' harris. But he still looked like Banks. Yes.
And then the other big innovation was the was not
an innovation at all. It was following the Rby model,

(11:00):
but for boys it was it was that this this doll,
which no one called the doll. 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 Joes. This is an action figures 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.

(11:23):
But there were pictures of the other 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 want
to collect them all. Some little kid came up with
that collect them all phrase just in his little brain. Yeah,

(11:44):
some little kid named middle age marketing executive Don Levine.
So not only that, 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 string to
simulate jet packing and send flying like between two trees. Uh.

(12:06):
And then I had the uh the submarine. It was
like a sea wolf. 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 to anyone at home, but it's about the
size of this lamp on our desk. Oh. So it

(12:27):
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, 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.

(12:52):
Well that's nice, and that's about all that we were. Uh,
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

(13:12):
well because of the Vietnam War. Um, and it was
actually kind of I think it was actually went away
from production for a while. 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, um and kind of rebranded

(13:32):
him I think too as rather rather than a soldier,
they rebranded him as an adventurer. Right, so this machete
is not for cutting off the hands of uh Sherpa
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.

(13:54):
Now yeah, and they, like you said, they called him
adventurer or the naval officer was called an aqua nat
And then 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 dumble little kid.
But I guess Rocky the G I Joe adventure guy

(14:17):
slash Frinco 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, have you? No? Okay, I'm just curious.
So Chuck, G I Joe is, uh, he starts to

(14:38):
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

(14:58):
company named Migo. And we'll talk about me go after
this break. How about that sounds good? My? You should

(15:24):
all right? Is it mego or mego? I've 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. Oh 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 Migo would love to tell you about. But or

(15:46):
Tommy mego. But yeah, I've seen I've 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 fussly. 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,

(16:09):
this was you said? It accounted for like 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, right. Um, So this first the
world's first action figure made a huge impact. And when

(16:31):
the world's first action figure wasn't around anymore, well, there
was a void that was to be filled. And this
company called me Go decided and I think one or
nineteen 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

(16:52):
called the World's Greatest Superheroes Action Figures, and I 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

(17:13):
don't know of, but licensing very famous characters and selling them.
So they got a hold of licenses for uh, Spider
Man and the Hulk and Batman and Wonder Woman and
Iron Man and Captain 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.

(17:36):
And not only that, but they said, you know, we're
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

(17:56):
Batcave place that, And before you knew it, they were
pumping out things like, uh, Bruce Wayne's Foundation building, I
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 Ward store. So it wasn't
like it wasn't a store, but at the at Montgomery

(18:18):
Ward only, Oh, you could buy the non superhero versions
of superheroes like Peter Parker and Bruce Wayne, which is like,
all right, you 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

(18:40):
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
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

(19:01):
was taller, and that was a huge hit. Yeah. And
the other thing about me go to Um 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 now,
that's right. Uh. And the one, uh, the one actually
had even though I have no idea why I had

(19:24):
the Star trek Um 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 movie or something, So I have no idea
why I got that. I mean, if it was a

(19:47):
cool action figure, like I had some weird I had
a weird Wizard action figure when I was a kid.
But you're in the 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

(20:07):
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 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,

(20:28):
but Migo, um yeah, they just they established it forever, permanently,
and they also 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

(20:49):
because one of the place sets was from um, one
of the sets from an episode of Star Trek, the
Apple episode. Um, like you don't necessarily see that. You
didn't see that before. With Action figures, it was more like, hey,
you you you know this guy, just buy them. This
is like you're into Star Trek and so are we,

(21:09):
and here is some awesome place that's 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 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,

(21:31):
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
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, um man, yeah, I think there's really

(21:54):
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
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,

(22:14):
the story that I think is true is that they
didn't want to invest and they said that you know,
we're not gonna throw our money at every little thing
that comes along, going to be a little more discerning. Yeah,
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

(22:34):
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,
what were you guys thinking? But I mean there's lots
of stories like that because somebody lacking foresight. Yeah, them.

(22:55):
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.
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

(23:15):
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 gonna come up in this episode,
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

(23:37):
meg 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 they still
somehow make me nostalgic, you know, exactly. All right, So, uh,
let's jump back a little bit to ninety six, and um,

(24:00):
we're gonna explain how they went from eight inches even
though they were still making the eight inchers after sixty six,
how they eventually got down to the three and three
quarters inch. Uh. G I Joe was licensing their stuff
out to other countries all over the place. There was
a UK company who released it under the name Action
man Uh and eventually they licensed it to Japan to

(24:22):
a company called Takara. 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. Uh so at three and three quarters inches
they developed. Microman released him in the nineteen seventy four,

(24:42):
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
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

(25:05):
I would say this is the one thing that divides
this more frequently than anything else, is whether the original
big g I Joes or the second wave small g
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

(25:25):
even say then? 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
think the big ones superior? 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

(25:46):
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 the
old ones seem weird and dusty and moldy or something
like that, but the small one seemed better than me.
All Right, At the very least, you have to you

(26:07):
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,
let's go ahead and talk about that 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,

(26:29):
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,
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 cool skateboarder. Uh, maybe

(26:52):
I still played a little bit. So your only your
neighborhood best friend knew about it. Your school friends didn't
exactly so did Yeah, Joe was a cartoon. H 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

(27:13):
of course Cobra. Yes, led by Cobra Commander. And this
was your right in your wheelhouse, correct, Yes, So in
nine three I was like seven, So yeah, this was
I was really just primed and ready. I would just
let's go Joe. And plus also the other thing too

(27:33):
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 its own
name and it wasn't Rocky or Rocky. It was things
like um Duke or Shipwreck or Blowtorch or Barbecq or

(27:59):
dust Um. And then the bad guys had their own
their own names to like Cobra command or spent or
to Max or z mott Um or uh, the whole
the whole gang right Toe Cheese who was that? Tomax
and Zat They were evil Twins who were they were?
Basically they were like, um, if if Cobra Commander had

(28:21):
hired Patrick Bateman and then cloned him a mirror version
of him, it would be Tomax and z a mot
interesting stuff, right right? Okay, 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

(28:45):
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, 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. And that sounds weird, uh,

(29:08):
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. 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

(29:29):
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 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

(29:52):
understand the the intent of selling ads. They can't distinguish
that from reality. Like if you dress up a cartoon
as an ad, 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

(30:14):
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 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

(30:36):
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.
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

(30:57):
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
the White House. Right. So, 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

(31:19):
move that basically said, you know what, there's gonna be
no regulation whatsoever. You got to leave these markets free.
You can do whatever you want. Uh. And that is
basically how all of these cartoons were born. G I. Joe, Transformers, Smurfs,
care Bears, Rainbow Bright, Yeah, you name it. It basically

(31:40):
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 cartoons
and warlike toys that was brought back Act under the

(32:00):
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 hundred fifty
from one year over the other from like eighty four
I think. Um, whereas before it was like no, we
don't Joe was an adventure. Remember, It's like, no, g

(32:22):
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 saw what was happening. All of a sudden,
kids were being bombarded with war cartoons and uh, just

(32:46):
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 legislation on this programming aimed at children. Uh.

(33:06):
It passed the House by eight passed unanimously in the
Senate and Reagan vetoed it and said, uh, basically, what
one of the things that 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 an hour in the week days and also provide,

(33:27):
uh require broadcasters to provide educational and informational programs as
a condition of renewing their licenses. So Reagan vetoed that
and said, no way, UH, we're not gonna do that.
We're gonna keep it as ish people that were in
favor of this went crazy. Basically they were saying, like,
how can you guys say you're the the party of
the Children and education and then veto is something that

(33:51):
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 how up? And was
along with this de regulation UM the toy companies and
the cartoons. They actually they kind of got in bed
together and they said, you know what, if you show, uh,

(34:12):
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 to to sell those those toys when you show
these cartoons. I imagine you know, because I remember watching

(34:36):
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, the individual ones were good,

(34:56):
like the voice acting was good, the animation was pretty good.
Same with its formers too, 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 satisfied viewer, but

(35:16):
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 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 didn't care about

(35:37):
I guess. I mean, you were kids, 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 I'll go back to

(35:59):
that hair Bear bunch. Well, they loved the hair Bears,
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

(36:21):
Scooby Doo? And 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 DNA of all of

(36:41):
these great these great dictators and conquerors like Alexander the
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 of this stuff?
But I was. I was trying to kiss girls in

(37:02):
the roller skating rink at this and you thought girls
were gross. Still, it's true, it's true, but I it
definitely helps 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,

(37:24):
I mean, I hadn't. I didn't really know anything about
it because I was still a dumb kid when this
is going on. Well let's do it though, Okay, agreed?
So that was G I Joe shaped my childhood the
ted so uh. But prior to g I Joe. The
first three and three quarter inch action figure in the

(37:45):
US as far as I know, was the Star Wars line,
and the 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

(38:08):
to catch up, and they ended up going bankrupt in
nineteen eighty three basically 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
nineteen seventy eight, which I believe was the first year
that they released these things, is three and three quarter

(38:29):
inch Star Wars line of action figures. UM. In n
seventy nine, they made a hundred million dollars each year
from selling those. They sold about forty million units a year,
and from ninety eight to ninety five, which I think
was the whole run of the Star Wars lines, the
original run with Kenner, Kenner sold three hundred million units.

(38:53):
So if they're stelling forty million a year and making
a hundred million each year From that, they sold three
hundred million total, So Kenner made some serious bank office
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

(39:16):
the minor characters, the Tie Fighter, the X Wing, the
Death Star, Oh you luck, the land 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

(39:39):
had the Big Luke and the Big 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 from 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
collect doable. Of course, ripped right into them to play,

(40:03):
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 it'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

(40:23):
like much later 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 everybody, you take a break. We should

(40:45):
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, all right, 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 my sk alright,

(41:24):
so 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 uh, 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

(41:44):
movies started having action figures, like for Nostalgias sake, like
I literally had a scarface doll. Oh yeah, I've seen
a scarface al Pacino that I used to have in
the office and come with a mount of cocaine, a
plastic mount of cocaine. It did. Uh. And now you
know you can find pretty much any kind of action

(42:04):
figure you want from politicians, older movies and TV shows
and like 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 mislabeled on the package to make these things, um,

(42:29):
to make them valuable for the aftermarket, the collector's market,
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

(42:50):
I took it. The person who wrote the article sounded
like they knew what they were talking about. But was
that the same article from the guy who said that
that Kennard couldn't sign the context because the right people
weren't there. I don't know, because the first thing I
think of this, 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. Well, most

(43:15):
companies like money now rather than a little more money later,
so that would probably do it. That's you know, So
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, which I mean it's pretty sensible. You say,

(43:39):
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, so he'll be kind of like in
a crouch running pose. Um, And then they slap some

(44:03):
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 is what they look for
early on. UM. And this you know, it depends on

(44:23):
the action figure. 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 you're thor and you want
to move your arms, move those big pipes a little bit. Uh,
they may choose to sculpt the arms separately, or maybe

(44:46):
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. Why do I always do this? Not to
start over? Pretty much, so they're working with this torso

(45:06):
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 some hair. And if it's one that's completely plastic,
you're gonna do the clothes and everything in the suit.

(45:28):
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
boots or Thor's hammer. Maybe they'll they gave Thorer kung
fod grip, so they'll have to mold that also separately.

(45:49):
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. It's like a big g
I Joe and that's just weird people out. We want it.
We want to plastic and molded. So they'll fill basically
carve the clothing out of the original sculpture as well. Yeah,
and this all takes about two weeks on the h

(46:10):
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 raws 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?
How many action figure sculptures did you pull to find
out that it was two weeks? They probably just talked
to someone at the company and they say how long's

(46:31):
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
actual materials of the thing itself. Uh, there's something called
a B S acra acrono. Wow, I thought, I want it.

(46:55):
You want me to try it? Sure? I think it's
a killa nit trial beauty die eyen styrene, A B
S nice work. Three types of plastic and one that's right,
So that's the harder plastic for the main body. Uh,
they may use something like polypropylene or poly ethylene for
the various parts or pieces. You got your fabrics. If

(47:16):
you have capes and things like that, so well no,
I mean even the little small figures had had like
the jawas had capes. Yeah, not capes, but cloaks. Now,
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

(47:38):
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 looked like he was
wearing a sleeping bag that had a draw string around
his face. Are you sure it wasn't a sleeping bag.
I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be a raincoat,

(47:58):
but I think that's what it was. Just pep, you know, Yeah,
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
of clothing that you would make for a son who
was was a serial killer, but you didn't want to

(48:20):
turn him in, so you just keep him locked in
the basement and you've got to make his own clothing.
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 end,
but we'll see exactly what it is you hate about
the call. So, uh, the manufacturing process. You got to

(48:41):
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 spent making these molds,
which makes sense, and it takes a few months again
is that arbitrary? Who knows? Yeah, this guy's like probably

(49:02):
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. 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

(49:24):
then once 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
I should have been able to come up with because
we were talking about molds at the time, that's right.

(49:44):
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
a mold and it's on this computerized arm, and this

(50:04):
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 I mean to deal with injection molding, Uh, they

(50:25):
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 g I Joe if their injection molds.

(50:46):
If you if you look at their body from the side,
it's in two pieces, and sometimes you can see a
little steam on their head or on their arm or something,
or probably on their arm because those are separate. But um,
sometimes you can see the seam or where the two
halves were pressed together. They wanted that smooth look for
the uh, for the rotational molding that that provides. But um,

(51:09):
always I guess the detail was the trade off. So
that's the that's the rotational moulling. You don't have seams,
but you lose fine detail. Within checks and mulling, you
can get the detail, but you can see the seams
of where the two sides of the mole came together,
I guess. 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.

(51:30):
You know, Like, had I've been Mark Hamill had been
like this, 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 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
great things about these especially the three and three quarter
inch guys. They just they just they were They were

(51:52):
meant to be played with. They were meant to have
imagination bestowed on them and little child's hands. Yeah, 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 you know, the stuff that's out today, they

(52:12):
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 from me, like I think that they were they
were great. Have I told you how I feel about
the three and three quarter ins g I, Joe, No,

(52:33):
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, put all the little finishing details.

(52:54):
Maybe the clothing that you hate so much, Um, maybe
they're painted with 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. Yeah. Yeah,

(53:15):
so it's I don't hate it, 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

(53:39):
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. 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,

(54:00):
and that I mean that was definitely part of it
that really helps sell the action figures in a lot
a lot of ways. Yeah, you know, like right into it.
Like I said, I disregarded the package well with the
later g I jose there was a card on the
back that had like their code name, their specialty, their backstory,
and like you clip a mountain and collect those as well,

(54:20):
Like it was definitely part of it. 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 with five grand. So foolishly I thought I
had something of value, which I did not. Um. But

(54:41):
I went through and I had some weird cards that
I don't even remember collecting. Like I had welcome Back
Carter cards. Oh yeah, that's twice that welcome Back cart
has made an appearance in this episode. I was not
expecting either one. I like, I like to 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,

(55:06):
some weird like I mean, I 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 untoward, it's weird. But the cool thing about the

(55:26):
seventies cards is just the the look when you could
like 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 hair dues that all
these guys had back then. It's pretty Why is he
holding that fistol off and then chuck? After the packaging,
it goes to the stores and little kids like us

(55:48):
buy it and love it. 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 time. The molding process is an Asia, so
that's one reason it takes so long because they put

(56:09):
them on slow boats. So you kind of tease us 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

(56:32):
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

(56:52):
think that was pretty smart. So no one holds us
our feet to the flame. Yack Face. I had not
heard of yeck face, had you know? So yeck Face
is one of um Boba Fette's either guards or mercenaries.
But he worked for Boba Fett. No not, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry Star Wars people, stop stopping. He worked for

(57:16):
Job of the Hut. He's not the same person you
just cause three car accidents, three Toyota 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.

(57:36):
He was canceled and you'll find. 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. And I think
he wasn't necessarily a garbage figure. He was just released
at a time when, like Star Wars figures, sales in

(57:56):
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 and a very limited run,
and then they sent him to Europe. I think in
ve 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

(58:19):
cares about Return of the Jedi. We're we're into uh
Temple of Doom, which I read an article about that recently.
Supposedly Temple of Doom was so dark because both George
Lucas and Steven Spielberg were going through breakups at the
time that they were writing and making it. So we said,

(58:40):
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 what it did all right
week way, So this is another Jab of the huts guards.
Are you sure you didn't get those confused? I specifically
went and looked up Yeke face and he he works
for a job of the Hut. They even gave Job

(59:00):
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 member of the huts, like
the race of Huts or the tribe of Huts. So
was Jab of the hut like you know, Chuck the
American gotcha. Well, I think I'm on record as being

(59:22):
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, like oh, 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?

(59:44):
Oh yeah, 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. I never had the comics.
I was aware of the books and there was 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 we have slashed

(01:00:07):
the people who are into the books. Alright. So a
week Way is another guard. Apparently it's not super rare,
but there's a limitedive addition version that is worth more so.
The car died 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,

(01:00:32):
that's what the normal one's worth. The one that 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 cape Jahua 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,

(01:00:55):
just off the top of my head. There's also a
think of Vinyl caped in a cloth cape. Imperial Guard,
remember the 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
just stop. Uh, let's skip that next one and go

(01:01:17):
straight to Bubba Fett. How does that sound? Okay? Bubba
fet very famously um in nine there was a Bubba
Fett that actually shot a missile, which is every parent
knows is a chokable? Is the parents worst nightmare is that?
Is that the term chable chokable something you can choke on?

(01:01:39):
Is 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 chokable? Smaller than that? Yeah? So like, if you
can fit something through a toilet paper tube, then your
kid can choke on it. Got you? That's what they say.

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

(01:02:25):
so they 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 or it wasn't hacked. Here's the

(01:02:48):
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
and we're like, this thing sucks. If it actually shot
the missile would be so much better, and I imagine

(01:03:10):
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 I also saw one

(01:03:30):
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 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 the double telescoping lightsaber for

(01:03:56):
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 cut
out with a little uh, a little you know, plastic

(01:04:17):
knob that you would uh shove up towards the wrist
and the lightsaber would come out of the hand as
if it were turning on. The double telescoping because that's
a telescoping feature. Double telescoping means that you could extend
it even further out from the original telescope, and those

(01:04:38):
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. Have you seen it? Yeah?
I thought I had one, but I can't find it,

(01:05:01):
So I don't 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, they always kind of
bent and it looked just it looked broken, you know. Yeah.

(01:05:24):
But even if I did have one, it it's well worned.
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 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,

(01:05:46):
the like which one is truly the Holy Grail? Uh?
What happened with the Kenner or not Kenner? The Mego
Star Wars deal? And did did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone? Yes,
we need answers, Pete Pull you got anything else? I
got nothing else. This is a big overview. There's clearly
many more stories to be told. I got a couple,

(01:06:08):
a couple more. I just want to give shouts out
Yo Joe dot com 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 Knockoffs and
Legs of Beloved Toys, and it's just like the slide

(01:06:29):
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 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 put together. And that's that's it, man,

(01:06:51):
It's all I got. Go watch the G I Joe
p s A s by Eric Finzler 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 them to you. You're gonna die laughing good. Yeah,

(01:07:14):
you'll love him. You've been trying to kill me for years.
It's lightful way to do it. But this time I
won't be wearing gloves coming at your neck. Uh. That's
it for me, man, that's it for me. Okay. Well,
if you want to know more about action figures, you
can take those words into the search bar of your
favorite UM search engine. Since I said search engine and

(01:07:35):
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. It's a good idea. K I v A
is a micro lending website that we have been We've
had a team now stuff you should know team for geez,
how many years? Six or seven? I think it was

(01:07:57):
two thousand eight or two two thousand nine, eight years,
seven or eight years? All right, So this is from Jordan,
and then I'm gonna go over a little bit more
about how our tina's looking. Hey, guys, once I listened
to uh podcasts where you promote Kiva, I decided to
google the Kiva donation thing and eventually found it correctly
as k I v a dot com. I immediately love
the site. It's the epitome of how to take the

(01:08:19):
globalized world and use that for good. So often donations
come in the form of awkward late night infomercials 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 each children. Uh. While all types of donations
are generally good, Kiva makes you feel even more personal

(01:08:39):
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 to 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.

(01:09:02):
In other words, loan, that's one of the keys I
think of 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. That's from Jordan's
bachelor who claims to be a US defector. You can

(01:09:24):
move from the US. I can't remember where he lives now,
just be 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 twenty five dollars loaned.

(01:09:46):
That is a hundred and forty three thousand, one d
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 with a couple of hundred bucks way

(01:10:09):
back when, and that now, just because I keep reinvesting,
it has grown to one thousand, one 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
twenty five dollars even and keep reloaning that and that

(01:10:31):
in a few years, five or six years can be
you know, hundreds and hundreds of dollars relan 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
to see people sign up for it, push us over
that four million dollar mark, which is crazy. And yeah,

(01:10:54):
yeah we're not exclusive, We're not snobs, and neither anybody
on our team. It's a very very welcoming the 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 that like
just keep everybody going and motivated and moderate and make

(01:11:15):
sure everybody's on the up and up. And if they
send us emails and reminders about how we're doing, hats
off to those guys. Thank you guys for that. Yeah,
so civa dot org I think I said dot com earlier, Um,
and just go to the team section search stuff you
should know, join the team for somebody's way. You can
you can give to people that are doing things that

(01:11:36):
are close to your heart, or maybe countries you've been
to that you want to help support. Uh, you can
give the 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
couple of blog posts on it, and I think there's

(01:11:57):
someone Huff Poe even that they published a ours, but 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 podcast, or you can
hang out with me at josh um Clark. You can

(01:12:20):
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 how Stuff Works
dot com. It has always joined us at our home
on the Web Stuff you Should Know dot com. For

(01:12:40):
more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
Stuff Works dot com.