Stuff You Should Know - A Partial History of Action Figures

Episode Date: November 3, 2016

Action figures have a long and glorious history. From GI Joes to Star Wars figures, these offshoots of dolls came along at just the right time to capture the hearts and minds of children everywhere. Learn all about the partial history of action figures right here. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's right there to my immediate right.

And that makes this Stuff You Should Know, the podcast. That's right. I'm excited about this particular podcast, Chuck, that we put together, this episode, I should say. Well, do you wanna go ahead and announce the title for the people that maybe didn't read it? It is, well, you're gonna select the title, what's the title? Oh, geez, I don't know.

Everything you ever wanted to know about, actually, some stuff about action figures that you may already know. And some stuff that may delight you. That's a working title, huh? Yeah. Yeah, but we're talking about action figures. That's the point of what I think that exercise just was. Yeah, I was gonna say everything you wanted to know,

but this, I mean, we could do, I'm sure there are entire podcasts on action figures. For sure. Yeah, and if you have a podcast on action figures, write it and let us know. We'll tweet it out for the people who's vote, this floated, and this one definitely follows in the vein of 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? I like to play with action figures. I play with Barbies, I had older sisters, so I play with Barbies whether I wanted to or not,

so I made the most of it. Yeah, I don't know. I don't remember my sister having Barbies, but surely she did, right? Yeah, she was a girl in America from the 60s on, yeah, she had a Barbie. Oh, no, my sister grew up in the Soviet Union. Oh, well, there you go.

She had 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 got it all. And like I said, Barbie kind of pops up in the beginning. She actually inspired, she actually inspired action figures basically directly.

When Mattel, I think it was Ruth Handler who invented the Barbie doll, right? Yes. And 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 was an 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. 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, is 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 Stan Weston, who actually knew Ms. Handler, and he was in the toy racket, and I guess I shouldn't call it a racket. It's a bit of a racket. It's a bit of a racket. So he said, like you were talking about,

like you know, there's tons of money to be made here. He was 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, and maybe not call them dolls? Yeah, that was a big one.

He didn't come up with the name, to be fair. His boss at Hasbro, VP Don Levine, or Levine, 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 Don Levine at that toy fair,

and said, I got a great idea, and apparently he gave him $100,000 just for the idea, and then he, since he worked with Hasbro, he's like, guys, 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, any time you're the schmuck that comes up with the idea that you sell

for even $782,000, and it goes on to be like hundreds of millions of dollar business, you probably always kind of feel like, I got taken for a ride. 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. It's certainly not one like G.I. Joe, right? Well, that's what we've been talking about. We've talked about G.I. Joe a lot on the show, so it feels appropriate that we sort of go down that rabbit hole if we're gonna be talking about action figures.

Well, yeah, because G.I. Joe was the one that literally started the action figure craze. Every action figure that's out there from action Jesus to the Marvel superhero action figures, every action figure came from G.I. Joe, and if you wanna get feminist about it, every action figure, including G.I. Joe, ultimately came from Barbie.

That's a good way to look at it. So all right, here's the deal that I never knew. G.I. Joe debuted in 1964 before Christmas. It's almost as if they had planned that. The original, I knew all this stuff. The original was 12 inches and had 21 moving parts, and the thing I did not know 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, for my era, the main guy was Duke, and for your era, the main guy was Rocky. Well, depends on which one you had. Okay. So there was Rocky was the army and the marines.

Skip was the Navy guy, and Ace was the Air Force guy, the fighter pilot. Right, so they ran out of names after name three. They ran out 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, I know. Or was it the same face for each one? It was literally just their clothes were different. You know, I don't know. I'm going for my own memory, which is that they were all the same dude, and they were all Franco Harris.

Well, they came up with an African-American one at one point in the late sixties, 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 sixties ones were different, but I only knew Franco Harris. I got you.

So maybe I just had Rocky. Maybe so. Rocky or Rocky, which one? Yeah, I had Rocky. Not Rocky. So they come out with 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. But they were on like little molded plastic stands, and 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, I was delighted. It was Toy Story, right? Where they had those guys come to life.

Right. That was like really, really cool to me when I saw that on screen. These, because you know, like you said, you could never move them. So I see those little dudes actually come to life was pretty awesome. You were like, oh, I've been dreaming of this day.

I kinda was. Thank you, DreamWorks. Oh, that's where they got the name. Was it DreamWorks, or was that Pixar? Oh, it was Pixar, right? Probably. I got it wrong. That's right.

It's 100% Pixar. We're still gonna get emails anyway, even though we just corrected. They're all working dreams. They are. So I read this great article called, oh geez, what was it called? Now you know the history of GI Joe,

and knowing it is half the battle from Smithsonian.com. Written by Jimmy Stamp. Was that his name? The Stamper? The Stamster. So I didn't realize this, but you can't copyright a figure, like a human figure.

So that was sort of an issue when people started to do knockoffs of GI Joe. But apparently early on in the process, GI 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 errors in production, but those flaws were what allowed them

to go after people for copyright infringement. That's right. That's crazy. Yeah, it is. And yeah, I guess they were natural. Like they didn't plan them or anything like that, but they just were happy accidents, I guess. Yeah.

And actually, I read also elsewhere, Chuck, that GI Joe was so successful, as we'll see, that by the 70s, there were so many knockoffs that Hasbro released its own line of knockoffs, of cheaply made GI Joe's to compete with the knockoffs and dilute their market share. Yeah, it was called Defenders. And there were just these really cheaply made versions

of the big GI Joe's. Well, it was a huge hit, though. 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 toy soldiers before, but this guy could move. He had, I think, like 28 or 29 moving parts, 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 mid-70s. Yeah, that's where I came in. Okay, so he had Kung Fu grip when you knew GI Joe? Uh, yeah, very much. Gotcha. It was so Kung Fu. Right, but he still looked like Franco Harris. But he still looked like Franco Harris, yes.

And then the other big innovation was not an innovation at all. It was following the Barbie model, but for boys it was. It was that this doll, which no one called a doll, in fact, 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 Joe's. This is an action figure. That's right. But on the package itself, and I don't know if you remember this or not, 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 GI 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 Levine.

So not only that, but they had, like Barbie, they had all manner of other things that you could collect and buy. I had the jet pack, which you would attach to a string to simulate jet packing and send fly, like between two trees. Gotcha. And then I had the submarine, it was like a Seawolf. It was really cool.

How big was the submarine if you were playing with 12-inch GI Joe's? It was, it'd take up the size of like the family room. 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, so it was like a one-man sub? Yeah, I feel like it was, I can't remember exactly. I feel like it was about the size of us,

little smaller than a bowling ball. How's that? Like a child's bowling ball. Yeah, cause 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. And then I had the six-wheel or eight-wheel,

I can't remember, all-terrain vehicle. Well, that's nice. And that's about all that we were, that's about all we could afford. But that was probably quite an outlay from your parents. No, 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 in the 60s, they actually, GI Joe did not do very well because of the Vietnam War. Yeah. 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 hurt sales, so they took them out a little bit, and then they re-released them again, and kind of rebranded them, I think too, as rather than a soldier, they rebranded them as an adventurer, right? Yeah, totally. This machete is not for cutting off the hands of a Sherpa

who leads us into danger. It's for, you know, cutting through vegetation and on a jungle adventure to save Sherpas, who for some reason live in the jungle now. Yeah, and they, like you said, they called them adventurer, or the naval officer was called an aquanaut. And I very much remember that being the deal. Like, I didn't think of them as a soldier.

I thought of them as, you know, well, I thought his name was Joe, because I guess it was a dumb little kid, but I guess Rocky, the G.I. Joe adventure guy. Right. Slash Brinko Harris. Right, and G.I. Joe actually, it 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,

he starts to do kind of poorly because of Vietnam. They take him out, they re-release him, and he doesn't do very well when they bring him back out, even though he's an adventurer, right? So G.I. Joe left. They stopped making G.I. Joe's for a while, and 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. Yes, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why. Skate, S.J. How you should know? On the podcast, HeyDudeta90s called

David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair.

Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it, and popping it back in

as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to, Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough,

or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you.

Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael.

And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen,

so we'll never, ever have to say, bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And inside me, gosh, you love the shock. All right, is it Miko or Mego? I've been saying Mego in my head, just because 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 Mego. To be honest, I have no idea. I'm sure there is a right way that Tommy Mego would love to tell you about, or Tommy Mego.

But yeah, I've said Mego in my head, but I don't know which one's correct to tell you the truth. All right, we'll just proceed thusly. I'll say Mego, you say Mego. Let's just call the whole thing off. So go ahead with Mego. So, so, Giojo'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? 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? 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 Mego 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 line of superheroes

called the world's greatest superheroes, action figures. And I think 1972, and it was a pretty big hit, like right off the bat. Yeah, and what they did was 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 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. And not only that, but they said, you know, we're making money hand over fist selling these action figures. What if, do you think kids would actually buy villains 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. And before you knew it, they were pumping out things like Bruce Wayne's Foundation Building. I know that was a real thing. 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 Montgomery Ward only. Oh. You could buy the non superhero versions of superheroes like Peter Parker and Bruce Wayne, which is like, 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 what you do with that action figure.

All right, that makes much more sense. I thought they had a Montgomery Ward play set. That's what I thought at first too. 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.

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. And that was a huge hit. Yeah, and the other thing about Mego too was that all action figures had been like 12 inches tall, 12 inches tall up to that point. And Mego's line was eight inches.

So action figures are starting to shrink a little bit now. That's right. And the one I actually had, even though I have no idea why, I had the Star Trek Enterprise Bridge. Oh, yeah. And then I guess, I mean, I know I had Spock and Kirk and a couple of others, but 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. 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. But you're into weird wizards. You still are. 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, their collection, that was another big hit. So they were just, they literally kind of, 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. They kind of, they kind of, yeah, action figures were cool and G.I. Joe had really started something, but Mego, yeah, 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 play sets was from, one of the sets from an episode of Star Trek, the Apple episode. Like, you don't necessarily see that, or you didn't see that before with action figures. It was more like, hey, you know this guy, just buy him.

This is like, you're into Star Trek and so are we, and here is some awesome play sets based on your love of Star Trek. So Mego definitely broke the mold in that sense as well. But they also, like, they were it for action figures. Like, nobody could compete with Mego. They would buy stuff from Japan and then turn them into new stuff here.

There was just no competing with Mego in the U.S. even though a lot of people were. But they also dropped the ball in the most spectacular fashion anyone could ever drop the ball in the action figure world. Yeah. Like, 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 what we're talking about, and if you know action figures, you probably see this coming, they declined the Star Wars brand

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 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. 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's lots of stories like that. Just somebody lacking foresight. Yeah, the other story is completed by the, supposedly they weren't there. So Lucas went to another, went to Kenner, who was in the same building in New York.

And I guess the people that could sign their name were there. Right. 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 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. I read the same blog. Exactly. I knew your nerd voice is going to come up in this episode. So sure, of course. 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 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 wasn't even around when these things came out. And yet they still somehow make me nostalgic, you know? Exactly. All right. So let's jump back a little bit to 1966.

And we're going to explain how they went from 8 inches, even though they were still making the 8 inches after 66, how they eventually got down to the 3 and 3 quarters inch. GI Joe is licensing their stuff out to other countries. All over the place, there was a UK company who released it under the name Action Man. And eventually they licensed it to Japan, to a company called Takara.

They went on to create some action figures based on GI Joe. And then due to the oil crisis in the early 70s, they started developing smaller versions. So at 3 and 3 quarters inches, they developed Microman, released him in 1974. And that kind of led to this new thing, which was smaller dudes. Three. And kids didn't care.

No, no. Not only did we not care. So now we're starting to enter my wheelhouse. Not only did 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 one thing that divides us more frequently than anything else is whether the original big GI Joe's or the second wave small GI Joe's are better. All right, let me ask you, sir, have you ever held in your hands and played with a 12 inch GI Joe with a kung fu grip? I would not touch one. So you can't even say then.

Have you played with a small one? Yeah, man, I had tons of small action figures. Oh, OK, 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 inches. It articulates 19 different ways.

No. 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 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 admit, the wave of GI 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 GI Joe changed a lot 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 GI Joe became a cartoon series. This was in the early 80s. So this is when I had quit playing with action figures for the most part. OK. Because 83, 84, I was like 13, and I was moving on to, you know. Check out this mustache.

Yeah, I was skateboarding by that point. And I thought it was super cool skateboarder. Maybe I still played a little bit. So just only your neighborhood best friend knew about it, your school friends did. Exactly. So GI Joe was a cartoon. Then for the first time, basically,

it became 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, I was really just primed and ready.

I would just, yeah, 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 blew up the back stories, because this new wave of GI Joe when they released it, each character now had its own name and it wasn't Rocky or Rocky. It was things like Duke or Shipwreck or Blowtorch or Barbecue or Dusty.

And then the bad guys had their own names, too, like Cobra Commander, Serpentor, Tomax, or Zemot, or the whole gang, right? Tochis, who was that? Tomax and Zemot. They were evil twins who were basically, they were like, if Cobra Commander had hired Patrick Bateman and then cloned him,

a mere version of him, it would be Tomax and Zemot. Interesting, I know none of this stuff. Right, right, OK, so I do, because I grew up with it. But I also had it pounded into my head every day after school watching the GI Joe cartoon. And that was the huge innovation that really just created this other world for kids like me to just lose yourself in with the action figures.

Because now you didn't even need to use your imagination. You could just be like, oh, I saw this on the GI 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, but here's the 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. And they said, should we ban or regulate this marketing to children? They put together 6,000 pages of testimony from 60, oh, the oral testimony, 60,000 pages of expert testimony

from all these experts on child psychology and health and nutrition, because it had to do with 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 intent of selling ads. They can't distinguish that from reality. Right, like if you dress up a cartoon as an ad,

the kid just thinks it's a cartoon, or she does. Exactly, or if the ad is a cartoon, rather than the kid doesn't know, they just think, I'm still watching cartoons 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, they basically said it was unfair and deceptive to kids. For older kids, they said they can tell the difference, but maybe we should have warnings on the ads and disclosures saying that this is a commercial message. 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 free trade in business. And so we're going to raise a record, at the time, $16 million to lobby against this. 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 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. And that is basically how all of these cartoons were born.

Right. Helped GI Joe, Transformers, Slurfs, Care Bears, Rainbow Bright, Care Bears Short Kins. Yeah, you name 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 GI Joe too was the, I don't know if it was formal or informal,

but there was basically a ban on war-like cartoons and war-like toys that was brought back under the same ease of restrictions by the FTC so that I think the percentage of war-like toys that was sold in the early 80s went up like 350% from one year over the other, from like 1983 to 84, I think. Whereas before, it was like, no, we don't. GI Joe's an adventurer, remember?

It's like, no, GI Joe's going to cut Cobra's head right off. So that's in 1980. That's one of the first big things Reagan did when he got into office. 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 just terrible sugary packaged food all over the place, like the restrictions were nowhere to be found. So Congress came back and said, you know what? This is out of hand. Here's a measure that will restrict once again and impose some legislation on this programming aimed at children. It passed the House by 328 to 78,

passed unanimously in the Senate, and Reagan vetoed it, and said basically what one of the things they were trying to do, they were trying to limit programming to advertising to 10.5 minutes an hour on the weekends and 12 minutes an hour in the weekdays and also require broadcasters to provide educational and informational programs as a condition of renewing their licenses.

So Reagan vetoed that and said, no way. We're not gonna do that. We're gonna keep it as is. People that were in favor of this went crazy basically. They were saying like, how can you guys say you're the party of the children 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, 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 our cartoons

that sell toys will give you a profit on those toys. So if you run these G.I. 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 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 large part to sell G.I. Joe's true, but it had great story arcs. It had overarching story arcs that went from episode to episode, the individual ones were good, like the voice acting was good, the animation was pretty good, same with Transformers too,

like it was pretty good cartoon. So at least they were putting time and effort and thought into this, but yeah, it's pretty despicable marketing to kids in general. Actually, I read a blog, I'm certainly glad you were a satisfied viewer, but I read this blog that basically said that, man, I wish I could find it, maybe I'll post this when we release it,

that the deregulation killed the creativity in children's cartoons. Well, yeah. And 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. That was too stupid to know it 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 bearer bunch.

Well, they loved the hair bears. They were drug fueled. But they're, yeah, yeah, that was a big one. But there, 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. Scooby-Doo was interesting and it was pretty cool, but it was basically the same story line

every single time. Like, what's Scooby-Doo? And I'm not trying to argue in favor of corporate America marketing the kids and ruining creativity, but like you don't, there weren't any overarching story lines 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 Napoleon and put them all together and created Sir Pentor, who was actually the new guy who was in charge of Cobra, because Cobra Commander was a bit of a coward. Did you not know any of this?

How do you not know this stuff? 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 it definitely helped shape me and 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 the kids, because this whole deregulation story is just fascinating. Yeah, I mean, 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 G.I. Joe, shape my childhood. You don't say.

It's just a tad. So, but prior to G.I. Joe, the first three and three quarter inch action figure in the U.S. as far as I know was the Star Wars line. And the Star Wars line, again, when Mego passed it up, they quickly realized that we really screwed up. They released like a Buck Rogers line and a Black Hole line.

You remember that movie, the Black Hole from Disney? It's really creepy, even still. But so they tried to catch up when they ended up going bankrupt in 1983, basically as a result of losing this Star Wars line. Sad. And so Kenner picked it up, picked up the Star Wars line instead and they released them right out of the gate

in 1978, which I believe was the first year that they released these things, these three and three quarter inch Star Wars line of action figures. In 1978, 1979, they made a hundred million dollars each year from selling those. 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 hundred 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 lawn mowing fund. Yeah.

Oh, for sure. I feel like I had at least doubles of most of the major characters, many of the minor characters, the TIE Fighter, the X-Wing, the Death Star. Oh, you lucky that you had all those. The Landspeeder, I also had the Big Dolls. I don't know if there were 12 inch, but I- What is it with you and Big Dolls?

Maybe 10, man, they're huggable. Yeah, I had 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, I would get.

And I was all in. I didn't know that these were collectible. Of course, I ripped right into them to play with. To play with them like normal children do. Sure. I didn't put it in a box on a shelf to try and keep it in mint condition, but- 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 became evident that you could sell them to people

who wished they had them in the package still for a lot of money. Yeah, and should we close later on with some of the more valuable ones? Yes, for sure. So that's a tease. Okay. Everybody.

Did you 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 gonna take a break and we're gonna come back and talk a little bit about the-how these things are actually made. On the podcast, Heydude, the 90's, called David Lascher and Christine Taylor, stars of the Cult classic show, Heydude, bring you back to the days of slip-dresses

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and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s.

Listen to, Hey Dude! The 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man.

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All right, so just to put a little bow on the action figure thing before we get into how they're made. You know, Transformers came along was huge throughout the 90s, then you saw Marvel and DC really come on the market. Every movie you could think of had action figures. TV shows started having action figures.

Older, popular movies started having action figures. Mm-hmm. Like for nostalgia's sake, like I literally had a Scarface doll. Oh yeah, I've seen that. A Scarface al Pacino that I used to have in the office. Did it come with a mound of cocaine? It did.

Plastic mound of cocaine? It did. And now, you know, you can find pretty much any kind of action figure you want from politicians to older movies and TV shows and 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 a very limited run of some where they're missing their thumb or it's mislabeled on the package to make these things, to make them valuable for the aftermarket, the collector's market, which seems really untoward to me. Like gaming 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 legend to me. Well, it was in one of the articles you sent and I took it, 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 contract because the right people weren't there? I don't know because the first thing I think of is 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, again, you found some good stuff here

when you put this together. Yeah, I thought this was pretty interesting. So it starts with design, right? Right, which means 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 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. 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. And then they kind of start to get to work from there. Yeah, rough Thor-ness is what they look for early on. And this depends on the action figure. There are all different kinds that have varying levels 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. They may choose to sculpt the arms separately, or maybe the legs separately. They almost always do the head separately, because it's got all this fine detail, and you just want to work on that by itself. Right, and when you're messing with the head,

your wrist is like going into the chest that you just finished, and why do I always do this not 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, once you've got this head and face like you want it, you're going to attach that back on,

build the neck, and build some hair. And if it's one that's completely plastic, you're going to do the clothes and everything, and the suit, sometimes you have real cloth, though, like in a cape, so you're not going to carve that, obviously. No, no, they'll add that later, and sometimes an action figure will come with a breastplate or boots or Thor's hammer,

or maybe they gave Thor kung fu grip, so you'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. It's like a big GI Joe, and that's just weird to people out. We want it plastic and molded, so they'll basically carve the clothing

out of the original sculpture as well. Yeah, and this all takes about two weeks on the... Of course, it depends on who you're working with, but two or three weeks to carve this dude out to its kind of rawest form. Yeah, I'm always incredulous and 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 talk to someone at the company, and they say, how long does it take? And they say, about two weeks. Yeah, that's good enough for me, then. All right, as long as they spoke to somebody. All right, so now you've got your little dude,

and you're going to use a plastic resin when it comes to the actual materials of the thing itself. There's something called ABS Acrylino. Wow, I thought I got it. You want me to try it? Sure. I think it's Acrylinitrile Butadiene Styrene. ABS, nice work.

Three types of plastic in one. That's right, so that's the harder plastic for the main body. They may use something like polypropylene or polyethylene for the various parts or pieces. You've got your fabrics, if you have capes and things like that. That's so weird. Well, no, I mean, even the little small figures had, had, like, the Jawas had capes.

Yeah, no, I know. Not capes, but cloaks. Now, I know, I remember. Weirded me out, too. And I think finally I understand what it is that I don't like about the large GI Joes. They had fabric clothing. And it was ill-fitting clothing, too.

Like, did you see, I don't know if you had it or not, but the original GI Jo, 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 guess it's not actually the size. It's 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 a son who 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 ball. All right, cool. So the manufacturing process, you got to create the mold next. You want a master mold, or maybe it might be more than one mold. And this requires the most time. They say in this article about two-thirds 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 have the molds,

then you also have to make a decision when you're making the molds. Do you want to 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 molds 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. And then you have to decide what kind of, what kind of, what's the word I'm looking for, where you actually make the plastic 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 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, 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 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,

they pump it into two pieces, and then they apply pressure to those two pieces to mold them together while it cools and hardens. But I think what you get there is, which is why probably they wanted to use the rotational molding, if you have those little Star Wars guys, or imagine GI Joe if they're injection molds, if you look at their body from the side, it's in two pieces.

And sometimes you can see a little seam on their head. Or on their arm or something, or probably on their arm, because those were separate. But yeah, sometimes you could see the seam where the two halves were pressed together. They wanted that smooth look for the rotational molding that that provides. But I guess the detail is the trade-off.

So that's the rotational molding. You don't have seams, but you lose fine detail. With injection molding, you can get the detail, but you can see the seams of where the two sides of the mold came together. I guess, but man, how bad could that detail have been? Because when you look at those early Star Wars figures, I mean, the detail is not great.

Had I been Mark Hamiller, I'd been like, this is what you think my face looks like? Yeah, I mean, they've gotten way better. Like the stuff they're making today is amazing. But it's almost too good. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, there's some amazing stuff out there, but that was one of the great things about these,

especially the three and three quarter inch guys, they just, they were meant to be played with. They were meant to have imagination bestowed on them and little child's hands. Yeah. 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 subtly downgraded from, you know, the stuff that's out today. They were downgraded to an upgrade. Yes. Like John Hodgman is literally screaming right now into his earbuds because we're nostalgic about something that was decidedly crappier. 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 quarter inch GI Joes? No, we should talk about that some more. All right. So you've got this mold now pressed together if it's injection, and then you have to assemble it if you have the arms separately, perhaps,

or basically anything else that doesn't come on that original mold. You're going to have to assemble it together. Put all the little finishing details, maybe the clothing that you hate so much. Maybe they're painted with a little more detail, 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 just, I don't know. I get it. I'm not quite sure how to put it. I'm just teasing. Yeah, yeah. So, I don't hate it.

I just really don't like it. The final key to this whole thing is packaging and shipping. So, you think big deal was a big deal with the package, but a lot of thought goes into the packaging, like you were talking about earlier with the GI Joe actually advertising the other dudes on the package. But that classic cardboard backed clear plastic casing. The shell?

Yeah, the shell. That was sort of became the standard. And what everyone came to think of is an action figure package. Yeah. And man, that was another thing with the wave of GI Joe's that I played with that really put a lot of time and effort and thought into the packaging. And that, I mean, that was definitely part of it.

Really helped sell the action figures in a lot of ways. Yeah. You know? Even though I tore right into it, like I said, I disregarded the package. Well, with the later GI Joe's, there was a card on the back that had like their code name, their specialty, their backstory,

and like you'd clip them out and collect those as well. Like it was definitely part of it. I collected the Star Wars trading cards too. 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, ooh, maybe there'll be some, you know, Ken Griffey rookie card in here worth five grand. So foolishly, I thought I had something of value,

which I did not. Yeah. But I went through and I had some weird cards that I don't even remember collecting. I had Welcome Back Codder cards. No. Oh yeah. That's twice that Welcome Back Codder's

main 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 Moody cards. I had lots of Star Wars cards. 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 did the same thing you did. I got all the boxes of baseball cards from my dad's house and I was like, where did I get all these football cards? Yeah. Who even collects football cards? You know, it's untoward.

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

Why is he holding that fist aloft? 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. We did. I don't think we pointed that out. A lot of times the molding process is in Asia. So that's one reason it takes so long. Right. Because they put them on slow boats. That's right.

So you kind of tease this earlier. 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 as far as which ones are the most valuable because 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 know. 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 our feet to the flame. Right. Yak face. I had not heard of yak face, had you? No. No. So yak face is one of Boba Fett's either guards

or mercenaries, but he worked for Boba Fett. Oh, no, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Star Wars people stop, stop, stop. He worked for Jabba the Hutt. 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, you've got to work into our actual aerial tables. He was part of the power of the force line. He was canceled. And you'll find that here's a common thread here. His 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 Star Wars figures, 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

in a very limited run. And then they sent him to Europe. I think in 1985, 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 were into 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 at the time that they were writing and making it. So we said, what can we do here? Why don't we pull out his heart and eat it? That's what I feel like.

Because that's what Nina did. All right. We Quay. So this is another Jabba the Hutz guard. Are you sure you didn't get those confused? I specifically went and looked up Yak face. And he works for Jabba the Hutz. They even gave Jabba the Hutz full name.

And I just remember the Jabba part. Oh, he had more than that? Yeah. The Hutz was, he was a member of the Hutz, like the race of Hutz or the tribe of Hutz. So it was Jabba the Hutz, like 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 of the other half that really went down the rabbit hole. Like, oh, who are still like into it as much as before? Yeah. And even back then, like new things like Jabba the Hutz full name. Oh, oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, I didn't know that. I never knew that stuff and never read the books or anything like that. Yeah. 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 when they're.

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 we just swatched the people who are into the books.

All right. So Weekway is another guard. Apparently it's not super rare, but there's a limited edition version that is worth more. So the carded mint condition, the power of the forest line in the 90s is worth a little bit more money. Right. This is $35? That's what it's worth?

No, no, no, that's what the normal one's worth. Oh, OK. 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. OK. According to this guy. All right.

I remember the vinyl caped jawa was always worth a lot of money because they came out with a cloth cape. I know, it's creepy. So I'm going to throw that in there just off the top of my head. There's also a think of vinyl caped in a cloth caped imperial guard. Remember the emperors red cloaked guards? And I think return of the Jedi, maybe Empire Strikes Back? I don't know.

I'm afraid to say anything out loud now. I am too. Let's just press stop. Let's skip that next one. Go straight to Boba Fett. How does that sound? Boba Fett very famously in 1979, there was a Boba Fett that actually shot a missile, which as every parent knows is a chocable.

Is it the parent's worst nightmare? Is that the term? A chocable? A chocable, something you can choke on. Is that a real parent's term? Yeah. That's awesome, I did not know. Yeah, supposedly anything smaller than the size of a toilet paper roll tube.

What? Is a chocable. Smaller than that? Yeah, so like if you can fit something through a toilet paper tube, then your kid can choke on it. Gotcha. That's what they say. Who says that? I don't know.

That makes sense though. Can't fit a football through that. Can't choke on a football. That's correct. He could choke on a tiny football though. I guess so. The chocable Boba Fett, obviously they said this is a choking hazard. They scrapped the plans and redesigned it.

They did eventually release the figure, but it had that. And I had this one, not 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. You sure it wasn't hacked? Here's the other possible explanation. I saw it on an ad and I'm confusing reality with television again. Because it says here they never released them in stores. I saw that too.

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 7 or 8. 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. But then I also saw one where supposedly a $100,000 offer at a Sotheby's auction was turned down. What? So I have no idea the value of these dudes, but it's a lot of dough. Is that the Holy Grail one? Well, this is one of the Holy Grails. Do you remember what another Holy Grail you saw was?

Yeah, the other one is supposedly the most valuable is the double telescoping lightsaber for Obi-Wan, Darth Vader, and Luke. And I think Luke's is the most expensive. If you remember the little, did you have any of these? I had a couple. The lightsaber guys had a thing on the bottom of their arm, a little groove cut out with a little plastic knob that you would shove up toward the wrist, and a lightsaber would come out of the hand, as if it were turning on. The double telescoping, because that's a telescoping feature. Double telescoping means that you could extend it even further out from the original telescope. And those supposedly are super rare and worth a lot of dough.

So that one I saw actually online. Man, I can't remember the site, but it's a great Star Wars action figure site. 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 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. Yeah, but even if I did have one, 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 slogan. So I would love some of this cleared up by experts. Oh, we'll hear from them.

The Boba Fett matter, yeah, I don't even know why I'm asking. The Boba Fett matter, which one is truly the Holy Grail? What happened with the Kenner, or not Kenner, the Migo Star Wars deal? Right. And did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone? Yes. We need answers, people. You got anything else?

I got nothing else. This is a big overview. There's clearly many more stories to be told. I got a couple, a couple more. I just want to give a shout out. All right. YoJo.com. Okay.

If you were into GI Joes and you want to feel nostalgic, go check that site out. It's amazing. 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 the 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 they've tried to come up with a new brand altogether,

but it's just some cheap version of something great. So go check that out, too. It's kind of cool. It was fun to put together. I bet. And that's, that's it, man. That's all I got. Go watch the GI Jo 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 GI Jo 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.

That's a delightful way to do it. But this time I won't be wearing gloves coming at your neck. That's it for me, man. Yeah. That's it for me. Okay. Well, if you want to know more about action figures, you can type those words into the search bar of your favorite search engine.

Since I said search engine and didn't do any buzz marketing, it's time for a listener mail. We're going to plug Kiva, which we haven't done in a long time. That's a good idea. Kiva is a micro lending website that we have been. We've had a team now. Stuff you should know team for, geez, how many years? Six or seven? I think it was 2008 or 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 how our team is looking. Hey guys, once I listened to a podcast where you promoted Kiva, I decided to Google the

Kiva donation thing. I actually found it correctly as kiva.com. I immediately love the site. It's the epitome of how to take the globalized world and use that for good. So often donations come in the form of awkward late night infomercials or five 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. While all types of donations are generally good, Kiva makes you feel even more personal

and once, one can certainly give their money to needs that are important to them. You probably get your money back, which is great, but no way did that motivate me to loan. And I suspect that most people who use Kiva 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 Kiva site again. Yeah.

In other words, re-loan. That's one of the keys. I think I'm feeling preachy now for writing you an email on the basis that I just loaned 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 Batchelor who claims to be a U.S. defector. You can move from the U.S. I can't remember where he lives now. He was just being cheeky.

I got to. So, we started this Kiva team a long time ago and right now we have over 9,000 members and we are almost at 4 million bucks, dude. That is insane. 3,993,325 dollars loaned. That is 143,155 loans. Man. An average of 16 loans per member.

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. I started off with a couple of hundred bucks way back when and that now, just because I keep reinvesting it, 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. You can take a little bit. You can take $25 even and keep re-loaning that and that in a few years, five or six years can be hundreds and hundreds of dollars re-loaned to people. Really makes a big difference. We did our research on Kiva. They're not perfect, but we think they do a really good job and we have 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. 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. They're led unofficially, but de facto by Glenn and Sonya, who have emerged to be these great team leaders that just keep everybody going and motivated and moderate and make sure everybody's on the up and up.

Yep, they send us emails and reminders about how we're doing. Hats off to those guys. Thank you guys for that. Yeah, so kiva.org, I think I said dot com earlier, and just go to the team section, search stuff you should know, join the team, throw $25 somebody's way. You can give to people that are doing things that are close to your heart, or maybe countries you've been to that you want to help support. 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 if you want to know even more about it, you can go listen to our episode on micro landing and you can, we've written a couple of blog posts on it and I think there's something on HuffPo even that they published of ours, but I think like why we land on kiva and it really addresses a lot of stuff that people have raised and we've said, hey, man, it's still totally worth it. Yep. Yeah, good.

Check it out. All right. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast or you can hang out with me at joshumclark. You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant, or you can visit our official Facebook page at facebook.com slash if you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com and as always join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com.

For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, hey dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, hey dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use hey dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to hey dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye.

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