I wasn't old enough for Ideal's Captain Action line back in the day but I was always fascinated by the line by the ads that I saw in comic books. A childhood friend of mine had the Superman and Batman costumes on G.I. Joe bodies and I thought they were pretty cool.

When Playing Mantis brought back Captain Action in the late 90s I was disappointed because they didn't have the Marvel and DC licenses but I was extremely happy to be getting the Green Hornet and Kato. I picked them up at Kay-Bee for $15 each.

I recall reading in Toyfare that Playing Mantis was going to release the hero and villain costumes in packages like Ideal did back in the 60s. One of the upsides in the story was that the Green Hornet and Kato were not going to have rubber masks but rather just "clip on" masks to use on the Captain Action heads ala how Van Williams and Bruce Lee put on their masks. I thought that this a decent idea but I never saw these costume packages ever solicited.

Ok, so now we jump to 2011. I was thinking about taking the plunge on the Medicom Green Hornet and Kato action figures but I was searching for them on eBay, I stumbled upon the Captain Action costume packs for Green Hornet and Kato. Apparently they were released through Diamond Select Toys (I was originally going to post this question in that forum but it looks like nobody posts there) in 2000. The masks aren't "clip on" as the article stated but traditional pull over style and the masks are more screen accurate. I didn't buy them on eBay because I found them on Amazon for 1/2 off the eBay prices.

The packs arrived in the mail and look great. And finally getting to my question, on the back of the box is a checklist of the Captain Action uniform packs that you can buy: Lone Ranger, Tonto, Flash Gordon, Green Hornet, Kato, Phantom, Racer X (from the unproduced Speed Racer series), and two images of blacked-out characters with question marks above them. One appears to be holding a mask in his left hand. Who were they supposed to be?

Wow... that's a good question. And I don't have an answer. Let me reach out to the Round 2 folks (most of which are old PM people) and see if any of them remember.
I'll see what I can find out.

Thanks.

The answer to your question is on the Captain Action box, the shadowed people were supposed to be Dr. Benton Quest and Race Bannon. On the Dr Evil box, the shadowed box was Dr. Zin the enemy in jonny quest. Kid Action was speed racer, jonny quest, and hadji.

Thanks for solving this mystery.

I was wondering if anyone knows of the location of an article which they (Playing Mantis) talked about how they were going to proceed to create the racer x costume for the captain action figure as well as how they made the prototype speed racer costume display for the kid action figure. Any assistance would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Man I wish that Playing Mantis was able to make those Quest figures, the prototypes looked amazing, criminal that they were never made. Maybe BifBangPow could grab the license and fix that? How 'bout it Jason?