Tag Archives: action figures

January 3, 2014 · 8:25 pm

Beautiful Barbie Dolls

This is only a small part of the collection that sits on bedroom shelves.

Star Wars 12″ Action Figures are a large part of my collection.

Star Wars is not my only obsession. Captain Action caught my heart in the 1960’s.

Vintage Captain Action (circa 1967-68) (I always wanted to use “circa” somewhere in my writing.)

My newest Captain Action and Dr. Evil.

Beautiful Barbie Dolls

Believe it or not, I like to play with dolls. It all started in 1965 with a Navy G.I. Joe doll. I had a black rubber scuba suit for him and it was the neatest toy I owned. My sister had a Barbie’s friend Midge doll. The comic-book adventures of the romantic heroes, Midge and Joe began that year. I added a Captain Action with an Aquaman suit along with a German G.I. Joe and an Astronaut Joe with a Mercury Capsule. My sister added a dark-skinned Christie doll and little sister had a Tammy doll. I built a submarine/spaceship with my Constructor Set, and then the adventures were really off into the blue.

Today I collect Barbie-dolls, G.I. Joe action figures, Captain Action figures and suits, and a hodgepodge of Star Wars, Star Trek, and Planet of the Apes 12″ figures. I am not ashamed to call them my doll collection. I use my wife and daughter as an excuse for buying Barbies and my two sons as an excuse for buying the rest, but it is entirely me who is obsessed with dolls and doll clothes. Don’t tell anyone I said this, but I will always be ten years old when I have a doll or action figure in my silly old hands.

There is something really absorbing about dolls. My mother made them in a kiln we bought one summer. She fired beautiful works of porcelain, painted, stuffed, and dressed them, an expensive obsession, but cheaper than buying them. I know a fellow through e-Bay who molds his own reproduced Captain Action masks, and I’ve seriously thought that toy-making might be my next business. Who knows? Obsessions are often the best sort of inspiration.

Did you know Barbie started life as a German prostitute doll named Lily? Mattel copied one brought back from Europe after World War Two. G.I. Joe wouldn’t have existed if some bright boy hadn’t decided that little boys would accept the same doll-and-changeable-uniform toy if it was marketed as a fighting man action figure! Captain Action was Ideal Toy Company’s plan to use superheroes to make an action figure to compete with Hasbro’s G.I. Joe. The current market in dolls as collectibles is now driven by doll-playing old men like me, Baby-Boomers who long to recapture youth by recapturing the toys of their childhoods. At least I am not the only Peter-Pan-Syndrome, sad old obsessed guy out there!

Take my advice. If you have to develop a vice, ignore booze, drugs, and sex. Stay away from identity theft and computer porn. Go buy a doll, and see if it doesn’t bring back the child in you!

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Tagged as action figures, doll collecting, goofy behavior, humor, nostalgia, Peter Pan Syndrome, photos, satire

December 11, 2013 · 2:43 am

Mego Men

In 1976 I ordered a Mego Spiderman from the ad in my Avengers comic book. It came by mail. It was only 8 inches tall, not the 12 that would become the basis of my action figure (don’t call them dolls) collection. I love Megos. I should’ve bought more of them, but I was in college and had limited space to keep them. I ordered the Wolfman second, then the Lizard, and finally Iron Man. I was going to buy a Captain America next, but Mego stopped making these things at the end of the 70’s. That, of course, is what makes them valuable. The last time I priced them in the collector’s market, Iron Man was going for fifty dollars, and Spiderman for forty five. I have no intention of selling them. They will one day belong to my own children to play with or do with whatever destructive thing they will. Until then, they are mine to play with.

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Tagged as action figures, collecting, humor, Mego, photo, silliness, super heroes

November 16, 2013 · 9:23 pm

Call Them Action Figures, Not Dolls

Yes, I am an addict. I have a mania for buying dolls… er, I mean, action figures. It began when I was nine back in 1965. Yes, G.I. Joe got me hooked. Specifically, the G.I. Joe sailor. I still have that sorry pusher. He has detached arms held on by strings and the shirt that he wears. He is play-worn and so far from mint that he’s only valuable to me. I still have the Marine dress uniform hat on him, the sole surviving piece of the second costume set I ever got for him. The first costume, given to me for the same birthday, big number nine, was the frogman uniform, long since disintegrated into black rubber pulp.

Of course, it wasn’t exactly like my sister’s Barbie. Yes, the idea was to buy costume after costume, the drive for fashion being the primary source of income for Hasbro and Mattel. I did a bit of that. But in 1966 I wanted the German G.I. Joe from the Montgomery Ward Christmas Catalog for my birthday. Mom and Dad bought me my first Captain Action instead. After many tears and bitter disappointment, I actually started to play with it. Christmas brought the Aquaman suit for Captain Action, along with the German G.I. Joe. After that, Spiderman… Captain America… more Joes, and a 1969 G.I. Joe Mercury capsule complete with astronaut. Man! What you could get back then for less than twenty dollars!

So this is the foundation of my obsession. Of course, as a child I did not have my own money to spend. I always wanted more than birthdays and Christmases could account for. Once I became an adult and had my own money… look out! I could’ve impoverished myself had I not established the rules for my personal collection. Twelve inch action figures are rule number one. Rule number two is twenty dollars or less. I try hard not to break those rules. The collection has grown all out of proportion.

I got married, and that had an effect on my addiction too. I began to buy Barbie action figures too. (Heck, she’s a twelve inch figure too.) I had kids too, but never even thought of using that as an excuse. I bought Barbies for my beautiful wife, but if I bought action figures for my kids, then they wouldn’t be mine, and how do you explain to a six year old that you can’t actually play with that cool Batman figure?

I am showing off a few of my figures here and now. Maybe more will come later. But for now, it’s enough to get this terrible secret off my conscience.