Transcript

SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: A Partial History of Action Figures | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW

From Stuff You Should Know · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 1 h 14 min · 14,021 words · 330 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: A Partial History of Action Figures | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW", an episode of Stuff You Should Know published December 15, 2025 (1 h 14 min, about 14,021 words). It mentions 94 people, works and ideas, including action figures, Kenner, Stan Weston, kung fu grip, Star Wars line.

What this episode is about

This content explores the rich history of action figures, highlighting key developments and cultural significance while inviting listeners to engage in a playful debate over the merits of different types, such as the classic G.I. Joe versus smaller figures. The discussion weaves together nostalgia, toy evolution, and connections to broader pop culture, including a nod to iconic toys like Barbie.

Key takeaways

  • Barbie's wardrobe sparked envy, inspiring Stan Weston's 'doll for boys'—G.I. Joe—and sidestepped gender norms. Genius!
  • Stan's $100K idea in 1963 equals $782K today—an expensive lesson in missed billions for G.I. Joe's creator.
  • G.I. Joe birthed action figures, proving that a name change from 'doll' to 'action figure' can redefine masculinity.
  • Toy fairs are where lightbulbs ignite fortunes; $100K for a brainstorm—imagine today’s market value on creative sparks.
  • From Barbie to G.I. Joe—genderbending toys echo societal shifts, illustrating play as profound cultural commentary.

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 10:00: action figures, Stan Weston, action Jesus, Jimmy Stamp
  2. – 20:00: action figures, Bruce Wayne, Franco Harris, Montgomery Ward
  3. – 30:00: action figures, Cobra Commander, Kenner, Action Man
  4. – 40:00: deregulation, Kenner, Star Wars line, Transformers
  5. – 50:00: action figures, armature, Chewbacca, Kenner
  6. – 1:00:00: rotational molding, action figures, Liberty Mutual
  7. – 1:10:00: action figures, Eric Fensler, G.I. Joe PSAs, Kenner
  8. – 1:13:34: HowStuffWorks, HuffPo

Notable quotes from "SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: A Partial History of Action Figures | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW"

  • This one's pretty good if I remember correctly. It is a partial history of action figures. We all love action figures. And if I'm not mistaken, we might argue once again about…
    about action figures · at
  • Yeah. Finally, this dude named Stan Weston who actually knew Miss Handler and he was a in the toy racket and I guess I shouldn't call it a racket.
    about Stan Weston · at
  • Parts and he was articulated so he could lift up his hand and karate chop you although he didn't get the kung fu grip until the mid70s.
    about kung fu grip · at
  • And allowed Kenner to pick it up.
    about Kenner · at
  • Blowtorrch or Barbecue or Dusty. and then the bad guys had their own names too, like Cobra Commander, Serpenttor, Tomax or Zamot. or the whole gang, right?
    about Cobra Commander · at
  • G.I. Joe, Transformers, Smurfs, Bears, Care Bears, Rainbow Brite, Strawberry Shortcake.
    about Transformers · at
  • Yeah. And not only that, the what happened was along with this deregulation, the toy companies and the cartoons, they actually they kind of got in bed together and they said, You know what? If you show if you schedule as a broadcaster.
    about deregulation · at
  • So there's different kinds. I looked up one kind called rotational molding.
    about rotational molding · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Stan Weston — Person · 3 mentions · first at
  • Franco Harris — Person · 2 mentions · first at
    It was so kung fu, right? But he still looked like Franco Harris.
  • Ruth Handler — Person · 1 mention · first at
    She actually inspired action figures like basically directly when Mattel I think it was Ruth Handler who invented the Barbie doll, right?
  • Jimmy Stamp — Person · 1 mention · first at
  • Eric Fensler — Person · 1 mention · first at
    And that's that's it, man. That's all I got. Go watch the G.I. Joe PSAs by Eric Fensler again. They still hold up.
  • Aaron Glenn — Person · 1 mention
  • Don Levine — Person · 1 mention
  • John Hodgman — Person · 1 mention
  • Jordan Bachelor — Person · 1 mention
  • Patrick Bateman — Person · 1 mention
  • Sonia — Person · 1 mention

Books & papers

Companies & orgs

  • Kenner — Company · 6 mentions · first at
  • Montgomery Ward — Company · 2 mentions · first at
    Or what was the other weird one? The store. Oh, they had an exclusive with the Montgomery Ward store. So, it wasn't like it wasn't a store, but at the at Montgomery Ward only.
  • Federal Trade Commission — Company · 2 mentions · first at
    Lot of concern about kids and advertising about advertising to children. So the FTC the Federal Trade Commission got a task force together and they said should we ban or…
  • smithsonian.com — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Called? now you know the history of G.I. Joe and knowing it is half the battle from smithsonian.com.
  • Mego Museum — Company · 1 mention · first at
    To know what we're talking about, also go check out the MIGO Museum online, MEGO Museum, and it's just basically like this wonderful online museum dedicated to everything that…
  • Takara — Company · 1 mention · first at
    And eventually they licensed it to Japan to a company called Takara. they went on to create some action figures based on G.I. Joe and then due to the oil crisis in the early '7s they started developing smaller versions.
  • Liberty Mutual — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Three Toyota Priuses just right. Liberty Mutual is going to be like this Josh Clark, we got to work him into our actuarial tables.
  • HuffPo — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Episode on microl lending and you can I we've written a couple blog posts on it and I think there's something on Huffpo even that they published of ours, but it's I think like why we land on KA.
  • HowStuffWorks — Company · 1 mention · first at
  • Kiva — Company · 1 mention
  • MIGO — Company · 1 mention
  • yojoe.com — Company · 1 mention

Products & tech

  • kung fu grip — Product · 3 mentions · first at
  • Star Wars line — Product · 3 mentions · first at
    Out loud, like yes, that's a ridiculously dumb story. Yeah. them actually turning down the Star Wars line is it's even better. It's even sweeter.
  • Cobra Commander — Product · 3 mentions · first at
  • Transformers — Product · 3 mentions · first at
  • Bruce Wayne — Product · 2 mentions · first at
    And before you knew it, they were pumping out things like Bruce Wayne's foundation building.
  • action Jesus — Product · 1 mention · first at
    The action figure craze. Every action figure that's out there from like action Jesus to the Marvel superhero action figures to every action figure came from G.I. Joe. And if…
  • Defenders — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Compete with the knockoffs and dilute their market share. Yeah. was called Defenders and they were just these really cheaplymade versions of the big G.I. Joe's.
  • jetpack — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Of other things that you could collect and buy. I had the I had the jetpack, which nice you would attach to a string to simulate jetpacking and send flying like between two trees.
  • Seawolf — Product · 1 mention · first at
    And then I had the submarine, the it was like a Seawolf. It was really cool. How big was the submarine if you were playing with 12-in GI Joes?
  • Iron Man — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Selling them. So, they got a hold of licenses for Spider-Man and the Hulk and Batman and Wonder Woman and Iron Man and Captain America.
  • Wonder Woman — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Selling them. So, they got a hold of licenses for Spider-Man and the Hulk and Batman and Wonder Woman and Iron Man and Captain America.
  • Captain America — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Licenses for Spider-Man and the Hulk and Batman and Wonder Woman and Iron Man and Captain America.
  • Batgirl — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Like the Joker and do you think they would buy side characters like Robin and Batgirl and other villains like the Riddler and things like the Batmobile and the Batcave playset?
  • Batmobile — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Would buy side characters like Robin and Batgirl and other villains like the Riddler and things like the Batmobile and the Batcave playset?
  • Riddler — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Would buy side characters like Robin and Batgirl and other villains like the Riddler and things like the Batmobile and the Batcave playset?
  • Batcave playset — Product · 1 mention · first at
    And Batgirl and other villains like the Riddler and things like the Batmobile and the Batcave playset?
  • Peter Parker — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Oh, you could buy the nons superhero versions of superheroes like Peter Parker and Bruce Wayne, which is all right, you sit there in your cubicle and that's what you do while the rest of us are saving the world. That's.
  • Planet of the Apes line — Product · 1 mention · first at
    In 1973, they moved into movies with their Planet of the Apes line, which was some plastic primates and then the astronaut that was taller.
  • Action Man — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Out to other countries all over the place. That was a UK company who released it under the name Action Man.
  • Microman — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Started developing smaller versions. so at 3 and 3/4 in they developed Microman released him in 1974 and that kind of led to this new thing which was smaller dudes and kids didn't care.
  • Barbecue — Product · 1 mention · first at
    And it wasn't Rocky or Rocky. It was things like Duke or Shipwreck or Blowtorrch or Barbecue or Dusty. and then the bad guys had their own names too, like Cobra Commander, Serpenttor, Tomax or Zamot. or the whole gang, right?
  • Smurf cereal — Product · 1 mention · first at
    My brain hasn't made that switch, but man, could I go for some Smurf cereal?
  • Serpentor — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Alexander the Great and Napoleon and put them all together and created Serpentor who was actually the new guy who was in charge of Cobra because Cobra Commander was a bit of a coward.
  • Black Hole line — Product · 1 mention · first at
    It up, they quickly realized that we really screwed up. They released like a Buck Rogers line and a Black Hole line. Remember that movie, The Black Hole? I do. From Disney.…
  • Buck Rogers line — Product · 1 mention · first at
    It up, they quickly realized that we really screwed up. They released like a Buck Rogers line and a Black Hole line. Remember that movie, The Black Hole? I do. From Disney.…
  • TIE fighter — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Many of the minor characters. the TIE fighter, the X-wing, the Death Star.
  • Death Star — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Many of the minor characters. the TIE fighter, the X-wing, the Death Star.
  • X-wing — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Many of the minor characters. the TIE fighter, the X-wing, the Death Star.
  • Landspeeder — Product · 1 mention · first at
    The Landspeeder. I also had the big dolls. I don't know if they were 12 inch, but I What is it with you and big dolls?
  • Chewbacca — Product · 1 mention · first at
    The big I think the big Luke and the big Vader and maybe like one other, maybe Chewbacca, but not all of them.
  • Scarface doll — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Like for nostalgia sake, like I literally had a Scarface doll.
  • Thor character — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Right. Which it's pretty sensible. You say, give us a Thor character, you sucker. And, they're talking to an artist, a sculptor when they say that. So, the sculptor gets to work like creating like a basically a.
  • Thor's hammer — Product · 1 mention · first at
    That later. And sometimes like an action figure will come with like a breastplate or boots or Thor's hammer.
  • G.I. Joe PSAs — Product · 1 mention · first at
    And that's that's it, man. That's all I got. Go watch the G.I. Joe PSAs by Eric Fensler again. They still hold up.
  • all-terrain vehicle — Product · 1 mention
  • Blowtorch — Product · 1 mention
  • Cobra — Product · 1 mention
  • Duke — Product · 1 mention
  • Dusty — Product · 1 mention
  • G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero — Product · 1 mention

Concepts & topics

  • action figures — Concept · 23 mentions · first at
  • deregulation — Concept · 3 mentions · first at
  • rotational molding — Concept · 3 mentions · first at
  • copyright infringement — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Were because of errors in production, but those flaws were what allowed them to go after people for copyright infringement.
  • oil crisis — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    They went on to create some action figures based on G.I. Joe and then due to the oil crisis in the early '7s they started developing smaller versions. so at 3 and 3/4 in they…
  • advertising to children — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Story. So in the late 70s there was a lot of concern about kids and advertising about advertising to children. So the FTC the Federal Trade Commission got a task force together…
  • armature — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    They say that. So, the sculptor gets to work like creating like a basically a skeleton. It's called armature out of wire. And the wire is in basically a position. Thor likes to…
  • polyethylene — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    For the main body. they may use something like polyropylene or polyethylene for the various parts or pieces. you got your fabrics if you have capes and things like that.
  • micro-lending — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    That's a good idea. K Iva is a micro lending website that we have been we've had a team now the stuff you should know team for gez how many years six or seven.
  • ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) — Concept · 1 mention
  • child cognitive inability to understand persuasive intent — Concept · 1 mention
  • collectibles market / aftermarket — Concept · 1 mention
  • licensing (intellectual property) — Concept · 1 mention
  • lobbying — Concept · 1 mention
  • polypropylene — Concept · 1 mention

Sponsors

Full transcript with timestamps

Howdy everybody. I hope everyone is having a loving and warm December with your friends and family. I'm here to introduce a a classic episode for our 12 Days of Christmas toys playlist. And uh this one's pretty good if I remember correctly. It is a partial history of action figures. We all love action figures. And if I'm not mistaken, we might argue once again about the superiority of the tall full-size GI Joe's that I grew up with. the little action figures that Josh grew up with. Let us know who's right. Thanks everybody. Hope you love it.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from how stuffuffs.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry's right there to my immediate right and that makes this stuff you should know the podcast. the podcasts.

That's right. I'm excited about this particular podcast, Chuck, which you put together this episode, I should say.

Well, do you want to go ahead and announce the title for the people that maybe didn't read it?

It is uh Well, you you you're going to select the title. What's the title? Oh, jeez. I don't know. um everything you ever wanted to know about act stuff about action figures that you may already know and some stuff that may delight you.

Well, that's a working title, huh? Yeah. Yeah. But we're talking about action figures. That's the point of of what I think that exercise just was.

Yeah. I was going to say everything you wanted to know, but this I mean we could do there. I'm sure there are entire podcasts on action figures

for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And if you do if you have a podcast on action figures, write in, let us know. We'll we'll tweet it out for the people whose boat this floated.

And this this one definitely follows in the vein of um the Barbie episode, which I have to say is one of my perennial favorites. I love the Barbie episode.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And Barbie actually makes an appearance in this one. Do you like to play with dolls?

Uh I like to play with action figures. I play with Barbies. I had older sisters, so like I was I played with Barbies whether I wanted to or not, so I made the most of it.

Yeah. But I don't remember my sister having Barbies, but surely she did, right?

Yeah. She was a girl in America from the 60s on. Yes, she had a Barbie. Oh, no. My sister grew up in the Soviet Union.

Oh, well, there you go. She had um a Martina. There probably was a Martina. But I mean, that was a pretty good episode. And this one's kind of similar. It's It's got it all. And like I said, Barbie kind of pops up in the beginning. She actually inspired action figures um like basically directly when when Mattel I think it was Ruth Handler who invented the Barbie doll, right?

Yes. And when she when she and Mattel released it, it was just a huge enormous hit. And one of the big reasons Barbie was number one such a hit and number two so appealing to toy companies was that when you bought a Barbie, your buying experience wasn't over. There were always like more clothes and shoes and like my sister had the pool that you could hang out with and it had like a shower that actually worked and there's just a ton of extra stuff to buy. And so when you bought a Barbie, you wanted all the other stuff, too. And toy companies wanted to figure out how to do that with boys toys, but they just couldn't quite figure it out because no one had ever come up with a doll for boys. And that's kind of what it required. It was coming up with a doll for boys. And no one had cracked that nut.

But Barbie made the whole thing all the more appealing, I guess. Yeah. Finally, this dude named uh Stan Weston who actually knew Miss Handler

and uh he was a in the toy racket and um I guess I shouldn't call it a racket. It's a bit of a racket.

It's a bit of a wrecket. So he said like you were talking about like you know there's tons of money to be made here. uh he was a a military history buff

and so he had this, you know, the light bulb went off over his head and he says, "What if we could come up with a soldier doll or perhaps even a series of soldier dolls?" Uh and maybe not call them dolls. Actually,

that's a big one. He didn't he didn't come up with the the name. Uh to be fair, his uh boss at Hasbro uh VP Don Lavine or Levine uh in 1963, he was pitched this idea and he went nuts over it and he's the one that said, "Maybe we should call them action figures."

Right. Yeah. Stan Weston approached um uh Don Yeah. Don Lavine at like that toy fair and said, "I got a great idea." And apparently he gave him a $100,000 just for the idea. And then he he since he worked with Hasbro, he's like, "Guys, I've I've got a good idea here."

So that roughly translates into about $782,000 in today money, which is good dough for an idea. But of course,

anytime you're the schmuck that comes up with the idea that you sell for even 782 grand and it goes on

to be like hundreds of millions of dollar business, you probably always kind of feel like, uh, I got taken for a ride.

Yeah, a little bit. I'm sure Stan Weston was like, I'll have millions of good ideas like these that I can sell for $780,000 a piece. I'm sure

he may have. Yeah. I don't know. Certainly not one like GI Joe, right? Well, that's what we've been talking about. We've talked about G.I. Joe a lot on this show, so uh it feels appropriate that we sort of uh go down that rabbit hole if we're going to be talking about action figures.

Well, so well, yeah, because G.I. Joe is the one that started literally started the action figure craze. Every action figure that's out there from like um action Jesus to um to the Marvel superhero action figures to every action figure came from G.I. Joe. And if you want to get feminist about it, every action figure, including G.I. Joe, ultimately came from Barbie.

Yeah, it's a good way to look at it. Yeah. So, uh, all right. Here's the deal that I never knew. G.I. Joe, uh, debuted in 1964 before Christmas. It's almost as if they had planned that. Uh, the original, I knew all this stuff. The original was 12 in and had 21 moving parts. And the thing I did not know, uh, was that G.I. Joe was the collective name of all four of these armed forces dolls.

You didn't know that? I thought the guy was Joe. No, the the for my era, the guy the main guy was Duke and for your era, the main guy was Rocky.

Well, it depends on which one you had. Okay. So, there was there was Rocky was the army and the Marines. Skip. Skip was the Navy guy and Ace was the Air Force guy, the fighter pilot.

Right. So they they ran out of names after name three and back circle back to Rocky.

They ran out of names and they all were identical except for their clothing. Yeah.

As far as I know. Right. Didn't Wasn't their head different? Oh, was it the same? Was it the same face for each one? It was literally just their clothes were different.

You know, I don't know. I I'm going for my own memory, which is that they were all the same dude and they were all Frank O'Haris.

Well, no. Well, they came up with an African-American one at one point in like the late60s, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. They changed with the times, but to my recollection, those original dudes, and maybe I got in on the second wave. Maybe the original 60s ones were different, but I only knew Frank Harris.

I got you. So, maybe I just had Rocky, maybe. So, Rocky or Rocky? Which one? Yeah, I had Rocky, not Rocky.

So, um, they they come out with this this toy and it's the first one of the big differences with G.I. Joe because there were toy soldiers before, but did you ever have those like little plastic ones, the little plastic green men? You dump them out of the bucket and one had a bazooka and he was always the best one. Yeah. And but but they were on like little molded plastic stands and you you couldn't do anything with them except slide them around or whatever. Those have been around forever.

Well, you could do a lot more with them if you had imagination. And a lighter and a can of hairspray.

Actually was delighted. It was Toy Story, right? Where they had those those guys come to life,

right? Uh that was like really really cool to me when I saw that on screen. Uh these cuz you you know, like you said, you could never move them. So to see those little dudes actually come to life was pretty pretty awesome.

You were like, "Yeah, I've been dreaming of this day." I kind of was. Thank you, DreamWorks.

Oh, that's where they got the name. Was it DreamWorks or was that uh Pixar? It was Pixar, right? Probably

I got it wrong. That's all right. It's 100% Pixar. We're still going to get emails anyway, even though we just corrected.

They're They're all working dreams. They are. So, um, I read this great article called, uh, oh jeez, what was it called? Uh, now you now you know the history of G.I. Joe and knowing it is half the battle from smithsonian.com.

Written by Jimmy Stamp. Was that his name? Mhm. The stamper. The stampster. So, um, I didn't realize this, but uh, you can't you can't copyright a a a figure like a human figure. So that was sort of an issue when people started to do knockoffs of G.I. Joe. But apparently early on in the process, G.I. Joe was well known for that scar on his face. And I didn't even know this. He had an inverted thumbnail. And both of these were because of uh errors in production, but those flaws were what allowed them to go after people uh for copyright infringement.

That's right. That's crazy. Yeah, it is. Um and yeah, I guess they were they were natural. like they didn't plan them or anything like that, but they just were happy accidents, I guess.

Yeah. Um and actually, I've read also elsewhere, Chuck, that um G.I. Joe was so successful, as we'll see, that by the 700s um there were so many knockoffs that Hasbro released its own line of knockoffs of cheaplymade G.I. Joe's to compete with the knockoffs and and dilute their market share. Yeah. was called Defenders and they were just these really cheaplymade versions of the big G.I. Joe's.

Well, it it was a huge hit though. Um, it says here that they accounted for almost 66% of Hasbro's profits in 1964.

That's insane. That is nuts. And that was the year it came out, right? Yeah. Like right out of the gate, it was a really big deal.

And again, one of the reasons why was because you had to soldiers before, but this guy could move. He had I think like 20 28 or 29 moving parts um or different parts and he was articulated so he could lift up his hand and karate chop you although he didn't get the kung fu grip until the the mid70s.

Yeah, that's where I came in. Okay. Uh so he had kung fu grip when you knew G.I. Joe.

Uh yeah, very much. Gotcha. It was so kung fu, right? But he still looked like Franco Harris.

But he still looked like Frank Harris. Yes. And then the other big innovation was the was not an innovation at all. It was following the Barbie model, but for boys it was. It was that the this this doll, which no one called a doll. In fact, um I believe Hasbro wouldn't do business with you if you were going to call it a doll as a retailer. They would just be like, "Well, you don't get any GI Joes. This is an action figure."

That's right. But on the package itself, and I don't know if you remember this or not, um I don't because I wasn't born yet, but there were pictures of the other dudes and the other outfits you could get. So when you bought one GI Joe, you as a kid were made immediately aware, whoa, whoa, whoa, there's other G.I. Joe's out there, and I want to collect them all. Some little kid came up with that collect them all phrase just in his little brain.

Yeah. some little kid named middle-aged marketing executive Don Lavine. So, uh not only that, but they had, you know, like Barbie, they had all manner of um other uh things that you could collect and buy. Um I had the I had the jetpack, which um

nice you would attach to a string to simulate jetpacking and send flying like between two trees.

Gotcha. Uh and then I had the uh the submarine, the it was like a Seawolf. It was really cool. How big was the submarine if you were playing with 12-in GI Joes?

It was um It take up the size of like the family room. It was Well, this is not going to mean anything to anyone at home, but it's about the size of this lamp on our desk.

Oh. Oh, so it was like a oneman sub. Yeah, I feel like it was I can't remember exactly. I feel I feel like it was about the size of a little smaller than a bowling ball.

Mhm. How's that? Like a child's bowling ball. Yeah, cuz he had to sit in it. You're right. and he was a big dude even though you would, you know, in a seated position he was smaller. Uh and then I had the uh sixheel or eight-wheel, I can't remember, uh allterrain vehicle.

Well, that's nice. And that's about all that we were uh that's about all we could afford.

That's But that was probably quite an outlay from your parents. It was great. And that was over time, you know?

Right. Several Christmases, right? Yeah. And this was, like I said, I came in on the 70s, but um in the 60s they actually uh GI Joe did not do very well because of the Vietnam War.

Yeah. Um and it was actually kind of I think it was actually went away from production for a while.

Yeah, it did. They just they basically retired them. I think the Vietnam War uh hurt sales so they took him out a little bit and then they re-released him again um and kind of rebranded him I think too as rather rather than a soldier they rebranded him as an adventurer right so this this machete is not for cutting off the hands of a a sherpa who leads us into danger it's for um you know cutting through vegetation on a jungle adventure to save sherpas who were for some reason live in the jungle now.

Yeah. And they they like you said they called him adventurer or the uh naval officer was uh called an aquinaut. And I very much remember that being the deal. Like I didn't think of him as a soldier. I thought of him as you know well I thought his name was Joe because I guess I was a dumb little kid. But I guess Rocky the G.I. Joe adventure guy

right. Franco Harris right? And G.I. Joe. Actually, that was taken from a 1945 movie called The Story of G.I. Joe. That's where that came from.

Did you ever see that? No. No. Have you? No. Oh, okay. I was just curious. So, Chuck G.I. Joe is uh he starts to do kind of poorly because of Vietnam. They take him out, they re-release him. Um and he doesn't do very well when they bring him back out even though he's an adventurer, right? Um, so GI Joe left. They stopped making GI Joes for a while and it it created it left this big vacuum that was just waiting to be filled and it was filled by a little company named MIGO. And we'll talk about MIGO after this break. How about that?

Sounds good. S Y S K SK. All right. Is it MIGO or mego? I've been saying mego in my head just cuz I'm a dumb American.

No. Well, I think MEGO is probably how they say it in the UK. Oh, was that where it came from?

No, they're American. I say MIGO to be honest. I have no idea. I I'm sure there is a right way that Tommy Migo would love to tell you about, but

Uhhuh. or Tommy Mgo. Uh but yeah, I I've said I've said MIGO in my head, but I don't know which one's correct to tell you the truth.

All right. Well, we'll just proceed thusly. I'll say mego. You say MIGO. Let's just call the whole thing off.

So, go ahead with me go. So, so um GI Joe's gone, but again, this was you said it accounted for like 66% of Hasbro's sales just in the first year. And he was a hit year after year after year for many years, right? Um and even when they brought him back, sales were terrible compared to the initial stuff, but they were still making money off of him, right? Um, so this first the world's first action figure made a huge impact. And when the world's first action figure wasn't around anymore, well, there was a void that was to be filled. And this company called MIGO decided in I think 1971 or 1972 that a pretty good place to start would be releasing a line of action figures that were based on superheroes.

and they released a um a line of superheroes called the world's greatest superheroes action figures in I think 1972 and it was a pretty big hit like right off the bat.

Yeah. And what they did was uh they were super smart and kind of had a lot of vision and said I think where it's at is not necessarily creating characters from whole cloth that kids don't know of but licensing very famous characters and selling them. So, they got a hold of licenses for uh Spider-Man and the Hulk and Batman and Wonder Woman and Iron Man and Captain America.

Yeah. And not just Yeah. If you'll notice, it's DC and Marvel characters in the same line. Like, that's unheard of today.

They did not discriminate back then. No, they did. It was a wonderful time. Uh and not only that, but they said, you know, we're making money hand over fist selling these action figures. Um, what if do you think kids would actually buy villains like the Joker and uh do you think they would buy side characters like uh Robin and Batgirl and other villains like the Riddler and things like the Batmobile and the Batcave playset?

And before you knew it, they were pumping out things like uh Bruce Wayne's uh foundation building.

I know that was a real thing. Or what was the other weird one? The store. Oh, they had they had an exclusive with the Montgomery Ward store. So, it wasn't like it wasn't a store, but at the at Montgomery Ward only.

Oh, you could buy the nons superhero versions of superheroes like Peter Parker and Bruce Wayne, which is like, all right, you you sit there in your cubicle and that's what you do while the rest of us are saving the world. That's what you do with that action figure.

All right, that makes much more sense. I thought they had a Montgomery Ward playet.

That's what I thought at first, too. And like Bruce Wayne worked there or something, which of course he didn't even work. I don't know what I'm thinking.

No, he just gave orders. They were making tons and tons of money. Um, in 1973, they moved into movies with their Planet of the Apes line, which was uh some plastic uh primates and then the astronaut that was taller.

And that was a huge hit. Yeah. And the other thing about MIGO too um was that all action figures had been like 12 inch tall 12 inches tall up to that point and MIGO's line was 8 in. So action figures are starting to shrink a little bit now.

That's right. Uh and the one uh the one I actually had even though I have no idea why I had the Star Trek um Enterprise bridge.

Oh yeah. And then I guess I mean I know I had Spock and Kirk and a couple of others, but you know I'm well known to not have ever seen any Star Trek at all except for maybe one movie or something. So I have no idea why I got that.

Oh, I mean if it was a cool action figure like I had some weird I had a weird wizard action figure when I was a kid and

But you're into weird wizards. You still are. Yeah. Well, I am now as a grown-up. I wasn't as a kid. I was like, "What is this thing?"

Gotcha. Some weird wizard. Well, I don't know why I had it, but the Star Trek uh their collection, that was another big hit. So, they were just they literally kind of uh I mean, G.I. Joe and Barbie of course kind of spawned this thing, but it seems like Mega really took it to another level.

Yeah. Yeah. Um they kind of uh they kind of Yeah. action figures were cool and GI Joe had really started something but MIGO um yeah they they just they established it forever permanently and they also showed other companies too like hey man go get yourself a license and stick to it like get creative like with the Star Trek license that they had clearly the toy designers had actually watched Star Trek episodes because one of the playsets was from um one of the sets from an episode of Star Trek, the Apple episode. Um, like you don't necessarily see that. You didn't see that before with action figures. It was more like, hey, you you you know this guy, just buy him. This is like you're into Star Trek and so are we and here is some awesome playsets based on your love of Star Trek. So, MIGO definitely broke the mold in that in that sense as well. Um, but they also like they were it for action figures.

like nobody could compete with MIGO. Um they would buy stuff from Japan and then turn them into new stuff here. Um there was just no competing with MIGO in the US even though a lot of people were. But they um they also dropped the ball in the most spectacular fashion anyone could ever drop the ball in the action figure world.

Yeah. Like they it's it's almost it's almost an elegant end of the story because it literally makes you cringe when you read it. And there's two different versions, but both of them are like, "Oh, man."

Yeah, I think there's really only one version. I literally could not find a single source other than this one guy's blog

who claimed the other version. But um what we're talking about, and if you know action figures, you probably see this coming. Uh they declined the Star Wars brand.

Yeah. And allowed Kenner to pick it up. Yes. So how though? Which story is true? Well, the story that I think is true is that they didn't want to invest and they said that, you know, we're not going to throw our money at every little thing that comes along. We want to be a little more discerning.

Yeah, that one hurts. That hurts more than the other story. The other version was that like um the people who could sign the contracts were out of town when George Lucas came by to offer him the franchise. And now that I'm saying it out loud, like yes, that's a ridiculously dumb story. Yeah. them actually turning down the Star Wars line is it's even better. It's even sweeter. Like, man, what were you guys thinking? But, I mean, there there's lots of stories like that. Just somebody lacking foresight.

Yeah. The um the other story is completed by the supposedly they weren't there. So, Lucas went to another uh toy went to Kenner who was in the same building,

right, in New York. And I guess the people that could sign their name were there,

right? Uh, but I can't find that anywhere else except for this one blog where this guy says it's true. But I would love to hear from someone if they if they have inside like verifiable knowledge of that.

Oh, for sure. George Lucas, just let us know. And I mean verifiable, not that's what I heard,

right? I read the same blog. Exactly. I knew your nerd voice is going to come up in this episode.

Well, sure. Of course. Um, so if you if you have a love of MIGO or you just want to know what we're talking about, also go check out um the MIGO Museum online, MEGO Museum, and it's just basically like this wonderful online museum dedicated to everything that MIGO ever put out. It's pretty cool. I I wasn't even around when these things came out and they still somehow make me nostalgic, you know.

Exactly. All right. So, uh, let's jump back a little bit to 1966. And, um, we're going to explain how they went from 8 in, even though they were still making the 8 in after 66, how they eventually got down to the 3 and 3/4 in. Uh, G.I. Joe was licensing their stuff out to other countries all over the place. That was a UK company uh, who released it under the name Action Man. Uh, and eventually they licensed it to Japan to a company called Takara. Uh they went on to create some action figures based on G.I. Joe and then due to the oil crisis in the early '7s they started developing smaller versions. Uh so at 3 and 3/4 in they developed Microman uh released him in 1974 and that kind of led to this new thing which was smaller dudes

and kids didn't care. No. No. Not only did we not care. So now we're starting to enter my wheelhouse. Not only do we not care, these smaller ones are vastly superior to the older ones.

Oh, you think? Yeah. So we agree on a lot of stuff, but I would say this is the the the one thing that divides us more frequently than anything else is whether the original big GI Joes or the second wave small G.I Jos's are better.

All right. Let me ask you, sir. Have you ever held in your hands and played with a 12-in GI Joe with a kung fu grip? I would uh would not touch one.

So So you can't even say then. Have you played with the small one? Yeah, man. I had tons of small action figures.

Oh, okay. All right. Oh, did you have the Star Wars stuff? Oh, yeah. So, you think the big one's superior?

Well, yeah. It's 12 in. It's It articulates 19 different ways. I like the small ones. I always will. Even after playing with the big one, which I have not and never will. I just know that the small one is is vastly superior. I don't know if it's because I am nostalgic for the small ones and the old ones seem weird and dusty and moldy or something like that, but the small ones seem better to me. All right. At the very least, you have to you have to admit the wave of G.I. Joe's that were released when I started playing with them, just the line itself was better regardless of the size of them. Right.

Well, let's go ahead and talk about that because G.I. Joe changed a lot um once it became a cartoon and we're going to talk about some really cool political stuff that had no idea went into this but um GI Joe became a cartoon series. This was in the early 80s. So this is when I had kind of quit playing with action figures for the most part.

Okay. Cuz 83 84 I was like 13 and you know I was moving on to you know check out this mustache.

Yeah. I was I was skateboarding by that point and I thought I was like super cool skateboarder.

Yeah. Uh maybe I still played a little bit. So G your only your neighborhood best friend knew about it. Your school friends did.

Exactly. Uh so GI Joe was a cartoon. Uh then they for the first time basically it became a a commando team, an anti-terrorist commando team that had all kinds of characters and they had finally had a common enemy which was of course Cobra.

Yes. led by Cobra Commander. And this was your right in your wheelhouse correct?

Yeah. So, in 1983, I was like seven. So, yeah, this was I was really just primed and ready. I was just Let's go, Joe.

And plus, also the other thing too that I had that you didn't have was the cartoon that not only like blew up the backstories because each this new wave of G.I. Joe, when they released it, um they each character now had its own name and it wasn't Rocky or Rocky. It was things like um Duke or Shipwreck or Blowtorrch or Barbecue or Dusty. Um and then the bad guys had their own their own names too, like Cobra Commander, Serpenttor, Tomax or Zamot. Um or uh the whole the whole gang, right?

Tois. Who was that? Tomas and Zamott. They were evil twins who were they were basically they were like um if if Cobra Commander had hired uh Patrick Baitman.

Oh yeah. And then cloned him, a mere version of him, it would be Tomax and Zamat.

Interesting. I know none of this stuff. Right. Right. Okay. So I do because I grew up with it. But but I also had it pounded into my head every day after school watching the G.I. cartoon. And that was the huge innovation that really just created this uh this other world for kids like me to just lose yourself in with the action figures cuz now you didn't even need to use your imagination. You could just be like, "Oh, I saw this on the G.I. Joe cartoon today, so let's act that out."

Right. And none of this would have ever happened had it not been for Ronald Reagan.

That's right. And that sounds weird. Uh but here's the story. So in the late 70s there was a lot of concern about kids uh and advertising about advertising to children. So the FTC the Federal Trade Commission uh got a task force together and they said should we ban or regulate this marketing to children? Uh they put together uh 6,000 pages of testimony from 60 oh the oral testimony 60,000 pages of expert testimony

uh from all these experts on child psychology and health and nutrition because it had to do with you know food and sugary candies and stuff like that too. And the conclusion across the board was that young children cannot they are cognitively unable to understand the the intent of selling ads. They can't distinguish that from reality,

right? Like if you dress up a cartoon as an ad, the kid is he just thinks it's a cartoon or she does.

Exactly. Or if the ad is a cartoon, right? Rather than the kid doesn't know. They just think I'm still watching cartoons on on my TV.

My brain hasn't made that switch, but man, could I go for some Smurf cereal? Exactly. So, it was a big deal at the time. So there were all these recommendations basically on how to regulate and restrict advertising that were that they basically said was unfair and deceptive to kids.

Mhm. Uh for older kids, they said they can tell the difference, but maybe we should have uh warnings on the ads and disclosures saying that this is a commercial message,

right? And so what happens when you do this in America? The private sector said, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I want to be able to sell as much sugary garbage to kids as I want. You can't restrict uh

free trade. Free trade in business. Yep. And so we're going to raise uh a record at the time, $16 million to lobby against this

and well and they were helped out in no small part by getting the right guy into the White House.

Right. So in 1980, one of the first things Ronald Reagan did was he appointed a new chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. And this uh this was a move that basically said, you know what, there's going to be no regulation whatsoever. Got to leave these markets free. You can do whatever you want. Uh and that is basically how all of these cartoons were born,

right? G.I. Joe, Transformers, Smurfs, Bears, Care Bears, Rainbow Brite, Strawberry Shortcake.

Yeah. You name it. It it basically became marketing and selling things and cartoons became one and the same finally.

Yeah. And one of the other things that definitely helped G.I. Joe too was the um I don't know if it was formal or informal, but there was basically a ban on um on warlike cartoons and warlike toys.

Yes. That was brought back under the same ease of restrictions by the FTC. Um, so that I think the percentage of warlike toys that was sold in the early 80s went up like 350% from one year over the other. Yeah. From like 1983 to 84, I think. Um, whereas before it was like, no, we don't. GI Joe's an adventurer, remember? It's like, no, G.I. Joe's going to cut Cobra's head right off. So, that's in 1980. That's one of the first uh one of the first big things Reagan did when he got into office. Uh, flash forward to 1988 in November. One of the last things he did was he vetoed a new measure because basically they saw what was happening. All of a sudden, kids were being bombarded with war cartoons and uh just terrible sugary packaged food all over the place. Like just the restrictions were were nowhere to be found,

right? So, uh, Congress came back and said, "You know what? This is out of hand. Here's a measure that will uh restrict once again and impose some uh some legislation on this programming aimed at children. uh it passed the house by 328 to78 passed unanimously in the senate and Reagan vetoed it and said uh

basically what one of the things they were trying to do they were trying to limit programming to uh advertising to 10.5 minutes an hour on the weekends and 12 minutes an hour on the weekdays and also provide uh require broadcasters to provide educational andformational programs as a condition of renewing their licenses. So Reagan vetoed that and said, "No way. Uh, we're not going to do that. We're going to keep it as is." Uh, people that were in favor of this went crazy. Basically, they were saying like, "How can you guys say you're the the party of the children, right,

and education and then veto something that is clearly going to help protect our children?"

Yeah, that was messed up, man. I had no idea about that one. Yeah. And not only that, the uh what happened was along with this deregulation, um the toy companies and the cartoons, they actually they kind of got in bed together and they said, "You know what? If you show uh if you schedule as a broadcaster um our cartoons that sell toys, we'll give you a profit on those toys.

If you run these GI Joe cartoons, then we'll give you a little cut of what we're selling." Plus also we'll buy ads on those cartoons or on your network too to sell those those toys when you show these cartoons I imagine you know.

Yeah because I remember watching G.I. Joe Real American Hero the cartoon which I have to say it was created in in large part to sell G.I. Joe. It's true. But it had it it had great story arcs. It had overarching story arcs that went from uh episode to episode. Uh, the individual ones were good. Like the voice acting was good. The animation was pretty good. Same with Transformers, too. Like it was pretty pretty good cartoon. So, at least they were putting time and effort and thought into this. But, uh, yeah, it's pretty despicable marketing to kids in general.

Actually, I read a blog. Um, I'm certainly glad you were a satisfied viewer. Yeah.

But, I read this blog that basically said that um, Man, I wish I could find it. Maybe I'll post this when we release it. that that the deregulation killed the creativity in kil in children's cartoons.

Well, yeah. And that they said that before you know it, there were just like things were knockoffs of one another. They didn't care about I guess I mean, you were a kid, so maybe you didn't realize it, but

I was too stupid to know what was going on. They said that, you know, you can see a clear demarcation line between really good storytelling and then storytelling that was clearly just geared to sell things.

I guess I don't I'm trying to compare like what cartoons were in the 70s and like they were great. They weren't high art though. Again, I'll go back to that hair bear bunch. Well, loved the Hair Bears.

They were drugfueled, but they're Yeah. Yeah, that was a big one, but their I mean, their plots were pretty simple. It was the same plot that you would see on a Yogi Bear cartoon or like a Huckleberry Hound cartoon. Um, Scooby-Doo was interesting and it was pretty cool, but it was basically the same story line every single time. like with with Scooby-Doo. And I'm not trying to argue in favor of corporate America marketing to kids and ruining creativity, but like you don't there weren't any overarching storylines aside from Scooby being crazy for Scooby snacks and Scooby-Doo. And there definitely was in G.I. Joe. like when they went around the world and took the DNA of all of these great these great dictators and conquerors like Alexander the Great and um Napoleon and put them all together and created Serpentor um who was actually the new guy who was in charge of Cobra because Cobra Commander was a bit of a coward.

Uhhuh. Did you not know any of this? How do you not know this stuff? I was I was trying to kiss girls in the roller skating rink at this point and you thought girls were gross still.

It's true. It's true. But uh I I it definitely helped shape me and I I am nostalgic for it in that sense and I am appreciative. But Chuck, I propose

that sooner than later we do an episode on marketing to kids because this whole deregulation story is just fascinating.

Yeah. I mean I had I didn't really know anything about it because I was still a dumb kid when this was going on.

Well, let's do it though. Okay. Agreed. So that was GI Joe Shaped my childhood.

You don't say. just a tad. So, uh, but prior to G.I. Joe, the first 3 and 3/4 inch action figure in the US, as far as I know, was the Star Wars line. And the Star Wars line, again, when MIGO passed it up, they quickly realized that we really screwed up. They released like a Buck Rogers line um and uh a Black Hole line. Remember that movie, The Black Hole? I do. From Disney. It's really creepy even still. Um, but so so they tried to catch up and they ended up going bankrupt in 1983 basically as a result of losing this Star Wars line.

Sad. And so Kenner and so Kenner picked it up, picked up the Star Wars line instead. And they released them and right out of the gate in 1978, which I believe was the first year that they released these things, this 3 and 3/4 inch Star Wars line of action figures. Um, in 1978, 1979, they made a hund00 million each year from selling those. Yeah.

They sold about $40 million units a year. And from 1978 to 1985, which I think was the whole run of the Star Wars lines, the original run with Kenner,

Kenner sold 300 million units. So, if they're selling 40 million a year and making a h 100red million each year from that, they sold 300 million total. So Kenner made some serious bank off of Star Wars.

Yeah. Off of me and my my lawnmowing fund. Yeah. Uh for sure. I had I feel like I had at least doubles of most of the major characters.

Many of the minor characters. Uh the TIE fighter, the X-wing, the Death Star. Oh, you lucky.

The Landspeeder. Um I also had the uh the big dolls. Um, I don't know if they were 12 inch, but I

What is it with you and big dolls? Maybe 10. Man, you they're huggable. Uh, yeah, I had the the the big Luke and the big I think the big Luke and the big Vader and maybe like one other, maybe Chewbacca,

but not all of them. And basically whatever I could either get for my birthday or Christmas or save my allowance to buy,

right, I would get. And I was all in. And I didn't know that these were collectible, of course. I ripped right into them to play to play with them like normal children do.

Sure. Um I didn't put it like in a box on a shelf to try and keep it in mint condition.

But uh that's weird to do though as a kid. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, maybe there were kids doing it. I didn't know any. We all played with them.

Sure. But I mean that was originally the point. I think it wasn't until like much later that it it became evident that you could sell them to people who wish they had them in the package still for a lot of money.

Yeah. And should we should we close later on with the uh some of the more valuable ones?

Yes, for sure. So, that's a tease. Okay, everybody. Should we take a break? Yeah, we should. Was that it about Star Wars, you think?

I don't have anything else really. I mean, there's a gazillion other things we could talk about, I guess, but what more do you need to know besides that they were huge hits?

That's it. All right, we're going to take a break. We're going to come back and talk a little bit about the uh how these things are actually made. S Y L Y S K S K. You should know. All right. So, uh just to put a little bow on the action figure thing before we get into how they're made. Um, you know, Transformers came along was huge throughout the '9s. Then you saw uh Marvel and DC really come on the market. Every movie you could think of had action figures. TV shows started having action figures. Uh, older popular movies started having action figures.

Like for nostalgia sake, like I literally had a Scarface doll. Oh yeah, I've seen that.

A Scarface Alpuccino that I used to have in the office. And did it come with a mound of cocaine?

It did. plastic mount of cocaine. It did. Uh, and now, you know, you can find pretty much any kind of action figure you want from politicians to, uh, older movies and TV shows and

like things you wouldn't even imagine people would like Welcome back Cotter action figures.

Yeah. And I didn't realize this, but apparently companies intentionally will release like a very limited run of some where like they're missing their thumb or like it's mislabeled on the package to make these things um to make them valuable for the aftermarket, the collector's market. Yeah. Which seems really untoward to me.

Like gaming the the collector's market by manufacturers. That's just that seems that's just the opposite of what you're supposed to do.

So that is that verified? That sounds urban legendy to me. Well, it was in one of the articles you sent and I took it the the person who wrote the article sounded like they knew what they were talking about. Really?

But was that the same article from the guy who said that Oh, I don't know that Kenner couldn't sign the contracts because the right people weren't there.

I don't know. Because the the first thing I think of does if they're doing that, then what's to keep them from artificially manufacturing something that's going to be valuable and just keeping a bunch of them themselves?

Well, most companies like money now rather than a little more money later. So, that would probably do it.

Yeah, that's true. You know, all right. So, you want to talk about how these suckers are made?

Yeah. You again, you found some good stuff here when you put this together. Yeah. Yeah, I thought this is pretty interesting. So, it starts with design, right?

Right. Which I mean, it's pretty sensible. You say, uh, give us a Thor character, you sucker. And, um, they're talking to an artist, a sculptor when they say that. So, the sculptor gets to work like creating um like a basically a skeleton. It's called armature out of wire. And the wire is in basically a position. Thor likes to run holding his hammer. So, he'll be kind of like in a crouched running pose. Um, and then they slap some clay around it, maybe bake it a little bit to make it stiff, and then they mold very, very roughly the general body shape and head shape of Thor. Um, and then they kind of start to get to work from there.

Yeah, rough Thornness, right, is what they look for early on. Um, and this, you know, it depends on the action figure. There are all different kinds that have varying levels of uh of movement. And depending on what you're going to end up with is really going to inform the process.

But let's say you're Thor and you want to move your arms, move those big pipes a little bit,

right? Uh they may choose to sculpt the arms separately or maybe the legs separately. Um they almost always do the head separately cuz it's got all these this fine detail and you just want to work on that by itself,

right? And when you're when you're messing with the head, you're just oh, your wrist is like going into the chest that you just finished. And why do I always do this? Now I have to start over.

Pretty much. So they're working with this torso. Perhaps only put him aside. Work on the arms, work on the hands, work on the head, and eventually uh once you've got this head and face like you want it,

um you're going to attach that back on, build a neck, and build some hair. And if it's one that's completely plastic, you're going to do the clothes and everything in the suit. Sometimes you have real cloth though, like in a cape. So, you're going to you're not going to carve that out obviously.

No, no, they'll add that. They'll add that later. And sometimes like an action figure will come with like a a breastplate or boots or Thor's hammer. Maybe they'll they gave Thor kung fu grip, so they'll have to mold that also separately. But then sometimes, and you'll know this already probably as the designer, they're going to be like, "No, we don't want any of that weird cloth that's like a big G.I. Joe, and that just weirds people out. We want it we want it plastic and molded." So, they'll they'll basically carve the uh the clothing out of the original sculpture as well.

Yeah. And this all takes about two weeks on the uh of course it depends on who you're working with, but

Sure. two or three weeks to carve this this dude out to its kind of rawest form.

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

They probably just talked to someone at the company and they say, "How long does it take?" And they said, "About two weeks."

Yeah, that's good enough for me then. All right. If they as long as they spoke to somebody.

All right. So, now you've got your little little dude. And uh you're going to use a plastic resin. When it comes to the actual materials of the thing itself, uh there's something called ABS uh acra acryino.

Wow. I thought I had it. You want me to try it? Sure. I think it's acryo nitrial butadene styrene

ABS. Nice work. Three types of plastic in one. That's right. So that's a harder plastic for the main body. Uh they may use something like polyropylene or polyethylene for the uh various parts or pieces. Uh you got your fabrics if you have capes and things like that.

So weird. Well, no. I mean, even the little small figures had had like the Jawas had capes.

They had cloak not capes, but cloaks. I know. I remember. That weirded me out, too. And I I think finally I understand what it is that I don't like about the large GI Joes. They had fabric clothing and the it was ill-fitting clothing too. Like did you see I don't know if he had it or not but the original GI Joe like some of them came with a raincoat but it didn't look like a raincoat. It looked like he was wearing a sleeping bag that had a drawstring around his face.

You sure it wasn't a sleeping bag? I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be a raincoat but I think that's what it was. It was just creepy, you know. Yeah,

that was all I I guess it's not actually the size. It was the the creepy factor brought on by this

clothing that didn't fit quite right. Like, you know, it was the kind of clothing that you would make for uh the a son who was was a serial killer, but you didn't want to turn him in, so you just keep him locked in the basement and you got to make his own clothing. You have to make clothing for him. This is the kind of clothing you would make him. That's I think what creeps me out about it. Well, you're working through some stuff. So, I'll check in with you at the end. We'll see exactly what it is you hate about the tall

balls. All right. So, uh the manufacturing process, you got to create the mold next. Uh you want a master mold or maybe it might be more than one mold. And uh this requires the most time. Uh they say in this article about twothirds of the whole time is spent making these molds.

Yeah. Which makes sense. And it takes a few months. Again, is that arbitrary? Who knows? Yeah, this guy's like probably just takes a couple months. And then once you once you have the molds and you also have to make a decision when you're making the molds. Do you want to um make the torso and the legs together? Is he going to move his arms? If so, you probably want to do two different molds for the arms. So, there's a pretty decent amount of decision making work that goes into just coming up with what mold you're going to make. And then once you make the molds then yes you have to make the molds you have to operate them then you have to decide what kind of um uh what kind of um what's the word I'm looking for where you actually make the plastic um figure molding which I should have been able to come up with because we were talking about molds at the time.

That's right. So there's different kinds. I looked up uh one kind called rotational molding.

Yeah. I guess that's what Star Wars was going to try at first, but they lost too much detail on the figure. So, they went to um uh I think an injection molding process. But with rotational molding, you've got a mold and it's on this computerized arm and this arm just kind of spins around inside an oven and inside the arm is like powdered plastic resin and I guess it just melts it by kind of slowly spinning it around. I I don't understand what the problem is, but I guess injection molding is far superior.

Yeah, I guess so. I mean, the deal with injection molding, uh, they they pump it into two pieces and then they apply pressure to those two pieces to mold them together while it cools and hardens.

Um, but I think what you get there is, which is why probably they wanted to use the rotational molding, is if you have those little Star Wars guys, or I imagine G.I. Joe, if they were injection molds. Yeah.

If you if you look at their body from the side, it's in two pieces. And sometimes you can see a little seam.

Yeah, that's true. On their head or on their arm or something or probably not on their arm cuz those were separate. But um

yeah, sometimes you could see the seam where the two halves were pressed together. Uh they wanted that smooth look for the uh for the rotational molding that that provides. But um

I guess the detail is the trade-off. So that's the that's the rotational molding. You don't have seams, but you lose fine detail. Yeah. With injection molding, you can get the detail, but you that you can see the seams of where the two sides of the mold came together,

I guess. But man, I mean, how bad could that detail have been? Cuz when you look at those early Star Wars figures, I mean, the detail was not great.

No. You know, like had I been Mark Hamill been like, "This is what you think my face looks like?"

Yeah. Like they I mean, they've gotten way better. Like the stuff they're making today is is amazing,

but it's almost too good. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, there's some amazing stuff out there, but it's that was one of the great things about these, especially the three and three/4er inch guys. They just they just they were they were meant to be played with. They were meant to have imagination bestowed on them and little child's hands. not supposed to sit on your desk at work or something like that and just as adornment like they were meant to be played with and they were

they were subtly downgraded from you know the the stuff that's out today. They were downgraded to an upgrade.

Yes. Like John Hajman is literally screaming right now into his earbuds because we're nostalgic about something that was

sorry John decidedly crappier. Sorry. But it's true though for me. Like I think that they were they were great. Have I told you how I feel about the three and three/4 inch GI Joes?

I know. We should talk about that some more. Uh all right. So you've got this mold now pressed together if it's injection. And then you have to assemble it. Uh if you have the arms separately perhaps or um basically anything else that doesn't come on that original mold, you're going to have to assemble it together. Uh, put all the little finishing details. Maybe the clothing that you hate so much. Um, maybe they're painted with a little more detail that that detail that you hate so much.

And all the things that make a better action figure that you hate so much. It's not that I hate it. It's It's just

I don't know. I'm not quite sure how to put it, but I'm just teasing. Yeah. Yeah.

So, it's I don't hate it. I just really don't like it. Uh the final um the final key to this whole thing is uh packaging and shipping. So uh you think big deal? What's the big deal with the package? But the lot lot of thought goes into the packaging like you were talking about earlier with the the G.I. Joe actually advertising the other dudes on the package,

right? But that classic cardboardbacked uh clear plastic um casing. Mhm. The shell. Um, yeah, the shell that was sort of became the standard and what everyone came to think of is an action figure package.

Yeah. And and man, that was another thing that with the wave of G.I. Joes that I played with that really put a lot of time and effort and thought into the packaging. Um, and that I mean that was definitely part of it that really helped sell the the action figures in a lot a lot of ways.

Yeah. You know, like even though I tore right into it, like I said, I I disregarded the package. Well, with the later GI Joes, there was a card on the back that had like their code name, their specialty, their backstory, and like you clip them out and collect those as well. Like, it was definitely part of it.

I collected the Star Wars trading cards, too. Mhm. It's funny. I went back and got all my old cards not too long ago. And I didn't collect a ton of cards. I thought like, maybe there'll be some, you know,

Ken Griffy rookie card in here worth five grand. And so, foolishly, I I thought I had something of value, which I did not. Yeah.

Um, but I went through and I had some weird cards that I don't even remember collecting.

Like I had Welcome Back Cotter cards. No. Oh, yeah. That's twice that Welcome Back Cotter has made an appearance in this episode. I was not expecting either one.

I like I like the show a lot, but I don't remember buying these cards. I had Jaws, the movie cards.

I had uh lots of Star Wars cards. Um, some weird like I mean I had football cards. I didn't even collect football cards. I didn't think

Yeah. I went through I I did the same thing you did. I got all the boxes of baseball cards from my dad's house and I was like, "What? I didn't Where did I get all these football cards?" Who even collects football cards, you know? It's unoured.

It's weird. But the cool thing about the 70s cards is just the the look when you could like

Yeah. You know, you had to back the camera off so you could fit the afro into the card and all these like great haircuts and hairdos that all these guys had back then.

Yeah, it's pretty great. Why is he holding that fist aloft? Yeah. And then Chuck, after the packaging, it goes to the stores and little kids like us buy it and love it.

That's right. That's the end of the manufacturing process. Wow. What a journey.

Yeah, that was something. We went all the way to China and back. Well, we did. I don't think we pointed that out a lot of times. Uh the molding process is uh in Asia. So that's one reason it takes so long.

Right. So because they put them on slow boats. That's right. So you kind of teased this earlier. Um the uh you found a list of the rarest Star Wars figures.

Yeah. And you know, I looked at other lists and they listed different figures. So, I don't know if that's something that changes a lot.

Mhm. As far as which ones are the most valuable, cuz I literally saw at least two different ones that were described as the holy grail of Star Wars figures.

Yeah. So, you know, there can't be more than one holy grail. No. So, everybody knows that.

I do look forward to hearing from those in the no. But instead of saying these are the most valuable, let's just say we'll talk about some that are pretty rare and fairly valuable. I think that was pretty smart.

So, no one holds us uh our feet to the flame, right? Yakface. I had not heard of Yakface. Had you?

No. So, Yakface was one of um Boba Fett's either guards or mercenaries, but he worked for Boba Fett. Oh, no. No. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Star Wars people, stop stop your email.

He worked for Joba the Hut. He's not the same person. You just caused three car accidents. three Toyota Priuses just

right. Liberty Mutual is going to be like this Josh Clark, we got to work him into our actuarial tables.

Uh yeah, so he was part of the power of the force line. Uh he was cancelled and you'll find here's a common thread here is rarity is what makes something valuable and something can be a garbage figure

and they don't make many of them and then it becomes valuable, right? And I think he wasn't necessarily a garbage figure. He was just released at a time when like Star Wars figure sales in general were waning. So they sent him over to Europe. And this thing says that he was never released in the States. I saw that he was, but it was in for a very brief time and a very limited run. And then they sent him to Europe, I think in 1985. Got where Return of the Jedi had just come out. So they were crazy for anything that had anything to do with Return of the Jedi. America was already like, "Who cares about Return of the Jedi?

We're we're into uh Temple of Doom." Oh, yeah. Which I read an article about that recently. Supposedly, Temple of Doom was so dark because both George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were going through breakups. Wow.

At the time that they were writing and and making it. So, we said, "What could we do here? Why don't Why don't he pull out his heart and eat it?" Right?

That's what I feel like. cuz that's what Tina did. Uh, all right. We quay. Mhm.

So, this is another of Jabba the Hut's guards. Are you sure you didn't get those confused?

I specifically went and looked up Yakface. Okay. And he he works for Jabba the Hut. They even gave Jabba the Hut's full name and I I just remember the Jabba part.

Oh, he had more than that. Yeah. The Hut was he was a member of the Huts, like the race of huts

or the tribe of Huts. So it was Jabba the Hut like you know Chuck the American.

Gotcha. Well, I think I'm on record as being like I'm a big Star Wars fan. Loved them. Saw them many, many times.

Collected the things, but then it ended. I'm not on of the other half that really went down the rabbit hole.

What? Like Oh. Who are still like into it as much as before? Yeah. And even back then like knew things like Jabba the Hut's full name.

Oh. Oh. Oh yeah. Yeah. Like I didn't know. I never knew that stuff and never read the books or anything like that.

Yeah. Um Oh, I did have some of those comics though. I remember that now. I never had the comics. I was aware of the books and there was a lot of books, wouldn't there?

Yeah, they still write them too, I think, don't they? Sure. Hey, if it's a good thing.

Sure. Right. Is that good? I think so. I think we swatch the people who are into the books. All right. So, Weekway is another guard apparently is not super rare, but there is a limited edi uh edition version that is worth more. So, the the carded mint condition Power of the Forest line in the '9s um is worth a little bit more money.

This says $35. That's what it's worth. No, no, no. That's what the normal one's worth.

Oh, okay. The one that has a special freeze frame slide, which I don't know what that is.

Ah, gotcha. That one's worth 10 times that amount according to this guy. All right. I remember the vinyl caped Jawua was always worth a lot of money.

Mhm. Because they came out with a cloth cape. I know. It was creepy. Uh, so I'm going to throw that in there just off the top of my head.

There was also I think a vinyl caped and a cloth caped Imperial Guard. remember the the Emperor's red cloaked guards in I think Return of the Jedi. Maybe Empire Strikes Back.

I don't know. I'm afraid to say anything out loud now. Yeah, I am too. Let's just press stop.

Uh let's skip that next one and go straight to Boba Fett. How does that sound? Okay. Boba Fett very famously um in 1979 there was uh a Boba Fett that actually shot a missile which as every parent knows is a chokeable is the parents worst nightmare

is that is that the term a chokeable a chokeable something you can choke on is that a real like parents term

that's awesome I did not know that yeah supposedly anything smaller than a uh the size of a toilet paper roll cir tube.

What is a chokeable? Smaller than that. Yeah. So, like if you can fit something through a toilet paper tube,

huh, then your kid can choke on it. Gotcha. That's what they say. Who says that?

I don't know. The Today Show. Dumb dumb parenting blogs. No, it makes sense though.

Yeah. Can't fit a a football through that. Can't choke on a football. That's correct.

The system works. You could choke on a tiny football though, I guess. So, chokeable. the uh the the chokable Boba Fett. Um obviously they they said this is a choking hazard. So they scrapped the plans and redesigned it.

And so uh they did eventually release uh the the figure, but it had that and I had this one, not the the one that shot the rocket because they never released that one, right?

I specifically remember being in the same room with one that shot a rocket or You sure it wasn't hacked? Here's the other possible um explanation. Uh I saw it on an ad and I'm confusing reality with television again

because it says here they never release them in stores. I saw that too. But I'm like I swear I saw one of these things. Or maybe we were just playing with it and we're like this thing sucks. If it actually shot the missile, it'd be so much better. And I imagine what that would be like and then accidentally formed a memory. Who knows?

I'm 40 years old now. I can't remember what was going on when I was seven or eight.

Uh, as far as how valuable these things are, if you can get your hands on one. I mean, I've seen things all over the place. One was sold for $18,000 last year.

Wow. Uh, but then I also saw one where supposedly a $100,000 offer at a Southern auction was turned down.

What? So, I have no idea the value of these dudes, but it's it's a lot of dough.

Is that the holy grail one? Well, this one of the holy grails. Do you remember what another holy grail you saw was?

Yeah, the other one is is supposedly the most valuable is the double telescoping lightsaber for uh for Obi-Wan, Darth Vader, and Luke. And I think Luke's is the the most expensive. Um if you remember the little Did you have any of these?

I had a couple. So, the the the lightsaber guys had a uh thing on the bottom of their arm, a little groove cut out with a little uh a little, you know, plastic uh knob that you would uh shove up toward the wrist and a lightsaber would come out of the hand.

Yeah. As if it were turning on. Right. The double telescoping, cuz that's a telescoping feature.

A double telescoping Yeah. means that you could extend it even further out from the original telescope right?

And those supposedly are super rare and uh worth a lot of dough. So, that one I saw actually online. Um Oh, man. I can't remember the site, but it was it's a it's a great Star Wars action figure site. Um and they had a picture of it. Have you seen it? Yeah, I thought I had one, but I can't find it, so I don't think I do.

Like the the regular lightsaber that they had was just fine. But then the double telescoping part was just like this extra thinner

pointy piece of plastic that hung down at like a weird angle. It didn't keep going straight.

Yeah, they always kind of bent and it looked just It looked broken, you know. Yeah. But even if I did have one, it it's well worn. So, it's not like I mean I think all of these things it's always like mint condition in the package. It's worth this.

Don't even talk to me if it's not mint. Yeah, that's the that's the slogan. So, I would love some of this cleared up by experts. Um

Oh, we'll we'll hear from them. The Boba Fett matter. Yeah. I don't even know why I'm asking. The Boba Fett matter. The like which one is truly the holy grail?

Uh what happened with the Kenner uh or not Kenner, the MIGO Star Wars deal, right? And did did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone?

Yes, we need answers, people. You got anything else? I got nothing else. This is a a big overview. There's clearly many more stories to be told.

I got a couple couple more. I just want to give shouts out. All right. yojo.com.

Okay. If you were into GI Joes and you want to feel nostalgic, uh, go check that site out. It's amazing. Um, and then I created a gallery a few years ago called hilarious knockoffs and bootlegs of beloved toys.

Oh, that was great. And it's just like this slideshow of toys from around the world that are it's pretty obvious what they're supposed to be, but they're not like the name's just a little off or um they uh they they've tried to come up with a new brand alto together, but it's just some cheap version of something great. So, go check that out, too. It's kind of cool. Yeah,

it was fun to put together, I bet. And that's that's it, man. That's all I got. Go watch the G.I. Joe PSAs by Eric Fensler again. They still hold up.

Oh, yeah. You remember those? No. Where it was like a like just a weird dubs of those G.I. Joe PSAs. Like now you know and knowing is half the battle.

Yeah. Yeah. You haven't seen these? I don't think so. Oh, okay. I'll send them to you. You're going to die laughing.

Good. Yeah. You'll love them. You've been trying to kill me for years. That's a delightful way to do it.

But this time, I won't be wearing gloves coming at your neck. Uh I That's it for me, man.

Yeah, that's it for me. Okay. Well, if you want to know more about um action figures, you can type those words into the search bar of your favorite um search engine. Since I said search engine and didn't do any buzz marketing, it's time for listener mail.

Uh we're going to plug KA, which we haven't done in a long time. That's a good idea. K Iva uh is a micro lending website that we have been uh we've had a team now the stuff you should know team for gez how many years six or seven

I think it was 2008 or 20 2009 eight years seven or eight years wow it's been a while

all right so this is from Jordan and then I'm going to go over a little bit more about uh how our team is looking uh hey guys once I listened to a podcast where you promoted ka I decided to Google the ka donation thing and eventually found it correctly as kivva.com. I immediately love the site. It's the epitome of how to take the globalized world and use that for good. Uh so often donations come in the form of awkward late night infomercials or 5-second quips at the grocery line where you begrudgingly make an enemy out of the 17-year-old clerk for saying no, I don't want to give a dollar to needy children.

Uh while all types of donations are generally good, KA makes you feel it uh even more personal. And once uh one can certainly give their money to needs that are important to them. Uh you probably get your money back which is great but no way did that motivate me to loan. And I suspect to most people who use KA would also be happy to have their money go to those in need without getting a return. However, if I do decide to receive my money back, I will certainly use those funds to circulate that KA site again.

Yeah. In other words, relo. That's one of the keys. Uh, I think I'm feeling preachy now for writing you an email on the basis that I just loaned what amounts to a small amount of cash. But I just want to thank you guys for sharing that site and allowing people like myself to make their lives better. That's from Jordan uh Bachelor uh who claims to be a US defector.

He moved from the US. I can't remember where he lives now. Oh, he was just being cheeky.

I got you. So, we started this KA team a long time ago and um right now we have over 9,000 members.

Mhm. And we are almost at 4 million bucks. Dude, that is insane. 3,993,325 loaned. That is $143,155 loans.

An average of 16 loans per member. Mhm. And just to give you an idea of how it works, you donate money, you will most likely get paid back, and then they say you can check out and take your money back or you can roll that into another loan.

For sure. Uh I started off with a couple of hundred bucks. Mhm. Way back when. And that now just because I keep reinvesting it

uh has grown to $1,125 and 47 loans. And my default rate is only 4%. Nice. Yeah, the default rate is not bad at all.

It's not bad. So, you can take a little bit, you can take $25 even and keep reloing that and that in a few years, five or six years can be, you know, hundreds and hundreds of dollars relo to people,

right? Um, really makes a big difference. We did our research on KA. They're not perfect, but we think they do a really good job.

Yeah, for sure. And, um, you know, we have a stuff you should know team, so we would love to see people sign up for it. push us over that $4 million mark,

which is crazy. And yeah, yeah, we're not exclusive. We're not snobs, and neither is anybody on our team. It's a very, very welcoming group of people who are really active on the board. Um, they're uh led unofficially, but de facto by Glenn and Sonia. Yep.

Who have emerged to be these great team leaders that like just keep everybody going and motivated and moderate and make sure everybody's on the up and up and

Yep. They send us emails and reminders about how we're doing. Hats off to those guys. Thank you guys for that.

Yeah. So, ka.org. I think I said.com earlier. Um, and just go to the team section, search stuff you should know, join the team, throw $25 somebody's way. You can y

you can give to people that uh are doing things that are close to your heart or maybe countries you've been to that you want to help support.

Uh, you can give to women or men. And it's just a really you can really dial down and give very specifically how you want to give.

Yeah. And uh if you want to know even more about it, you can go listen to our episode on microl lending and you can I we've written a couple blog posts on it and I think there's something on Huffpo even that they published of ours, but it's um I think like why we land on KA. Yeah. And it really addresses a lot of stuff that people have raised and we've said, "Hey, man, it's still totally worth it." So,

yep. Yep. Go check it out. All right. Uh, if you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at SYSK podcast or you can hang out with me at joshumclark. You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook at Charles Wchchchchchchchchchchchchchchchchchchchchchchchchchchchchchchchchchchchchchchchchuk Bryant or you can visit our official Facebook page at facebook.com/ stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@ousstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyou know.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

Questions about this episode

What is "SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: A Partial History of Action Figures | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW" about?

This content explores the rich history of action figures, highlighting key developments and cultural significance while inviting listeners to engage in a playful debate over the merits of different types, such as the classic G.I. Joe versus smaller figures. The discussion weaves together nostalgia, toy evolution, and connections to broader pop culture, including a nod to iconic toys like Barbie.

What is mentioned in this Stuff You Should Know episode?

94 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including action figures, Kenner, Stan Weston, kung fu grip, Star Wars line, Cobra Commander. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: A Partial History of Action Figures | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW"?

The episode runs 1 h 14 min; the transcript is about 14,021 words in 330 timestamped sections.

More from Stuff You Should Know

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated December 15, 2025.