ToyGuru wrote: "The new 6 packs should be out in a few weeks too. Look for the Hawk and Eclipso packs only at Target! TG "

This news is only partially great.

Great that the Hawk set is shipping (3 new characters, 1 new cool variant costume).

Disappointing that Mattel is still producing the Eclipso pack after all the negative fan reaction to that set’s pack-out.

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Here’s a fun little project I worked on with Idolz Toys!

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Action figures. Before 1964 the two words never were put together. Then Hasbro came out with G.I. Joe and since boys couldn’t and wouldn’t be caught dead playing with dolls – unless you count putting a naked Ken on top of a naked Barbie – action figures came into being.

Up until the debut of Joe, boys either had to be the action figure themselves with their stash of toy guns or the commanding general with their hordes of little men in static poses. Joe changed everything and to one toy manufacturer, it was a helluva change. Louis Marx & Company began back in 1919 and in the 1950’s and early 1960’s they dominated the toy market, garnering 20% of the sales (that may not sound like a lot, but you have to remember the number of toy manufactures then and the size of the market as us baby boomers were the consumers then). Louis Marx was on the cover of Time magazine in 1955. But Hasbro and G.I.Joe were like a kick in the crotch and, after catching their breath, Marx jumped into the action figure market.

But, contrary to popular notion, Johnny West was not the first Marx action figure. That position went to “Stony Smith, the Paratrooper.” He was a 12-inch tall guy with unarticulated legs (like Ken and Barbie). His head moved from side to side and his arms were jointed, but that was it. Also, unlike Joe, Stony was a victim of plastic injection technology. What that meant was that his body and all his gear were the same O.D. Green color. His body and uniform were one in the same. There was no changing clothes to make Stony into a sailor or pilot. What you saw was what you got. And that OD Green. Well, it was boring. Unlike Joe’s painted accessories everything from weapons (and he came with a butt-load) to radios and binoculars were green. It was almost as if the Soviet GUM store had directed some factory out in Siberia to crank out a Comrade Klem. One look at Stoney and you turned your head and moved down the toy aisle to G.I. Joe. To their credit, Marx fixed the leg issue in 1965, but Stony was never more than a second stringer. In retrospect, he should have come with a pair of glasses, desk and typewriter and he could have served as the Company clerk to G.I. Joe.

Marx was, however, not a quitter and introduced a fully clothed figure called The All-American Fighter, a.k.a. “Buddy Charlie.” He was available as a marine, pilot, sailor, or combat soldier. Buddy was the strongest effort to compete directly with Joe, and had cloth uniforms. He had articulation very similar to Joe except that his hands were formed in a semi-grip so he could easily hold anything you put in them. G.I. Joe, in contrast had the strangest hand articulation that looked like he was developing arthritis. Other military items included the accessories from Stony, a Jeep Set, and a General Eisenhower figure. Despite Marx’s efforts, none of the military figures did well in the action figure market. During the production run of the Marx military figures and sets, they were diligently planning a counter attack with the production of a new line of action figure toys. These would become Marx’s largest sellers with a very long production run of 10 years….

The frontal assault on G.I. Joe was as successful as Operation Market Garden (and Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery should have been fired for that murderous fiasco, but that is another blog for another time) so Marx looked around at what had been popular and next to soldiers, cowboys were the cat’s pajamas. TV was crowded with western folks and considering there were only three networks that was a lot of horses, gunfights and Indian raids. One of the first was the figure “Daniel Boone” which was a tie into the TV series and/or the “Davy Crockett” (Disney) show. The head mold carried a Fess Parker look and the body was molded in caramel tan. Like Stony, this figure also did not have articulating legs, but did well in 1965 unlike the Stony figures. To further capture market share, they branched into more TV themes, i.e. “Wild Wild West”, “Gunsmoke” and “Bonanza.”

I think that this was a test of the waters because following the TV cowboys, Marx debuted 12-inch tall Johnny West and Chief Cherokee and the horse Thunderbolt in 1965. Although both Johnny and the Chief had the plastic injection molding bodies, but they were fully articulated and came with enough gear to fill a wagon (Chief Cherokee even had a peace pipe as smoking was still cool in 1965). The gear was unpainted, but there was a lot of it and Thunderbolt came with a full tack. Marx had a viable TV commercial campaign to support Johnny and suddenly G.I. Joe had some serious competition and this guy had a winchester!

Over the next few years more western figures were created. These included “Jane West” (I was never sure if she was supposed to be Johnny’s wife, girlfriend, sister or just some bimbo into leather), her horse “Flame” the non-jointed trotting posed horse. And, to the surprise of Marx, Jane was a hit with girls. I guess the combination of a cowgirl and a horse was appealing to some women who were concerned with that tramp Barbie. Marx even had commercials showing boys and girls playing with both Johnny and Jane together. I often wondered if the boy in the commercial got beat up by his friends when the commercial hit the air waves.

Major department stores chains such as Sears, Penny’s and Montgomery Wards added many nice sets in the early stage of Johnny West. Some examples include a ranch jeep set, Indian teepee set, and a Johnny West wild mustang set. Many parts of the combo sets were also sold individually depending on the retailer.

Other figures added to the Johnny West line include animals and more horses than you could possibly rustle in a single night, and the West kids! These include two boys Jay and Jamie West, two girls Josie and Janice West, a chestnut or palomino “Poncho” pony for the kids, a wild buffalo, and two dogs Flick (shepherd) and Flack (Setter). A horse and rig (buckboard, covered or surrey wagons) were added. Like Jane, it was never really explained who these kids were and what relation they were to Johnny. I mean, even if you put Johnny on top of Jane, they were both still fully clothed, so that seemed to end that possibility.

Moving down the list, Marx developed the cardboard “Circle X Ranch” playset. More color versions of Thunderbolts were created (black, brown, pinto) along with a new horse called Buckskin. Buckskin was available in brown or palomino and had fixed legs with articulation in the head and neck.

In the latter part of the 1960’s Marx branched out into the Fort Apache Fighter Series. This series brought in the Cavalry theme and more Indians. Marx seemed to be again targeting TV shows, i.e. “F-Troop”, “Rin Tin-Tin” etc. Figures added included Captain Maddox, Zeb Zachary, and the now rare hard to find Bill Buck, Geronimo, Fighting Eagle, and lastly General Custer. Two Fort Apache Fighter horses called Commanches were added, and were available in brown and tan/palomino colors. These were fully jointed and are notorious today for having loose joints and fail to stand and display well as a result. They included the same set of tack as the other large horses except they had a special cavalry saddle. Other playsets added included a cardboard full-scaled Fort Apache for the 12” figures.

In 1972, Louis Marx retired and sold off the company to Quaker Oats. QO updated figure construction, added some sets, changed packaging, and eliminated a few items. Two figures added were “outlaw” Sam Cobra and Sheriff Garrett. Quaker Oats also added a Johnny West camping set. This set had a hard plastic yellow/orange jeep with a variety of camping gear.

QO/Marx brought out another western series in 1974. This was “The Best of The West” series. It offered an across the board packaging change for all figures and horses. The main new addition to the series was the addition of a female Indian figure “Princess Wildflower.” The princess came with a papoose! No tomahawk, bow & arrow or rifle, but a papoose.

In 1975 Marx western / cavalry packaging and figures changed yet to another new series. They became the Johnny West Adventure Series, a.k.a. JWA series. In this series, the boxes changed more to watercolored lithographed illustration on the cover and were one piece constructed. JWA offered big color changes to the standard blue and caramel tan molded figures. Johnny West and Sam Cobra were changed to “Quick-Draw” figures. These had a right arm, controlled by a lever in their backs, which would allow the two figures to draw their “special” pistols out of their “special” holsters. Most figures were molded brighter colors, and accessories were all changed to look more colorful. JWA figures and accessories are uncommon today due to such a short production run. Finally…. the most sought after JWA figure was developed. Jed Gibson was a black cavalry scout and is quite hard to find today.

Additionally, Marx cranked out the Nobel Knights and Mighty Viking Series; Secret Agents and, in the U.K., the Lone Ranger; Safari Adventures; and – believe it or not – the Archies.

The next few years were typical for a company that had lost their inspiration. Mergers, acquisitions and failed products foretold the inevitable doom of Marx. 1978 was the last full year of U.S. production. But it was a helluva ride and many kids have lots of fond memories of Johnny West and his friends. So, put that in your peace pipe and smoke it G.I. Joe!

Please take a few moments today, tonight, this week, to recognize the past and present sacrifices made by our servicemen and women, and their families. We all know someone that has served with great honor, or is currently serving in the name of America. Please make sure you acknowledge them.

A heartfelt thanks goes out to all of you that defend and preserve our freedom.

There is a place more terrifying than the Bermuda Triangle, more mysterious than the pyramids of Egypt, and more baffling than the crowd at a Michael Jackson memorial tribute. This place has plagued generations of toy lovers, and continues to be an ongoing, though not often explored, conundrum in all of our pasts. I’m speaking, of course, about the Portal of Lost Toys. That mystical place where so many toys have gone, never to be heard from again, leaving broken hearts all over the world.

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Little men. I can still hear my dad and mom’s voices calling my toy soldiers that in my mind. Usually it was in some derogatory sentence such as “ pick up all these damned little men”, or some really good expletive followed by “little men” when someone stepped on one in the night going to the only bathroom in the house.

Some kids were sports kids with baseballs, basketballs and footballs (who the hell ever heard of soccer in the states until the arrival of Pelé?). Some kids were into trucks with Tonka, Buddy L and Ertl vehicles (and Matchbox and, later, Hot Wheels) of various shapes and sizes to fulfill a multitude of construction or general maintenance work. A few kids were into chemistry sets and telescopes – but you didn’t hang around those kids. Me, I was a toy soldier kid.

Marx was the primary producer of toy soldiers. Oh sure, there were others. Ideal, MPC ( They made the weird ring-hand soldiers that came with weapons you put in the hands and always lost within a couple of days), Tim-Mee, Remco, Britans, Swoppet, Elastolin (if your old man was in the military and you lived in Europe) and Airfix (who had a plethora of HO scale soldiers). But, Marx was the main supplier of toy soldiers.

Depending on your whims, allowance, birthdays and holidays you could have a varied collection of figures from cavemen to spacemen. Along with a smattering of the aforementioned, I also had calvary; cowboys & indians; revolutionary rebels and British; Zorro and Mexicans and Texians; Romans; and, of course, army soldiers. All manufactured by Marx. When you tossed in the assorted collections from other manufactures it was a significant collection.

In addition to the figures, there were the accessories and the playsets . Again, the other manufacturers put out some half-hearted playsets, but Marx ruled the domain. Tin lithographed buildings, all sorts of hard plastic accessories. Cannons that actually shot tiny plastic shells/cannon balls. Animals too, Camels, cattle, dogs & cats, sheep, chickens and, of course, horses. Fort Apache was probably the most famous of all the playsets. Thank the stars that John Ford always had a wooded stockade in his westerns to authenticate Marx’s bastion of the wild west.

And as much stuff that Marx cranked out for the non-army playsets; they shined with the military equipment to support the green troops. Pillboxes, jeeps, trucks, tanks, landing craft, halftracks. Even aircraft! And if the Marx military industrial machine wasn’t enough to satisfy your lust for mobilizing your forces, the other manufacturer’s cranked out vehicles as well. Auburn made this great half-track out of hard rubber that had a machine gunner moulded into it. It actually would hold a few of your Marx soldiers. Ideal made a tracked Howitzer that was huge in comparison to the Marx vehicles, but was probably closer in real scale to the troops.

The thing I always wondered about was why the Marx tanks for US/allied forces were M-48 Pershings and not M-4 Sherman. Marx did eventually crank out both Panther and Tiger tanks for the german troops they began manufacturing in the mid-60’s. In fact, they created British, Russian, Japanese and French forces as well as the green US G.I.’s. And, they began to sell them in small packages in the 5 and Dime stores so that, for a portion of your allowance, you could have a few krauts or brits to augment your regular forces.
Then 1964 and the world of “little men” would never be the same. In February of that year, Hasbro introduced G.I. Joe, the 11 ½ inch tall “action figure” and his plethora of equipment and the proverbial handwriting was on the wall. The growing dissatisfaction with the war in Viet-Nam also contributed to the demise of the toy line. In addition to growing up, we were growing out our hair, listening to rock and roll and discovering girls. Getting a driver’s license became more important than looking through the Sears catalog.

A gaping hole in the toy soldier production was super heroes. Oh, Ideal came out with a playset that included Batman, Robin, Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Joker and Riddler in 1966 as Batmania took the nation, but by and large the spandex crowd never really took off (no pun intended). You just didn’t have the opportunity to have Superman or Captain America kick the crap out of the Nazis or have Spiderman help tame the wild west with the 7th Calvary. Oh, Marx put out some oversized figures of Ironman, Spiderman, Thor, Captain America and Daredevil, but unless you were going to do the Godzilla thing and have them step on the enemy they were really useless for make believe battles.

Fast forward to the new century and WizKids began to manufacture HeroClix. Originally designed to be gaming pieces, old fart comic and toy soldier fans like me became enamored with the cool static poses and the variety of figures available. I tried to resist the siren song of these multicolored “little men and women and creatures of undetermined sex, but the combination of being super hero focused and the possibility of recreating hordes of figures became overpowering.

The one thing that drove me crazy with HeroClix was the fact that you had to buy a box and it was up for grabs as to what you got in the box. Sort of like cracker jacks, but without the popcorn and peanuts. Several decades ago, I would have traded with my friends the duplicates I had for something they might have that I wanted, but today that isn’t an option. For better or worse I don’t give a rat’s ass about the game itself. I only am interested in the figures and I simply am not going to waste a day at a game session to see if some kid wants to trade figures. Thank the heavens for ebay! Although it’s more expensive, I’ve been able to amass my DC, Marvel and Independent heroes and villains without the frustration of having six or seven mole men or mirror master figures. Considering the continuing escalation of the price of regular action figures, this may be my solution to the problem of deciding whether to pay the mortgage or buy that latest series of figures.

In case you weren’t already hip to it, I’m going to let you in on a little fact that all humans and pets should be well aware of at this point in our evolutions: Halloween is the best holiday of the year. Period. Oh, and also, for those still in the dark, Oswald didn’t kill Kennedy, Adam and Eve didn’t cavort with dinosaurs, you can’t get pregnant from using the same toilet seat, and the light does indeed go off when you close the refrigerator door. But why am I telling you this on the Action Figure Insider ‘Men of Action’ blog? Well, because for me, Halloween has several significant memory triggers, and as always, they’ll come back to toys.

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Any geek worth their salt has had the same age old conversations: who’d win in a fight between Superman and Captain Marvel? Is Godzilla bad or just misguided? When is ‘Ten Speed and Brown Shoe’ going to get a DVD release? And what if the ‘Star Wars’ prequels had been any good? But the one that comes up all the time when you have your own toy company is, “Oh, you should do toys from….”, or, “Have they done action figures of…” or even better, “Oooo! You should make dolls from that movie.…”. Oh, if only it were that simple.

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I’ve always been a bit of a spend thrift.  In this economy of I find it even harder to let go of my money.  In the pursuit of our hobby along these lines, I find patience to be my best ally.  This time, it guided me to an animation buy.

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Based on this list of products on display can you guess what toy store I visited this past weekend? My Little Pony, Strawberry Shortcake, Littlest Petshop, and Barbie. DCUC, Brave & the Bold, Movie Masters, DC Direct. NECA’s Twilight and Harry Potter. G.I. Joe 3 3/4 and 12". Marvel Legends, Marvel Select, Amazing Spiderman. Star Wars Legacy and Clone Wars. Secret Saturdays. Street Fighter, Gears of War, Castlevania and Final Fantasy. Give up? Here’s a hint:

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The force was strong with my padawan, Johnny, when he surprised me recently with tickets to a touring show called "Star Wars in Concert". Basically this event combines the music of John Williams performed by a live orchestra and chorus with specially edited footage from the Star Wars movies played on massive screens. High society meets hard core geek. Was I to wear a shirt and tie or my Chewy is My Copilot tee shirt?

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Greetings and salutations fellow toy fans and Action Figure Insiders-

Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Jason Lenzi, and I have a toy company called Bif Bang Pow! Some of you may have heard of us, but for those that haven’t, we’ve been around about four and a half years, and have produced action figures and bobble heads for various properties: ‘Flash Gordon’, ‘The Big Lebowski’, Showtime’s ‘Dexter’, ‘The Twilight Zone’, and ABC’s ‘LOST’. AFI and Daniel Pickett in particular have been big supporters of all of our activities, and when I mentioned to Daniel recently that I was thinking of doing some guest blogging here and there, he very graciously offered the ‘Men of Action’ board for me to set my soap box up on. So here I am.

I’ve been a follower of AFI and its blogs for a while now, and I enjoy them very much. I love the diversity of the subjects being tackled, but have noticed one pleasant underlying theme (while not a complete shock) is the sense of nostalgia everyone has. Whether writing about toys of the past, or the newest catch from a day’s run to Target, everyone seems to be motivated in their passion for collecting by what they loved as kids. Sure, sometimes that means junior high as well, maybe even high school. (And some folks never stopped collecting at all). But people seem to especially cling to the lines or characters they were introduced to as kids.

Which brings me to my motivation for writing on here in the first place. I’m sort of a pop culture junkie, always feeling like I’m going to run out of time before I see, hear and read all the things out there in the ether I’ve been seeing, hearing and reading so much about. I read a stack of magazines every month, cover to cover, and tend to make lists of all the new music, DVDs and books I have to seek out (whether old or new) so I can update the file cabinet I keep stored in my skull. But, similar to the point I was making earlier, if I was to make a family tree of all those interests rattling around up there in my melon, I could trace most of them back to the greatest years of my life: 1976-1984.

One of the things I thought I could bring to the blog that might be of interest to it’s readers, was my perspective as a guy who started his own toy company. We have our own Bif Bang Pow! blog that we update occasionally with new releases and announcements, but as far as I know, there’s no one out there from inside a toy company that’s giving out any inside scoop. My “day job”, as it were, in Los Angeles, is working in television production, but whenever BBP! comes up in conversation, I find that people are endlessly curious about the why, how, and where of the entire operation. And looking back, it has been a wild and fascinating ride. If I knew then what I know now…..I probably STILL would have taken the trip, but I would have brought more aspirin with me.  Now, I’m not saying this is going to read like the Watergate transcripts, or be a ‘how to’ through the toy business. No , no, no. I came here to talk about all the things I dig about toys, past and present, but there will be some juice along the way.

And it will all most likely tie into those glorious, youthful 10 years or so. Case in point: ‘Flash Gordon’. In 1977, there was a great animated series on CBS called ‘Tarzan: Lord of the Jungle”. It was about four teenagers and their talking dog, and they drove around in a van solving spooky mysteries. (No, it wasn’t, it was actually about Tarzan. I just wanted to see if you’ve stayed with me through this first column). Anyway, I loved it, watched it every week. Then, a couple of years later, fall of 1979, NBC started airing what I consider to be one of the best, if not THE best, animated series of all time, ‘Flash Gordon’. Immediately, my 9 year old eyes and ears noticed the similarities to the ‘Tarzan’ series that came before, especially because Tarzan and Flash had the same voice. (A year later, Thundarr had it too!). Since May of 1977, I had eaten, slept and drank ‘Star Wars’, so anything remotely sci fi was going to be diligently followed by me. My father had given me some Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon reprint books for a birthday that summer, to show me that yes, there WAS life before Vader, and I loved Alex Raymond’s artwork. So I was slightly primed when the animated series began to air, and was immediately hooked from the first episode. It was must see television every Saturday morning that season, and I collected the entire line of Mattel toys, the coloring books, lunch box and whatever else I could beg to get my hands on. Still have ‘em all, too.

Then, a cosmic event took place a year later that I’m still reeling from today: a big budget, live action ‘Flash Gordon’ movie was about to come out. WITH A SOUNDTRACK BY QUEEN.  (I wrongly assumed some Hollywood studio executive had singled me out for a ‘remote viewing’ project, thinking my pure Minnesota mind must have box office gold buried somewhere in it). The movie came out, and while it still wasn’t as cool as the cartoon, I saw it four times. I bought the soundtrack on vinyl, transferred it to cassette, and walked around with my tape recorder, re enacting the film and air guitaring through the house. At B Dalton’s I managed to find the official storybook, and the hardcover comic adaptation (and hey! Isn’t this the same guy who drew the ‘Empire Strikes Back’ adaptation?). I even found some puffy stickers at the local drug store. But something in the merchandise department was sorely lacking.

Toys. That’s right, zip, zilch, nada. Not a thing. I hunted high and low, from Target (a Minnesota born enterprise, so there were a lot to sift through), to Children’s Palace, Kidsville in the Maplewood Mall, Borgstrom Pharmacy, Wards and JC Penny’s. Not a thing. There must be some mistake, I thought. Every OTHER Sci Fi movie got it’s own toys, and I grabbed ‘em all. ‘The Black Hole’, ‘Star Trek the Motion Picture’, ‘Buck Rogers in the 25th Century’. But nothing for one of the coolest, loudest, most garish and freaky, rock and roll sound tracked space flicks of all? Nope.

So when I did finally decide to give this toy company thing a go, I made a list of all the properties that I’d always wanted action figures of. And right at the top of that list was 1980’s ‘Flash Gordon’. How it all eventually happened and the craziness involved with getting the license is a story for another column. But the beauty of all of it was, I found a kindred spirit through the process. Another lost soul who felt that one of the most overlooked movies of the past 100 years was also criminally short changed in the action figure aisles. That man was Alex Ross. Except he went even further than I did when he was a kid, and custom made his own Flash, Ming and Prince Barin, out of various Mego 12” figures. (And if you know Alex at all you’ll know how unsurprising that little tidbit is).  So 27 years after the film first came out, little ‘ol Bif Bang Pow! brought the world what I knew it always needed: action figures from the ‘Flash Gordon’ movie.

So there you go. Proof, conclusive I think, that it all comes full circle, and in some way that probably reflects on all of us and why we collect and come to sites like this in the first place. I look forward to posting on here, hearing your feedback and hopefully connecting with all of you in the near future. Hope you all enjoy it, and thanks in advance  for your future time. Here’s to the start of a beautiful friendship.
 

…and yes, there will be detailed blogging.

Peace,

Chip

Please forgive what is essentially a self-indulgent travelogue. Because, really, who likes looking at other people’s vacation photos? Fortunately I was able to shadow Sgt. Rock as he embarked on a solo reconnaissance mission to Arizona’s "Red Rock" country: Sedona and its environs. Here follows a photographic recap of a week scouting in one of the Earth’s most beautiful locations. Our little East Company canvassed primarily a 12 mile stretch of scenic terrain in Oak Creek Canyon.

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