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A Partial History of Action Figures · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to you Stuff you should Know from house Stuff
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry's right
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: there to my immediate right, and that makes this stuff
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: you should know the podcast the podcast. That's right. I'm
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: excited about this particular podcast Chuff put together this episode.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: I should say, well, do you want to go ahead
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: and announced the title for the people that maybe didn't
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: need it, it is, uh, well, you you're going to
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: selected title. It's the title. Oh geez, I don't know. Um,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: everything you ever wanted to know about actually, some stuff
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: about action figures that you may already know, and some
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: stuff that made the light you Well, that's a working title.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Huh yeah. Yeah, but we're talking about action figures. That's
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: the point of what I think that X size just was. Yeah.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: I was gonna say everything you wanted to know, but this,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, we could do there. I'm sure there are
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: entire podcasts on action figures for sure. Yeah. And if
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: you do, if you have a podcast on action figures
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: right in, let us know. We'll we'll tweet it out.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: For the people whose boat this floated and this this
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: one definitely follows in the vein of UM the Barbie episode,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: which I have to say is one of my perennial favorites.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: I love the Barbie episode. Yeah yeah, and Barbie actually
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: makes an appearance in this one. You'd like to play
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: with dolls? Uh? I like to play with action figures.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: I play with Barbies. I had older sisters, so like
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: I was, I played with Barbie's whether I wanted to
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: or not. So I made the most of it. But
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: I don't remember my sister having Barbies. But surely she did, right, Yeah,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: she was a girl in America from the sixties on. Yes,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: she had a Barbie. Oh no, my sister grew up
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: in the Soviet Union. Oh well, there you go. She
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: had um a Martina. There probably wasn't Martina. But I
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: mean that was a pretty good episode. And this one's
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: kind of similar. It's it's got it all And like
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: I said, Barbie kind of pops up in the beginning.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: She actually inspired action figures, UM, like basically directly when
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: when Mattel I think it was Ruth Handler who invented
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: the Barbie doll, right, and when she when she and
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Mattel released it, it was just a huge, enormous hit.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: And one of the big reasons Barbie was number one
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: such a hit and number two so appealing to toy
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: companies was that when you bought a Barbie, your buying
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: experience wasn't over. There were always like more clothes and shoes,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: and like my sister had the pool that you could
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: hang out with and it had like a shower that
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: actually worked. There's just a ton of extra stuff to buy.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: And so when you bought a Barbie, you wanted all
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: the other stuff too, And toy companies wanted to figure
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: out how to do that with boys toys, but they
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: just couldn't quite figure it out because one had ever
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: come up with a doll for boys. And that's kind
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: of what it required, is coming up with a doll
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: for boys, and no one had cracked that nut. But
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: Barbie made the whole thing all the more appealing. I guess. Yeah, finally,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: this dude name Stan Weston who actually knew Miss Handler
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: and uh, he was in the toy racket, and um,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: I guess I shouldn't call it a racket. It's a
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: bit of a racket. It's a bit of a racket.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: So he said like you were talking about, like, you know,
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: there's tons of money to be made here. Uh. He
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: was a military history buff and so he had this
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: you know, the light bulb went off over his head
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: and he says, what if we could come up with
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: a soldier doll, or perhaps even a series of soldier dolls? Uh,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: and maybe not call them dolls. Actually he didn't, he
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: didn't come up with the name. To be fair, His
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: boss at has Bro VP, Don Levine or Levine uh
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: in nine he was pitched this idea and he went
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: nuts over it. And he's the one that said, maybe
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: we should call them action figures, right, yeah, Stan Weston
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: approached um uh uh yeah, Don Levine at like that
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: toy fairents I got a great idea, And apparently he
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: gave him a hundred thousand dollars just for the idea,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: and then he he since he worked with HASPO, he's like, guys,
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: I've I've got a good idea here. So that roughly
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: translates into about seven hundred and eighty two thousand dollars
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: in today money, which is good though for an idea.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: But of course, anytime you're the schmuck that comes up
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: with the idea that you sell for even seven hundred
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: and eighty two grand and it goes on to be
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: like hundreds of millions of dollar business. You probably always
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: kind of feel like I got taken for a ride
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: a little bit. I'm sure Stan Weston was like, I'll
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: have millions of good ideas like these that I can
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: sell for seven hundred and eighty thousand dollars a piece.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: I'm sure he may have. Yeah, I don't know. It's
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: certainly not one like G I Joe. Right, Well, that's
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: what we've been talking about. We talked about g I
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: Joe a lot on this show, so uh, it feels
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: appropriate that we sort of go down that rabbit hole.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: We're gonna be talking about action figures. Well, so, well, yeah,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: because G I Joe was the one that started, literally
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: started the action figure craze. Every action figure that's out there,
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: from like UM Action Jesus to UM to the Marvel
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Superhero Action figures to every action figure came from G
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: I Joe. And if you want to get feminist about it,
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: every action figure, including G I Joe, ultimately came from Barbie. Yeah,
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: it's a good way to look at it. So, uh,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: all right, here's the deal that I never knew G I.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: Joe uh debuted in before Christmas. It's almost as if
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: they had planned that UH the original. I knew all
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: this stuff. The original was twelve inches and had twenty
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: one moving parts. And the thing I did not know
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: was that G I. Joe was the collective name of
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: all four of these Armed Forces dolls. You didn't know that.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: I thought the guy was Joe. No, that the for
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: my era, the guy, the main guy was Duke, And
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: for your era, the main guy was Rocky. Well, it
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: depends on which one you had, Okay, So that was
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: there was Rocky was the Army and the Marines Skip
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: Skip was the Navy guy, and Ace was the Air
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Force guy, the fighter pilot. Right, So they ran out
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: of names after name three, circle back to Rocky. They
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: ran out of names. And they all were identical except
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: for their clothing. Yea, as far as I know, right, didn't.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Wasn't their head different? And was it the same? Was
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: it the same face for each one? It was literally
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: just their clothes were different. You know, I don't know.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: I'm going from my own memory, which is that they
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: were all the same, dude, and they were all Franco Harris. Well, well, no,
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: well they came up with an African American one at
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: one point in like sixties, I think, yeah, yeah, they
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: changed with the times. But to my recollection, those original dudes,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: and maybe I got in on the second wave. Maybe
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: the original sixties ones were different, but I only knew
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Franco Harris, I got you. So maybe I just had
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: Rocky maybe so Rocky or Rocky which one? Yeah, I
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: had Rocky, not Rocky. So um, they come out with
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: this this toy and it's the first one of the
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: big differences with G I. Joe, because there were toy
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: soldiers before. But did you ever have those like little
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: plastic ones, a little plastic green men. You dump them
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: out of the bucket and one had a bazooka and
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: he was always the best one. And but that they
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: were on like little molded plastic stands and you couldn't
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: do anything with him except slide them around or whatever
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: does have been around forever? Well, you could do a
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: lot more with them if you had imagination and a
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: lighter and a can of hairs. Right, Actually, I was delighted.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: It was toy story right where they had those those
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: guys come to life. Uh. That was like really really
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: cool to me when I saw that on screen. Uh,
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: these because you know, like you said, you can never
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: move them, so you see those little dudes actually come
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: to life. Was pretty pretty awesome. You were like, Yeah,
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: I've been dreaming of this day. I kind of was
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: thank you. DreamWorks. Oh that's where they got the name?
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: Was the dream Works or was that Pixar? Is Pixar right?
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: Probably got it wrong. That's right, it's a Pixar. We're
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: still going to get emails anyway, even though we just corrected.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: They're they're all working dreams. So, um, I read this
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: great article called geez what was it called? Uh, now
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: now you know the history of g I Joe and
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: knowing it as half the battle from Smithsonian dot com
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: written by Jimmy Stamp. Was that his name the Stamper
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: the stamps there, So, um, I didn't realize this. But
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: you can't you can't copyright a a figure, like a
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: human figure. So that was sort of an issue when
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: people started to do knockoffs of g I Joe. But
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: apparently early on in the process, G I Joe was
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: well known for that scar on his face, and I
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: didn't even know this. He had an inverted thumbnail. And
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: both of these were because of errors in production, but
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: those flaws were what allowed them to go after people
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: for copyright infringement. That's right, that's crazy, Yeah, it is,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: um And yeah, I guess they were they were natural,
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: like they didn't plan them or anything like that, but
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: they just were happy accidents, I guess. Um. And actually
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: over it also elsewhere, chuck that um G I. Joe
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: was so successful as we'll see that by the seventies, Um,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: there were so many knockoffs that has Bro released its
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: own line of knockoffs and cheaply made G I. Jos
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: to compete with the knockoffs and and de Luke their
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: market shure. Yeah, it was called Defenders, and they were
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: just these really cheaply made versions of the big G. I. Joe's. Well,
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: it was a huge hit though. Um it says here
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: that they accounted for almost sixty six of Hasbro's profits
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: in that's insane. That is nuts. And that was the
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: year it came out right yeah, like right out of
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: the gate. It was a really big deal. And again
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: one of the reasons why it was because you had
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: toy soldiers before. But this guy could move. Yeah, I
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: think like or twenty nine moving parts. Um are different parts.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: And he was articulated so he could lift up his
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: hand in karate chop you, although he didn't get the
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: kung fu grip until the mid seventies. Yeah, that's where
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: I came in. Okay, so he had kung fu grip.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: When you knew G I Joe, Uh, yeah, very much.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: It was so kung fu right, but he still looked
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: like Frank o' harris. But he still looked like Banks. Yes.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: And then the other big innovation was the was not
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: an innovation at all. It was following the Rby model,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: but for boys it was it was that this this doll,
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: which no one called the doll. In fact, um, I
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: believe Hasbro wouldn't do business with you if you were
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: going to call it a doll as a retailer, they
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: would just be like, well, you don't get any g
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: I Joes. This is an action figures but on the
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: package itself. And I don't know if you remember this
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: or not. Um, I don't because I wasn't born yet.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: But there were pictures of the other dudes and the
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: other outfits you could get, so when you bought one
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: g I Joe. You, as a kid, were made immediately aware, whoa, whoa, whoa,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: there's other g I Joes out there, and I want
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: to collect them all. Some little kid came up with
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: that collect them all phrase just in his little brain. Yeah,
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: some little kid named middle age marketing executive Don Levine.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: So not only that, but they had, you know, like Barbie,
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: they had all manner of um other things that you
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: could collect them by. Um. I had the had the
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: jet pack, which um you would attach to string to
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: simulate jet packing and send flying like between two trees. Uh.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: And then I had the uh the submarine. It was
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: like a sea wolf. It was really cool. How big
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: was the submarine? If you're playing with twelve inch g
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: I Joe's, it was um to take up the size
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: of like the family room. Well this is not gonna
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: mean anything to anyone at home, but it's about the
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: size of this lamp on our desk. Oh. So it
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: was like a one man sub Yeah, I feel like
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: it was. I can't remember exactly I feel I feel
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: like it was about the size of us um, a
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: little smaller than a bowling ball. How's that like a
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: child's bowling ball? Yeah, because he had to sit in it,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: you're right. And he was a big dude, even though
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: you would you know, in a set of position, he
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: was smaller. Uh. And then I had the uh six
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: wheel or eight wheel, I can't remember all terrain vehicle.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: Well that's nice, and that's about all that we were. Uh,
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: that's about all we could afford. That's but that was
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: probably quite an outlay from your parents. It was great.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: And that was over time, you know, right, several Christmas
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: is right. Yeah, and this was, like I said, I
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: came in on the seventies, but um, in the sixties,
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: they actually uh g I Joe did not do very
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: well because of the Vietnam War. Um, and it was
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: actually kind of I think it was actually went away
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: from production for a while. Yeah, it did. They just
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: they basically retired him. I think the Vietnam War hurt sales,
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: so they took him out a little bit, and then
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: they re released him again, um and kind of rebranded
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: him I think too as rather rather than a soldier,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: they rebranded him as an adventurer. Right, so this machete
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: is not for cutting off the hands of uh Sherpa
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: who leads us into danger. It's for um, you know,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: cutting through vegetation and on a jungle adventure to save
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: sherpas who were for some reason live in the jungle.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: Now yeah, and they, like you said, they called him
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: adventurer or the naval officer was called an aqua nat
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: And then I very much remember that being the deal. Like,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: I didn't think of him as a soldier. I thought
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: of him as you know. Well, I thought his name
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: was Joe because I guess it was a dumble little kid.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: But I guess Rocky the G I Joe adventure guy
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: slash Frinco Harris, right, and G I Joe. Actually I
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: was taken from a movie called the Story of G
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: I Joe. That's where that came from. Did you ever
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: see that? No? No, have you? No? Okay, I'm just curious.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: So Chuck, G I Joe is, uh, he starts to
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: do kind of poorly because of Vietnam. They take him out,
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: they re release him, um, and he doesn't do very
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: well when they bring him back out, even though he's
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: an adventure right. Um, So G I Joe left. They
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: stopped making G I Joe's for a while, and it
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: created it left this big vacuum that was just waiting
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: to be filled, and it was filled by a little
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: company named Migo. And we'll talk about me go after
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: this break. How about that sounds good? My? You should
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: all right? Is it mego or mego? I've been saying
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: mego in my head just because I'm a dumb American. No, well,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: I think mego is probably how they say it in
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: the UK. Oh was that where it came from? No,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: they're American. I say mego to be honest, I have
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: no idea. I'm sure there is a right way that
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: Tommy Migo would love to tell you about. But or
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: Tommy mego. But yeah, I've seen I've said mego in
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: my head, but I don't know which one is correct
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: to tell you the truth. All right, well, we'll just
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: proceed fussly. I'll say mego, you say mego. Let's just
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: call the whole thing off. So go ahead with me go.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: So so um g I Joe is gone. But again,
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: this was you said? It accounted for like six it
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: hasbro sales just in the first year. And he was
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: a hit year after year after year for many years. Right, um,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: And even when they brought him back, sales were terrible.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: Compared to the initial stuff, but they were still making
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: money off of them, right. Um, So this first the
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: world's first action figure made a huge impact. And when
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: the world's first action figure wasn't around anymore, well, there
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: was a void that was to be filled. And this
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: company called me Go decided and I think one or
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: nineteen two, that a pretty good place to start would
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: be releasing a line of action figures that were based
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: on superheroes. And they released, um, a line of superheroes
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: called the World's Greatest Superheroes Action Figures, and I think
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two, and it was a pretty big hit,
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: like right off the bat. Yeah. And what they did
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: was they were super smart and kind of had a
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: lot of vision and said, I think where it's at
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: is not necessarily creating characters from whole cloth that kids
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: don't know of, but licensing very famous characters and selling them.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: So they got a hold of licenses for uh, Spider
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Man and the Hulk and Batman and Wonder Woman and
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: Iron Man and Captain America. Yeah, and not just yeah,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: if you'll notice that's DC and Marvel characters in the
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: same line, Like that's unheard of today. They did not
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: discriminate back, you know they did. It was a wonderful time. Uh.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: And not only that, but they said, you know, we're
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: making money hand over fist selling these action figures. Um,
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: what if do you think kids would actually buy villains
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: like the Joker? And do you think they would buy
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: side characters like Robin and Bat Girl and other villains
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: like the Riddler and things like the Batmobile and the
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: Batcave place that, And before you knew it, they were
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: pumping out things like, uh, Bruce Wayne's Foundation building, I
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: know that was the real thing. Or what was the
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: other weird one? The store? Oh, they had they had
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: an exclusive with the Montgomery Ward store. So it wasn't
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: like it wasn't a store, but at the at Montgomery
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: Ward only, Oh, you could buy the non superhero versions
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: of superheroes like Peter Parker and Bruce Wayne, which is like,
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: all right, you you sit there in your cubicle and
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: that's what you do. Well, the rest of us are
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: saving the world. That's what you do with that action figure?
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: All right, that makes much more sense. I thought they
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: had a Montgomery Ward play set. That's what I thought
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: at first. Two like Bruce Wayne worked there or something
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: which of course he didn't even work. I don't know
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: what I'm thinking. So this gave orders. They were making
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: tons and tons of money. Um. In nineteen seventy three
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: they moved into movies with their Planet of the Apes line,
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: which was some plastic primates, and then the Astronaut that
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: was taller, and that was a huge hit. Yeah. And
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: the other thing about me go to Um was that
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: all action figures have been like twelve inch twelve inches
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: tall up to that point, and Migo's line was eight inches,
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: So action figures are starting to shrink a little bit now,
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: that's right. Uh. And the one, uh, the one actually
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: had even though I have no idea why I had
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: the Star trek Um Enterprise Bridge and then I guess, man,
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: I know I had Spock and Kirk and a couple
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: of others, but you know, I'm well known to not
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: have ever seen any Star trek at all except for
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: maybe one movie or something, So I have no idea
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: why I got that. I mean, if it was a
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: cool action figure, like I had some weird I had
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: a weird Wizard action figure when I was a kid.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: But you're in the Weird Wizards, you still are, well,
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: I am now as a grown up. I wasn't as
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: a kid. I was like, what is this thing? Gotcha
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: some weird wizard. Well, I don't know why I had it.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: But the Star Trek uh that their collection was that
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: was another big hit. So they were just they literally
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: kind of uh I mean g I Joe and Barbie
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: of course kind of spawned this thing, but it seems
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: like Mego really took it to another level. Yeah yeah,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: um they kind of they kind of. Yeah, Action figures
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: were cool and g I Joe had really started something,
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: but Migo, um yeah, they just they established it forever, permanently,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: and they also showed other companies to like, hey, man,
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: go get yourself a license and stick to it, like
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: get creative, like with the Star Trek license that they had.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: Clearly the toy designers had actually watched Star Trek episodes
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: because one of the place sets was from um, one
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: of the sets from an episode of Star Trek, the
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: Apple episode. Um, like you don't necessarily see that. You
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: didn't see that before. With Action figures, it was more like, hey,
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: you you you know this guy, just buy them. This
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: is like you're into Star Trek and so are we,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: and here is some awesome place that's based on your
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: love of Star Trek. So Migo definitely broke the mold
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: in that in that sense as well. Um, but they
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: also like they were it for action figures, like nobody
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: could compete with me Go. Um, they would buy stuff
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: from Japan and then turn them into new stuff here. Um,
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: there was just no competing with me Go in the US,
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: even though a lot of people were. But they they
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: also dropped the ball in the most spectacular fashion anyone
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: could ever drop the ball in the action figure world
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: like they It's almost it's almost an elegant end of
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: the story because it literally makes you cringe when you
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: read it. And there's two different versions, but both of
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: them are like, um man, yeah, I think there's really
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: only one version. I literally could not find a single
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: source other than this one guy's blog who claimed the
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: other version. But um, what we're talking about, and if
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: you know action figures, you probably see this coming. Uh.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: They declined the Star Wars brand and allowed Kenner to
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: pick it up. Yes, So how though, which story is true? Well,
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: the story that I think is true is that they
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: didn't want to invest and they said that you know,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: we're not gonna throw our money at every little thing
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: that comes along, going to be a little more discerning. Yeah,
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: that one hurts. That hurts more than the other story.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: The other version was that, like, um, the people who
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: could sign the contracts were out of town when George
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: Lucas came by to offer him the franchise. And now
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: that I'm saying it out loud, like yes, that's a
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: ridiculously dumb story. Them actually turning down the Star Wars
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: line is it's even better, It's even sweeter, like, man,
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: what were you guys thinking? But I mean there's lots
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: of stories like that because somebody lacking foresight. Yeah, them.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: The other story is completed by the supposedly they weren't there,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: So Lucas went to another Uh, went to Kinner who
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: was in the same building in New York. And I
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: guess the people that could sign their name were there.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: But I can't find that anywhere else except for this
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: one blog where this guy says it's true. But I
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: would love to hear from someone if they if they
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: have inside, like verifiable knowledge of that for sure, George Lucas,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: just let us know, and I mean verifiable, not that's
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: what I heard I read the same blog exactly. I
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: knew your nerd voice is gonna come up in this episode,
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: sure of course. Um So if you if you have
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: a love of mego or you just want to know
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: what we're talking about, also go check out um the
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: meg Museum online m E g O Museum And it's
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: just basically like this wonderful online museum dedicated to everything
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: that Migo ever put out. It's pretty cool. I wasn't
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: even around when these things came out, and they still
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: somehow make me nostalgic, you know, exactly. All right, So, uh,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: let's jump back a little bit to ninety six, and um,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: we're gonna explain how they went from eight inches even
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: though they were still making the eight inchers after sixty six,
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: how they eventually got down to the three and three
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: quarters inch. Uh. G I Joe was licensing their stuff
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: out to other countries all over the place. There was
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: a UK company who released it under the name Action
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: man Uh and eventually they licensed it to Japan to
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: a company called Takara. They went on to create some
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: action figures based on Gi Joe, and then, due to
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: the oil crisis in the early seventies, they started developing
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: smaller versions. Uh so at three and three quarters inches
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: they developed. Microman released him in the nineteen seventy four,
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: and that kind of led to this new thing, which
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: was smaller dudes three and kids didn't care. No, no,
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: not only did we not care. So now we're starting
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: to enter my wheelhouse. Not only did we not care,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: These smaller ones are vastly superior to the older ones.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: Oh you think, yeah, so a lot of stuff. But
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: I would say this is the one thing that divides
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: this more frequently than anything else, is whether the original
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: big g I Joes or the second wave small g
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: I Joes are better. All right, let me ask you, sir,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: have you ever held in your hands and played with
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: a twelve inch g I Joe with a kung fu grip?
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: I would uh would not touch one, So you can't
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: even say then? Have you played with the small one? Yeah? Man,
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: I had tons of small action figures? Okay, all right?
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: Oh did you have the Star Wars stuff? So you
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: think the big ones superior? Yeah, it's twelve inches, it's
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: articulates nineteen different ways. I like the small ones. I
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: always will, even after playing with the big one, which
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: I have not never will. I just know that the
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: small one is vastly superior. I don't know if it's
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: because I am nostalgic for the small ones and the
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: old ones seem weird and dusty and moldy or something
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: like that, but the small one seemed better than me.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: All Right, At the very least, you have to you
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: have to admit the wave of G. I. Joe's that
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: were released when I started playing with them, just the
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: line itself was better, regardless of the size of them. Right, Well,
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: let's go ahead and talk about that thought, because G I.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: Joe changed a lot um once it became a cartoon
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: and we're going to talk about some really cool political
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: stuff that had no idea went into this. But um,
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: G I. Joe became a cartoon series. This was in
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: the early eighties, So this is when I had kind
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: of quit playing with action figures for the most part. Okay,
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: because eighty four, I was like thirteen, and you know,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: I was moving on to you know, check out this mustache.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah I was. I was skateboarding by that point, and
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: I thought it was like super cool skateboarder. Uh, maybe
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: I still played a little bit. So your only your
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: neighborhood best friend knew about it. Your school friends didn't
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: exactly so did Yeah, Joe was a cartoon. H Then
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: they for the first time basically it became a commando team,
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: an anti terrorist commando team that had all kinds of characters,
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: and they had finally had a common enemy, which was
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: of course Cobra. Yes, led by Cobra Commander. And this
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: was your right in your wheelhouse, correct, Yes, So in
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: nine three I was like seven, So yeah, this was
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: I was really just primed and ready. I would just
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: let's go Joe. And plus also the other thing too
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: that I had that you didn't have was the cartoon
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: that not only like blew up the back stories because
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: each this new wave of g I. Joe when they
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: released it, um, they each character now had its own
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: name and it wasn't Rocky or Rocky. It was things
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: like um Duke or Shipwreck or Blowtorch or Barbecq or
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: dust Um. And then the bad guys had their own
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: their own names to like Cobra command or spent or
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: to Max or z mott Um or uh, the whole
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: the whole gang right Toe Cheese who was that? Tomax
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: and Zat They were evil Twins who were they were?
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: Basically they were like, um, if if Cobra Commander had
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: hired Patrick Bateman and then cloned him a mirror version
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: of him, it would be Tomax and z a mot
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: interesting stuff, right right? Okay, so I do because I
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: grew up with it. But but I also had it
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: pounded into my head every day after school watching the G. I.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: Joe cartoon. And that was the huge innovation that really
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: just created this uh, this other world for kids like
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: me to just lose yourself in with the action figures
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: because now you didn't even need to use your imagination.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: You could just be like, oh, I saw this on
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: the G. I. Joe cartoon today, So let's act that
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: out right. And none of this would have ever happened
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: had it not been for Ronald Reagan. And that sounds weird, uh,
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: but here's the story. So in the late seventies, there
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: was a lot of concern about kids, uh and advertising
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: about advertising two children. So the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: got a task force together and they said, should we
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: ban or regulate this marketing to children? They put together
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: six thousand pages of testimony from sixty oh the oral testimony,
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: sixty thousand pages of expert testimony from all these experts
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: on child psychology and health and nutrition, because I had
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: to do with you know, food and sugary candies and
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: stuff like that too. And the conclusion across the board
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: was that young children cannot they are cognitively unable to
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: understand the the intent of selling ads. They can't distinguish
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: that from reality. Like if you dress up a cartoon
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: as an ad, the kid is he just thinks it's
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: a cartoon, she does exactly. Or if the ad is
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: a cartoon rather than the kid doesn't know. They just
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: think I'm still watching cartoons on my TV. My brain
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: hasn't made that switch. But man, could I go for
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: some smurf cereal exactly. So it was a big deal
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: at the time. So there were all these recommendations basically
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: and how to regulate and restrict advertising that were They
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: basically said it was unfair and deceptive to kids. UH.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: For older kids, they said they can tell the difference,
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: but maybe we should have uh warnings on the ads
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: and disclosures saying that this is a commercial message. And
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: so what happens when you do this In America, the
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: private sector said no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: I want to be able to sell as much sugary
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: garbage to kids as I want. You can't restrict uh,
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: free trade, free trade in business. And so we're gonna
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: raise a record at the time sixteen million dollars to
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: lobby against this. And well and they were helped out
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: in no small part by getting the right guy into
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: the White House. Right. So, one of the first things
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan did was he appointed a new chairman of
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: the Federal Trade Commission. And this, uh, this was a
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: move that basically said, you know what, there's gonna be
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: no regulation whatsoever. You got to leave these markets free.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: You can do whatever you want. Uh. And that is
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: basically how all of these cartoons were born. G I. Joe, Transformers, Smurfs,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: care Bears, Rainbow Bright, Yeah, you name it. It basically
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: became marketing and selling things and cartoons became one and
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: the same. Finally. Yeah, and one of the other things
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: that definitely helped G. I. Joe two was the um
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it was formal or informal, but
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: there was basically a band on UM on warlike cartoons
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: and warlike toys that was brought back Act under the
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: same ease of restrictions by the ftc UM so that
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: I think the percentage of warlike toys that was sold
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: in the early eighties went up like three hundred fifty
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: from one year over the other from like eighty four
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: I think. Um, whereas before it was like no, we
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: don't Joe was an adventure. Remember, It's like, no, g
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: I Joe was gonna cut Cobra's head right off. So
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: that's a nineteen eighty That's one of the first, uh,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: one of the first big things Reagan did when he
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: got in office flashboard in November. One of the last
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: things he did was he vetoed a new measure because
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: basically they saw what was happening. All of a sudden,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: kids were being bombarded with war cartoons and uh, just
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: terrible sugary packaged food all over the place. Like the
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: restrictions were nowhere to be found. So UH, Congress came
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: back and said, you know what, this is out of hand.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: Here's a measure that will restrict once again and impost
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: some some legislation on this programming aimed at children. Uh.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: It passed the House by eight passed unanimously in the
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: Senate and Reagan vetoed it and said, uh, basically, what
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: one of the things that were trying to do. They
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: were trying to limit programming to UH advertising to ten
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: point five minutes an hour on the weekends and twelve
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: minutes an hour in the week days and also provide,
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: uh require broadcasters to provide educational and informational programs as
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: a condition of renewing their licenses. So Reagan vetoed that
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: and said, no way, UH, we're not gonna do that.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: We're gonna keep it as ish people that were in
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: favor of this went crazy. Basically they were saying, like,
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: how can you guys say you're the the party of
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: the Children and education and then veto is something that
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: is clearly going to help protect our children. That was
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: messed up. Man, I had no idea about that one. Yeah,
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: and not only that, the what how up? And was
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: along with this de regulation UM the toy companies and
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: the cartoons. They actually they kind of got in bed
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: together and they said, you know what, if you show, uh,
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: if you schedule as a broadcaster UM our cartoons that
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: sell toys will give you a profit on those toys.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: If you run these g I. Joe cartoons, then we'll
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: give you a little cut of what we're selling. Plus
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: also we'll buy ads on those cartoons are on your
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: network to to sell those those toys when you show
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: these cartoons. I imagine you know, because I remember watching
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: G I Joe Real American Hero that cartoon, which I
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: have to say it was created in in large part
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: to sell G I. Joe's true, but it had it
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: had great story arcs that had overarching story arcs that
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: went from episode to episode. Uh, the individual ones were good,
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: like the voice acting was good, the animation was pretty good.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: Same with its formers too, Like, it was pretty pretty
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: good cartoon. So at least they were putting time and
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: effort and thought into this. But uh, yeah, it's pretty
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: despicable marketing to kids in general. Actually, I read a blog.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: Um I'm certainly glad you were a satisfied viewer, but
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: I read this blog that basically said that, um man,
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: I wish I could find it. Maybe I'll post this
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: when we release it, that that the de regulation killed
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: the creativity and killed in children's cartoons, and that they
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: said that before you know it, they were just like
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: things were knockoffs of one another they didn't care about
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: I guess. I mean, you were kids, so maybe you
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: didn't realize it, but that was too stupid to know
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: it was going on. They said that, you know, you
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: can see a clear demarcation line between really good storytelling
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: and then storytelling that was clearly just geared to sell things.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: I guess I don't. I'm trying to compare like what
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: cartoons were in the seventies, and like they were great,
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: they weren't high art though again I'll go back to
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: that hair Bear bunch. Well, they loved the hair Bears,
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: but there yeah, yeah, that was a big one. But there,
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, their plots were pretty simple. It was the
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: same plot that you would see on a Yogi Bear
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: cartoon or like a Huckleberry Hound cartoon. Um, Scooby Doo
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: was interesting and it was pretty cool, but it was
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: basically the same storyline every single time, like what what
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: Scooby Doo? And I'm not trying to argue in favor
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: of Corporate America marketing to kids and ruining creativity, but like,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: you don't, there weren't any overarching storylines aside from Scooby
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: being crazy for Scooby Snacks and Scooby Doo, And there
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: definitely was in G I. Joe, Like when they went
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: around the world and took the DNA of all of
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: these great these great dictators and conquerors like Alexander the
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: Great and Um Napoleon and put them all together and
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: created serpent or Um who was actually the new guy
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: who was in charge of Cobra because Cobra commander was
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: a bit of a coward? Did you not know any
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: of this? How do you not know of this stuff?
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: But I was. I was trying to kiss girls in
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: the roller skating rink at this and you thought girls
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: were gross. Still, it's true, it's true, but I it
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: definitely helps shape me, and I am nostalgic for it
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: in that sense, and I am appreciative. But Chuck, I
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: propose that sooner than later we do an episode on
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: marketing to kids, because this whole deregulation story is just fascinating. Yeah,
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, I hadn't. I didn't really know anything about
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: it because I was still a dumb kid when this
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: is going on. Well let's do it though, Okay, agreed?
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: So that was G I Joe shaped my childhood the
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: ted so uh. But prior to g I Joe. The
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: first three and three quarter inch action figure in the
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: US as far as I know, was the Star Wars line,
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: and the Star Wars line again when Migo passed it up,
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: they quickly realized that we really screwed up. They released
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: like a Buck Rogers line, um, and uh, a black
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: Hole line. Remember that movie The black Hole from Disney.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: It's really creepy even still. Um. But so they tried
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: to catch up, and they ended up going bankrupt in
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three basically as a result of losing this
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: Star Wars line, and so Kenner and so Kenner picked
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: it up, picked up the Star Wars line instead, and
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: they released them and right out of the gate in
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight, which I believe was the first year
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: that they released these things, is three and three quarter
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: inch Star Wars line of action figures. UM. In n
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: seventy nine, they made a hundred million dollars each year
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: from selling those. They sold about forty million units a year,
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: and from ninety eight to ninety five, which I think
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: was the whole run of the Star Wars lines, the
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: original run with Kenner, Kenner sold three hundred million units.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: So if they're stelling forty million a year and making
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: a hundred million each year From that, they sold three
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: hundred million total, So Kenner made some serious bank office
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: star Wars off of me and my my lawnmowing fund.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: For sure, I had. I feel like I had at
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: least doubles of most of the major characters, many of
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: the minor characters, the Tie Fighter, the X Wing, the
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: Death Star, Oh you luck, the land Speeder. Um. I
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: also had the uh, the big dolls. Um. I don't
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: know if they were twelve inch, but what is it
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: with you? And maybe man they're huggable. Uh. Yeah, I
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: had the Big Luke and the Big I think, the
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: Big Luke and the Big Vader, and maybe like one
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: other maybe Chewbacca, but not all of them. And basically
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: whatever I could either get from my birthday or Christmas
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: or save my allowance to buy, I would get. And
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: I was all in. I didn't know that these were
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: collect doable. Of course, ripped right into them to play,
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: to play with them like normal children do. Um. I
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: didn't put it like in a box on a shelf
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: to try and keep it in mint condition. But it's
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: weird to do though as a kid. Yeah, I don't know.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: I mean maybe there were kids doing it. I didn't
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: know any We all played with them, but I mean
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: that was originally the point. I think it wasn't until
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: like much later that it it became evident that you
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: could sell them to people who wish they had them
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: in the package still for a lot of money. Yeah,
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: and should we should we close later on with the
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: some of the more valuable ones, Yes, for sure. So
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: that's a tease everybody, you take a break. We should
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: Was that it about Star Wars? You think I don't
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: have anything else? Really? I mean there's a gazillion other
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: things we could talk about, I guess, but what more
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: do you need to know besides that they were huge hits.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: That's it, all right, We're gonna take a break. We're
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: gonna come back and talk a little bit about the
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: how these things are actually made as my sk alright,
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: so just to put a little bow on the action
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: figure thing before we get into how they're made. Um,
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: you know, Transformers came along, was huge throughout the nineties.
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: Then you saw uh, Marvel and d C really come
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: on the market. Every movie you could think of had
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: action figures. TV shows started having action figures. Older popular
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: movies started having action figures, like for Nostalgias sake, like
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: I literally had a scarface doll. Oh yeah, I've seen
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: a scarface al Pacino that I used to have in
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: the office and come with a mount of cocaine, a
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: plastic mount of cocaine. It did. Uh. And now you
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: know you can find pretty much any kind of action
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: figure you want from politicians, older movies and TV shows
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: and like things you wouldn't even imagine people would, like
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: Welcome Back Carter action figures. Yeah, and I didn't realize this,
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: but apparently companies intentionally will release like a very limited
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: run of some where like they're missing their thumb or
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: like it's mislabeled on the package to make these things, um,
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: to make them valuable for the aftermarket, the collector's market,
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: which seems really untoward to me, like gaming the the
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: collector's market by manufacturers. That's just it seems that's just
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: the opposite of what you're supposed to do. So that
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: is that verified? That sounds urban legendy to me. Well,
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: it was in one of the articles you sent, and
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: I took it. The person who wrote the article sounded
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: like they knew what they were talking about. But was
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: that the same article from the guy who said that
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: that Kennard couldn't sign the context because the right people
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: weren't there. I don't know, because the first thing I
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: think of this, If they're doing that, then what's to
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: keep them from artificially manufacturing something that's going to be
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: valuable and just keeping a bunch of them. Well, most
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: companies like money now rather than a little more money later,
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: so that would probably do it. That's you know, So
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: you want to talk about how these suckers are made? Yeah, again,
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: you found some good stuff here when you put this together. Yeah,
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: I thought this is pretty interesting. So it starts with design,
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: right right, which I mean it's pretty sensible. You say,
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: give us a Thor character, you sucker, and um, they're
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: talking to an artist, a sculptor when they say that.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: So the sculpture gets to work like creating um, like
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: basically a skeleton it's called armature out of wire and
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: the wires and basically a position. Thor likes to run
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: holding his hammer, so he'll be kind of like in
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: a crouch running pose. Um, And then they slap some
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: clay around it, maybe bake it a little bit to
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: make it stiff, and then they mold very very roughly
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: the general body shape and head shape of thor um
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: and then they kind of start to get to work
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: from there. Yeah, rough thorness is what they look for
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: early on. UM. And this you know, it depends on
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: the action figure. There are all different kinds that have
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: varying levels of uh of movement, and depending on what
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: you're gonna end up with is really going to inform
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: the process. But let's say you're thor and you want
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: to move your arms, move those big pipes a little bit. Uh,
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: they may choose to sculpt the arms separately, or maybe
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: the legs separately. Um. They almost always do the head
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: separately because it's got all these this fine detail and
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: you just want to work on that by itself. Right
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: when you're when you're messing with the heads, you're just
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: your wrist is like going into the chest that you
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: just finished. Why do I always do this? Not to
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: start over? Pretty much, so they're working with this torso
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: perhaps only put him aside. Work on the arms, work
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: on the hands, work on the head, and eventually, uh,
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: once you've got this head and face like you want it. Um,
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: you're gonna attach that back on, build a neck, and
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: build some hair. And if it's one that's completely plastic,
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: you're gonna do the clothes and everything in the suit.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: Sometimes you have real cloth, though, like in a cape,
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: you're gonna you're not gonna carve that out obviously, No, No,
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: they'll add that. They'll add that later. And sometimes like
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: an extra figure will come with like a breastplate or
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: boots or Thor's hammer. Maybe they'll they gave Thorer kung
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: fod grip, so they'll have to mold that also separately.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: But then sometimes and you'll know this already, probably as
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: the designer, they're gonna be like, no, we don't want
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: any of that weird cloth. It's like a big g
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: I Joe and that's just weird people out. We want it.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: We want to plastic and molded. So they'll fill basically
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: carve the clothing out of the original sculpture as well. Yeah,
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: and this all takes about two weeks on the h
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: of course it depends on who you're working with, but
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: two or three weeks to carve this this dude out
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: to its kind of raws form. Yeah, I'm always incredulous
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: and stuff like that. It's like, you know, who does
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: it take two weeks? Is that really an average? Like?
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: How many action figure sculptures did you pull to find
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: out that it was two weeks? They probably just talked
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: to someone at the company and they say how long's
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: it take and they say about two weeks. Yeah, that's
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: good enough for me. Then all right if they as
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: long as they spoke to somebody, all right. So now
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: you've got your little little dude, and uh, you're going
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: to use a plastic resin when it comes to the
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: actual materials of the thing itself. Uh, there's something called
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: a B S acra acrono. Wow, I thought, I want it.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: You want me to try it? Sure? I think it's
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: a killa nit trial beauty die eyen styrene, A B
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: S nice work. Three types of plastic and one that's right,
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: So that's the harder plastic for the main body. Uh,
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: they may use something like polypropylene or poly ethylene for
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: the various parts or pieces. You got your fabrics. If
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: you have capes and things like that, so well no,
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: I mean even the little small figures had had like
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: the jawas had capes. Yeah, not capes, but cloaks. Now,
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: I know, I remember that weird to me out too,
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: And I think, finally I understand what it is that
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: I don't like about the large G I Jos. They
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: had fabric clothing and that it was ill fitting clothing
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: to like, did you see I don't know if you
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: had it or not, but the original G I Joe,
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: like some of them, came with a raincoat, but it
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: didn't look like a raincoat. It looked like he was
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: wearing a sleeping bag that had a draw string around
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: his face. Are you sure it wasn't a sleeping bag.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be a raincoat,
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: but I think that's what it was. Just pep, you know, Yeah,
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: that was all I guess it's not. Actually the size
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: is the creepy factor brought on by this clothing that
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: didn't fit quite right. Like you know, it's the kind
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: of clothing that you would make for a son who
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: was was a serial killer, but you didn't want to
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: turn him in, so you just keep him locked in
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: the basement and you've got to make his own clothing.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: You have to make clothing for him. This is the
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: kind of clothing you would make him that's I think
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: what creeps me out about it? Well, you're working through
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: some stuff, so I'll check in with you at the end,
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: but we'll see exactly what it is you hate about
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: the call. So, uh, the manufacturing process. You got to
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: create the mold. Next you want to master mold, or
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: maybe it might be more than one mold, and uh,
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: this requires the most time. They say in this article
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: about two thirds of the whole time spent making these molds,
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: which makes sense, and it takes a few months again
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: is that arbitrary? Who knows? Yeah, this guy's like probably
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: just takes a couple and then once you once you
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: have the molds, and you also have to make a
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: decision when you're making the molds. Do you want to
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: um make the torso and the legs together? Is he
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: gonna move his arms? If so, you probably want to
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: do two different molds for the arms. So there's a
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: pretty decent amount of decision making work that goes into
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: just coming up with what molds you're gonna make. And
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: then once you make the molds, and yes you have
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: to make the molds, you have to operate them, and
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: then you have to decide what kind of um uh
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: what kind of UM what's the word I'm looking for
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: where you actually make the plastic um figure molding, which
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: I should have been able to come up with because
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: we were talking about molds at the time, that's right.
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: So there's different kinds. I looked up one kind called
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: rotational molding. I guess that's what Star Wars was going
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: to try at first, but they lost too much detail
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: on the figure, so they went to UM I think,
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: an injection molding process. But with rotational molding, you've got
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: a mold and it's on this computerized arm, and this
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: arm just kind of spins around inside an oven, and
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: inside the arm is like powdered plastic resin, and I
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: guess it just melts it by kind of slowly spinning
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: it around. I don't understand what the problem is, but
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: I guess injection molding is far superior. Yeah, I guess.
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: So I mean to deal with injection molding, Uh, they
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: pump it into two pieces and then they apply pressure
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: to those two pieces to mold them together while it
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: cools and hardens. UM. But I think what you get
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: there is, which is why probably they wanted to use
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: the rotational molding, is if you have those little Star
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: Wars guys, or imagine g I Joe if their injection molds.
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: If you if you look at their body from the side,
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: it's in two pieces, and sometimes you can see a
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: little steam on their head or on their arm or something,
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: or probably on their arm because those are separate. But um,
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: sometimes you can see the seam or where the two
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: halves were pressed together. They wanted that smooth look for
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: the uh, for the rotational molding that that provides. But um,
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: always I guess the detail was the trade off. So
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: that's the that's the rotational moulling. You don't have seams,
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: but you lose fine detail. Within checks and mulling, you
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: can get the detail, but you can see the seams
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: of where the two sides of the mole came together,
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: I guess. But man, I mean, how bad could that
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: detail have been? Because when you look at those early
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: Star Wars figures, I mean the detail was not great.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: You know, Like, had I've been Mark Hamill had been
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: like this, this is what you think my face looks like? Yeah?
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: Like they I mean, they've gotten way better. Like the
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: stuff they're making today is amazing, but it's almost too good,
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: you know, what I mean, like, yeah, there's some amazing
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: stuff out there, but it's that was one of the
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: great things about these especially the three and three quarter
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: inch guys. They just they just they were They were
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: meant to be played with. They were meant to have
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: imagination bestowed on them and little child's hands. Yeah, not
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: supposed to sit on your desk at work or something
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: like that, and just as adornment. Like they were meant
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: to be played with, and they were. They were subtly
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: downgraded from you know, the stuff that's out today, they
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: were downgraded to an upgrade. Yes, Like John Hodgman is
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: literally screaming right now into his earbuds because we're nostalgic
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: about something that was decidedly crappier. Sorry, but it's true
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: though from me, like I think that they were they
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: were great. Have I told you how I feel about
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: the three and three quarter ins g I, Joe, No,
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: we should talk about that some more, all right. So
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: you've got this mold now pressed together if it's injection,
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: and then you have to assemble it. If you have
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: the arms separately perhaps or um basically anything else that
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: doesn't come on that original mold, you're gonna have to
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: assemble it together. Uh, put all the little finishing details.
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: Maybe the clothing that you hate so much, Um, maybe
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: they're painted with little more detail that that detail that
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: you hate so much, and all the things that make
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: a better action figure that you hate so much. It's
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: not that I hate it, it's it's just I don't know,
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure how to put it. Yeah. Yeah,
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: so it's I don't hate it, really don't like it.
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: The final um, the final key to this whole thing
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: is packaging and shipping. So you think big deal was
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: a big deal with the package, but a lot of
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: thought goes into the packaging, Like you were talking about
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: earlier with the the g I Joe actually advertising the
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: other dudes on the package, but that classic cardboard backed
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: uh clear plastic um casing. Yeah, the shell that was
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: sort of became the standard and what everyone came to
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: think of as an action figure package. And and man,
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: that was another thing that with the wave of g
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: I Joes that I played with, that really put a
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: lot of time and effort and thought into the packaging. Um,
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: and that I mean that was definitely part of it
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: that really helps sell the action figures in a lot
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: a lot of ways. Yeah, you know, like right into it.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: Like I said, I disregarded the package well with the
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: later g I jose there was a card on the
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: back that had like their code name, their specialty, their backstory,
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: and like you clip a mountain and collect those as well,
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: Like it was definitely part of it. I collected the
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: Star Wars trading cards too. It's funny. I went back
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: and got all my old cards not too long ago,
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: and I didn't collect a ton of cards. I thought like, oh,
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: maybe there'll be some you know, Ken Griffy Rookie card
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: in here with five grand. So foolishly I thought I
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: had something of value, which I did not. Um. But
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: I went through and I had some weird cards that
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: I don't even remember collecting. Like I had welcome Back
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: Carter cards. Oh yeah, that's twice that welcome Back cart
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: has made an appearance in this episode. I was not
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: expecting either one. I like, I like to show a lot,
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: but I don't remember buying these cards. I had Jaws
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: the movie cards. I had lots of Star Wars cards, um,
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: some weird like I mean, I had football cards. I
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: didn't even collect football cards. I didn't think I went through.
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: I did the same thing you did. I got all
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: the boxes of baseball cards from my dad's house, and
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: I was like, I didn't where did I get all
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: these football cards? Who even collects football cards? You know,
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: it's untoward, it's weird. But the cool thing about the
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: seventies cards is just the the look when you could
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: like you know, you had to back the camera off
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: so you could fit the afro into the card and
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: all these like great haircuts and hair dues that all
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: these guys had back then. It's pretty Why is he
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: holding that fistol off and then chuck? After the packaging,
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: it goes to the stores and little kids like us
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: buy it and love it. That's right. That's the end
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: of the manufacturing process. Wow, what a journey. Yeah, that
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: was something we went all the way to China and back.
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: We did. I don't think we pointed that out a
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: lot of time. The molding process is an Asia, so
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: that's one reason it takes so long because they put
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: them on slow boats. So you kind of tease us earlier. Um,
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: the you found a list of the rarest Star Wars figures. Yeah,
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: and you know I looked at other lists and they
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: listed different figures, So I don't know if that's something
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: that changes a lot as far as which ones are
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: the most valuable, because I literally saw at least two
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: different ones that were described as the Holy Grail Star
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: Wars figures, so you know there can't be more than
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: one Holy Grail. No, So I do look forward to
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: hearing from those in the No. But instead of saying
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: these are the most valuable, let's just say we'll talk
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: about some that are pretty rare and fairly valuable. I
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: think that was pretty smart. So no one holds us
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: our feet to the flame. Yack Face. I had not
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: heard of yeck face, had you know? So yeck Face
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: is one of um Boba Fette's either guards or mercenaries.
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: But he worked for Boba Fett. No not, I'm sorry.
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry Star Wars people, stop stopping. He worked for
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: Job of the Hut. He's not the same person you
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: just cause three car accidents, three Toyota prius is just
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: liberty Mutual is going to be like this, Josh Clark.
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: We gotta work into our actual aerial tables. Uh. Yeah,
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: So he was part of the power of the Force line. Uh.
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: He was canceled and you'll find. Here's a common thread
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: here is rarity is what makes something valuable, and something
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: can be a garbage figure and they don't make many
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: of them, and then it becomes valuable. And I think
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: he wasn't necessarily a garbage figure. He was just released
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: at a time when, like Star Wars figures, sales in
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: general were waning. So they sent him over to Europe.
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: And this thing says that he was never released in
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: the States. I saw that he was, but it was
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: in for a very brief time and a very limited run,
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: and then they sent him to Europe. I think in
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: ve where Return of the Jedi had just come out,
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: so they were crazy for anything that had anything to
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: do with Return to Jedi. America was already like, who
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: cares about Return of the Jedi. We're we're into uh
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: Temple of Doom, which I read an article about that recently.
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: Supposedly Temple of Doom was so dark because both George
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: Lucas and Steven Spielberg were going through breakups at the
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: time that they were writing and making it. So we said,
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: what can we do here? Why don't why don't you
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: pull out his heart and eat it? Right? That's what
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: I feel like because that's what it did all right
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: week way, So this is another Jab of the huts guards.
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: Are you sure you didn't get those confused? I specifically
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: went and looked up Yeke face and he he works
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: for a job of the Hut. They even gave Job
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: of the Huts full name, and I just remember the
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: job apart. Oh he had more than that. Yeah, the
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: hut was he was a member of the huts, like
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: the race of Huts or the tribe of Huts. So
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: was Jab of the hut like you know, Chuck the
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: American gotcha. Well, I think I'm on record as being
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: like I'm a big star Wars fan, loved them, saw
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: them many many times, collected the things, but then it ended.
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: I'm not on of the other half that really went
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: down the rabbit hole, like oh, who are still like
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: into it as much as before? Yeah? And even back then,
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: like new things like the Job of the Huts full name?
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, Like I didn't know that. I never
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: knew that stuff and never read the books or anything
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: like that. Um oh, I did have some of those
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: comics though, I remember that now. I never had the comics.
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: I was aware of the books and there was a
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: lot of books when there. Yeah, they still write them too,
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: I think, don't they. Sure, Hey, if it's a good thing,
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: sure right, is that good? I think we have slashed
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: the people who are into the books. Alright. So a
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: week Way is another guard. Apparently it's not super rare,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: but there's a limitedive addition version that is worth more so.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: The car died mint condition, the power of the forest
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: line in the nineties, um is worth a little bit
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: more money. I says, thirty five dollars, that's what it's worth. No, no, no,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: that's what the normal one's worth. The one that has
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: a special freeze frame slide, which I don't know what
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: that is got you. That one's worth ten times that
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: amount according to this guy. All Right. I remember the
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: Vinyl cape Jahua was always worth a lot of money,
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: m because they came out with a cloth cape. I
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: know it's creepy. Uh So I'm gonna throw that in there,
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: just off the top of my head. There's also a
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: think of Vinyl caped in a cloth cape. Imperial Guard,
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: remember the the Emperor's red cloaked guards, And I think
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: Return of the Jedi, maybe Empire strikes back. I don't know.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: I'm afraid to say anything out loud. Now, let's just
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: just stop. Uh, let's skip that next one and go
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: straight to Bubba Fett. How does that sound? Okay? Bubba
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: fet very famously um in nine there was a Bubba
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: Fett that actually shot a missile, which is every parent
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: knows is a chokable? Is the parents worst nightmare is that?
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: Is that the term chable chokable something you can choke on?
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: Is that a real like parents term? Yeah, that's awesome.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: I did not know. Yeah, supposedly anything smaller then a
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: the size of a toilet paper roll tube. What is
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: it chokable? Smaller than that? Yeah? So like, if you
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: can fit something through a toilet paper tube, then your
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: kid can choke on it. Got you? That's what they say.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: Who says that? I don't know that today show dumb
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: dumb parenting blogs. That makes sense, though, Yeah, I can't
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: fit a football through that can't choke on a football?
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: That's correct. The system where he could choke on a
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: tiny football though, I guess so the the chokable Boba
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: fet um. Obviously, they said this is a choking hazard,
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: so they scrapped the plans and redesigned it, and so
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: they did eventually release uh, the figure, but it had
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: that and I had this one, not the one that
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: shot the rocket, because they never released that one, right,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: I specifically remember being in the same room with one
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: that shot a rocket or it wasn't hacked. Here's the
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: other possible UM explanation. Uh, I saw it on an
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: ad and a confusing reality with television again, because it
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: says here they never released them in stores. I saw
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: that too. But I'm like, I swear I saw one
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: of these things, or maybe we were just playing with
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: and we're like, this thing sucks. If it actually shot
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: the missile would be so much better, and I imagine
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: what that would be like, and then accidentally formed of memory.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: Who knows. I'm forty years old now, I can't remember
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: what was going on when I was seven or eight. Uh.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: As far as how valuable these things are if you
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: can get your hands on one, I mean I've seen
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: things all over the place. One was sold for eighteen
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: thousand dollars last year. But then I also saw one
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: where supposedly a hundred thousand dollar offer at a Southby's
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: auction was turned down. What so I have no idea
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: the value of these dudes, but it's a lot of dough.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: Is that the Holy Grail one? Well, this is one
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: of the holy grails. Do you remember what another Holy
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: Grail you saw was? Yeah? The other one is is
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: supposedly the most valuable is the double telescoping lightsaber for
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: uh for Obi Wan, Darth Vader, and Luke, and I
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: think Luke's is the the most expensive. Um. If you
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: remember the little did you have any of these? I
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: had a couple. So the lightsaber guys had a thing
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: on the bottom of their arm, a little groove cut
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: out with a little uh, a little you know, plastic
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: knob that you would uh shove up towards the wrist
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: and the lightsaber would come out of the hand as
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: if it were turning on. The double telescoping because that's
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: a telescoping feature. Double telescoping means that you could extend
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: it even further out from the original telescope, and those
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: supposedly are super rare and uh worth a lot of dough.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: So that one I saw actually online, um oh man,
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: I can't remember the site, but it was it's a
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: it's great, it's a great Star Wars action figure site. Um,
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: and they had a picture of it. Have you seen it? Yeah?
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: I thought I had one, but I can't find it,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: So I don't think I do. Like the the regular
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: lightsaber that they had was just fine, but then the
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: double telescoping part was just like this extra thinner, pointy
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: piece of plastic that hung down at like a weird angle.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: It didn't keep going straight. Yeah, they always kind of
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: bent and it looked just it looked broken, you know. Yeah.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: But even if I did have one, it it's well worned.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: So it's not like I mean, I think all of
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: these things, it's always like mint condition in the package.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: It's worth this. Don't even talk to me if it's
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: not mint. Yeah, that's the that's the slogan. So I
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: would love some of this cleared up by experts. Um. Oh, well,
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: we'll hear from them. The Bubba fet matter. Yeah, I
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: don't even know why I'm asking the Bubba fet matter,
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: the like which one is truly the Holy Grail? Uh?
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: What happened with the Kenner or not Kenner? The Mego
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: Star Wars deal? And did did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone? Yes,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: we need answers, Pete Pull you got anything else? I
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: got nothing else. This is a big overview. There's clearly
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: many more stories to be told. I got a couple,
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: a couple more. I just want to give shouts out
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: Yo Joe dot com if you were into G I
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: Joe's and you want to feel nostalgic, uh, go check
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: that site out. It's amazing. Um. And then I created
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: a gallery a few years ago called Hilarious Knockoffs and
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: Legs of Beloved Toys, and it's just like the slide
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: show of toys from around the world that are it's
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: pretty obvious what they're supposed to be, but they're not,
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: like the names just a little off or um. They
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: they they've tried to come up with a new brand altogether,
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: but it's just some cheap version of something great. So
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: go check that out too. It's kind of cool. It
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: was fun to put together. And that's that's it, man,
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: It's all I got. Go watch the G I Joe
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: p s A s by Eric Finzler again. They still
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: hold up. Do you remember those where it was like
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: like just weird dubs of those G I Joe p
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: s as Like, now you know and knowing is half
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: the battle. You haven't seen these I don't think so. Okay,
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: I'll send them to you. You're gonna die laughing good. Yeah,
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: you'll love him. You've been trying to kill me for years.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: It's lightful way to do it. But this time I
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: won't be wearing gloves coming at your neck. Uh. That's
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: it for me, man, that's it for me. Okay. Well,
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: if you want to know more about action figures, you
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: can take those words into the search bar of your
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: favorite UM search engine. Since I said search engine and
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: didn't do any buzz marketing, it's time for a listener mail.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: We're gonna plug Kiva, which we haven't done in a
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: long time. It's a good idea. K I v A
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: is a micro lending website that we have been We've
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: had a team now stuff you should know team for geez,
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: how many years? Six or seven? I think it was
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: two thousand eight or two two thousand nine, eight years,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: seven or eight years? All right, So this is from Jordan,
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: and then I'm gonna go over a little bit more
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: about how our tina's looking. Hey, guys, once I listened
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: to uh podcasts where you promote Kiva, I decided to
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: google the Kiva donation thing and eventually found it correctly
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: as k I v a dot com. I immediately love
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: the site. It's the epitome of how to take the
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: globalized world and use that for good. So often donations
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: come in the form of awkward late night infomercials or
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: five second quips at the grocery line where you begrudgingly
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: make an enemy out of the seventeen year old clerk
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: for saying, no, I don't want to give a dollar
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: to need each children. Uh. While all types of donations
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: are generally good, Kiva makes you feel even more personal
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: and once one can certainly give their money to needs
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: that are important to them, you probably get your money back,
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: which is great. But no way did that motivate me
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: to loan, and I suspect to most people to use
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: Kiva would also be happy to have their money go
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: to those in need without getting a return. However, if
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: I do decide to receive my money back, I will
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: certainly use those funds to circulate that Kiva site again.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: In other words, loan, that's one of the keys I
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: think of feeling preachy now for writing you an email
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: on the basis that I just loaned what amounts to
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: a small amount of cash. But I just want to
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: thank you guys for sharing that site and allowing people
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: like myself to make their lives better. That's from Jordan's
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: bachelor who claims to be a US defector. You can
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: move from the US. I can't remember where he lives now,
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: just be cheeky. So we started this Kiva team a
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: long time ago and um, right now we have over
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: nine thousand members and we are almost at four million bucks. Dude,
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: three million, nine thousand, three hundred twenty five dollars loaned.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: That is a hundred and forty three thousand, one d
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: fifty five loans average of sixteen loans per member. And
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: just to give you an idea of how it works,
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: you donate money, you will most likely get paid back,
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: and then they say you can check out and take
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: your money back, or you can roll that into another loan. Uh.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: I started off with a couple of hundred bucks way
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: back when, and that now, just because I keep reinvesting,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: it has grown to one thousand, one twenty five dollars
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: forty seven loans and my default rate is only four nice. Yeah,
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: the default rate is not bad at all. It's not bad.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: So you can take a little bit. You can take
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: twenty five dollars even and keep reloaning that and that
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: in a few years, five or six years can be
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: you know, hundreds and hundreds of dollars relan to people.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: Um really makes a big difference. We did our research
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: on Kiva. They're not perfect, but we think they do
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: a really good job. And um, you know, we have
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: the stuff you should Know team, so we would love
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: to see people sign up for it, push us over
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: that four million dollar mark, which is crazy. And yeah,
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: yeah we're not exclusive, We're not snobs, and neither anybody
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: on our team. It's a very very welcoming the people
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: who are really active on the board. UM there lad
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: unofficially but de facto by Glenn and Sonya who have
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: emerged to be these these great team leaders that like
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: just keep everybody going and motivated and moderate and make
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: sure everybody's on the up and up. And if they
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: send us emails and reminders about how we're doing, hats
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: off to those guys. Thank you guys for that. Yeah,
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: so civa dot org I think I said dot com earlier, Um,
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: and just go to the team section search stuff you
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: should know, join the team for somebody's way. You can
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: you can give to people that are doing things that
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: are close to your heart, or maybe countries you've been
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: to that you want to help support. Uh, you can
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: give the women or men and it's just really you
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: can really dial down and give very specifically how you
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: want to give. Yeah, and uh, if you want to
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: know even more about it, you can go listen to
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: our episode micro Lending and you can. We've written a
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: couple of blog posts on it, and I think there's
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: someone Huff Poe even that they published a ours, but um,
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: I think like why we land on Kiva, and it
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: really addresses a lot of stuff that people have raised
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: and we've said, hey man, it's still totally worth it. Yeah,
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: good check it out, all right. Uh. If you want
• 1:12:13
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• 1:12:15
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• 1:12:20
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• 1:12:23
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• 1:12:26
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• 1:12:42
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