Stuff You Should Know - SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: A Partial History of Action Figures

Episode Date: December 12, 2025

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to the brothers Ortiz on the IHeart Radio. have Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Howdy, everybody. I hope everyone is having a loving and warm December with your friends and family. I'm here to introduce a classic episode for our 12 Days of Christmas Toys playlist. And this one's pretty good, if I remember correctly. It is a partial history of action figures. We all love action figures.

And if I'm not mistaken, we might argue once again about the superiority of the tall, full-sized G-add Joe's that I grew up with, but the little action figures that Josh grew up with. Let us know who's right. Thanks, everybody. Hope you love it. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from How StuffWorks.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 the podcast that's right i'm excited about this particular podcast chuck oh yeah put together this episode i should say well do you want to go ahead and announce the title for people that maybe didn't read it it is uh well you you you're going to select the title what's the title oh geez i don't know um 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 well 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 there I'm sure there are entire podcasts on action figures for sure yeah and if you do if you have a podcast on action figures write in let us know we'll will tweet it out for the people who's boat 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, like, I play with Barbies whether I wanted to or not, so I made the most of it. Yeah, I don't remember my sister having Barbies, but surely she did, right? Yeah, she was a girl in America from the 60s on.

Yes, she had a Barbie. Oh, no, my sister grew up in the Soviet Union. Oh, well, there you go. She had 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 action figures. like basically directly when when Mattel i think it was ruth handler who invented the Barbie doll right yes and when she when she and Mattel released it it was just a huge enormous hit and one of the big reasons Barbie was number one such a hit and number two so appealing to toy companies was that when you bought a Barbie your buying experience wasn't over there were always like more clothes and shoes and like my sister had the pool that you could hang out with and it had like a shower that actually worked 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 crack 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's 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 like 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, anytime you're the schmuck that comes up with the idea that you sell for even 782 grand and it goes on to be like hundreds of millions of dollar business you probably always kind of feel like I got taken for a ride a little bit I'm sure Stan Westman 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 GI Joe right well that's what we've been talking about we've talked about GI Joe a lot on the show so it feels appropriate that we sort of go down that rabbit hole

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

Yeah, that's a good way to look at it. Yeah. So, all right, here's a 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, it 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 and circled back to Rocky. They ran out of names and they all were identical except for their clothing. Yeah. As far as I know, right?

Wasn't their head different? Oh, I don't know. 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 from my own memory, which is that they were all the same dude and they were all Frank O'Harris.

Well, no, well, they came up with an African American one at one point in like the late 60s I think yeah yeah they changed with the times but to my recollection those original dudes and maybe I got in on the second wave maybe the original 60s ones were different but I only knew Frank O'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 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, a little plastic green men? We dump them out of the bucket

and one had a bazooka and he was always the best one. Yeah. And, 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. Because, you know, like you said, you could never move them. So to see those little dudes actually come to life was pretty awesome. You were like, oh, I've been dreaming of this day. I kind of was.

Thank you, DreamWorks. Oh, that's where they got the name. Was it DreamWorks, or was that Pixar? It was Pixar, right? I got it wrong. That's all 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 G.I. Joe and knowing it is half the battle from Smithsonian.com.

Written by Jimmy Stamp. What 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 knock-offs of G.I. Joe, but apparently early on in the process,

G.I. Joe was well known for that scar on his face, and I didn't even know this, he had an inverted thumbnail, and both of these were because of 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 accents, I guess. Yeah. And actually, I read also elsewhere, Chuck, that G.I. 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 G.I. Joe's to compete with

the knockoffs and dilute their market share. Yeah, it was called Defenders. And they 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? Yeah, very much. Gotcha. It was so kung fu.

Right. But he still looked like Franco Harris. But he still looked like Frank O'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 G.I. Joe, you as a kid were made immediately aware, whoa, whoa, whoa, there's other G.I. Joe's out there, and I want to collect them all. Some little kid came up with that, collect them all phrase, just in his little brain. Yeah, some little kid named Middle Age marking executive.

Don Levine. So not only that, but they had, you know, 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 jetpacking and send flying like between two trees Gotcha

And then I had the The submarine It was like a seawolf It was really cool How big was the submarine If you were playing with 12 inch G.I. Joe's It would 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 a little smaller than a bowling ball. How's that? Like a child's bowling ball. Yeah, because 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. That's nice. 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, G.I. 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 on a jungle adventure to save Sherpas, who were for some reason live in the jungle now. Yeah, and like you said, they called them adventure 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 Franco Harris. Right. And G.I. Joe, actually, it was taken from a night.

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 adventure, right? So G.I. Joe left. They stopped making G. G. 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 mego and we'll talk about mego after this break how about that sounds good hey hey hey hey hey hey what's you should know hey hey hey hey Harry Potter fans huge news Harry Potter the full cast audio editions are all being released

released on Audible on a monthly basis, and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is already out. You have never experienced the wizarding world like this before. They've taken it to another level. The cast is perfect. Hugh Lorry is Dumbledore, Matthew McFaddy and is Baltimore, Riz Ahmed is Snape, and Cush Jumbo as the narrator. And there are too many others to name. There's even a brand new musical score. And the sound design, you'll feel like you're right there. Footsteps echoing down the halls of Hogwarts, a golden snitch flying past your ear. The Hogwarts It's expressed rumbling out of platform nine and three quarters, and it's all in Dolby Atmos, which makes the wizardry even more magical.

Plus, these are the unabridged versions, even more awesomeness. As I mentioned, the first book is out, and the next installments in the series will be released every month until all seven are out. Go to audible.ca slash HP1 and start listening now. We often think we know our type in dating. Tall, funny, a certain job, but the research shows we're usually not the best predictors of who will actually make us the happiest. As we often say on the Happiness Lab,

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I've been saying Mego in my head just because I'm a dumb American. Well, I think Mago is probably how they say it in the U.K. Oh, was that where it came from? No, they're American. I say Migo. To be honest, I have no idea. I'm sure there is a right way

that Tommy Migo would love to tell you about or Tommy Mego but yeah I've said Migo 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 Migo. Let's just call the whole thing off. So go ahead with Migo.

So G.I. Joe's gone but again this was, you said it again counted 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 them, 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

Migo decided in I think 1971 or 1972 that a pretty good place to start would be releasing a line of action figures that were based on superheroes. And they released a line of superheroes called the world's greatest superheroes, action figures, in I think 1972. And it was a pretty big hit, like right off the bat. Yeah, and what they did was 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 now. 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 Ridler and things like the Batmobile and the Batcave play set? 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 a store, but at Montgomery Ward only, 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. And like Bruce Wayne worked there or something. Which, of course, he didn't even work. I don't know what I'm thinking. No. He just gave orders. They were making tons and tons of money.

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 Migo, too, was that all action figures had been like 12 inches tall up to that point, and Migo's line was eight inches. So action figures are starting to shrink a little bit now. That's right. And the one 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, you know, I'm well known to not have ever seen any Star Trek at all, except for maybe one movie or something. So I have no idea why I got that. 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 Meggo Really took it to another level Yeah Yeah They kind of They kind of Yeah Action figures were cool

And G.I. Joe It really started something But Migo 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 um like you don't

necessarily see that you didn't see that before with action figures it was more like hey you you know this guy just buy them this is like you're into star trek and so are we and here is some awesome place that's based on your love of star trek so migo definitely broke the mold in that in that sense as well um but they also like they were it for action figures like nobody could compete with migo um they would buy stuff from japan and then turn them into new stuff here um there was just no competing with migo in the 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 them the franchise. And now that I'm saying it out loud, like, yes, that's a ridiculously dumb story. Yeah. Them actually turning down the Star Wars line is, it's even better. It's even sweeter.

Like, man, what were you guys thinking? But, I mean, there'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 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 verifiable knowledge of that. Oh, for sure. George Lucas just let us know. And I mean verifiable, not...

Yeah, that's what I heard. I read the same blog. Exactly. I knew your nerd voice is. is going to come up in this episode. Well, sure, of course. So 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, M-E-G-O 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 they still somehow make me nostalgic, you know? Exactly. All right, so let's jump back a little bit to 1966.

And we're gonna explain how they went from eight inches, even though they were still making the eight inchers after 66, how they eventually got down to the three and three quarters inch. G.I. Joe was 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 G.I. Joe,

And then due to the oil crisis in the early 70s, they started developing smaller versions. So at three and three quarters inches, they developed Microman, released him in 1974. And that kind of led to this new thing, which was smaller dudes. And kids didn't care. 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 very, 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 G.I. Joes or the second wave

small G.I. Joes are better. All right, let me ask you, sir, have you ever held in your hands and played with a 12-inch G.I. Joe with a Kung Fu grip? I would not touch one. So you can't even say then. Have you played with the small one? Yeah, man, I had tons of small action figures. Oh, okay, all right.

Oh, did you have the Star Wars stuff? Oh, yeah. So you think the big one's superior? Well, yeah, it's 12 inches. It articulates 19 different ways. Ew. 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 one seemed better to me. All right.

At the very least, you have to admit, the wave of G.I. Joes that were released when I started playing with them, just the line itself was better, regardless of the size of them, right? Well, let's go ahead and talk about that. Because G.I. Joe changed a lot 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 G.I. Joe became a cartoon series.

This was in the early 80s. So this is when I had kind of quit playing with action figures for the most part. Okay. Because 83, 84, I was like 13 and, you know. I was moving on to, you know. Check out this mustache. Yeah, I was skateboarding by that point.

And I thought it was like super cool skateboarder. Yeah. Maybe I still played a little bit. So G. Just, only your neighborhood best friend knew about it. Your school friends did. Exactly. So G.I. Joe was a cartoon.

Then they, 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, this was, I was really just primed and ready. Yeah, I would just, let's go, Joe.

And plus also the other thing, too, that I had that you didn't have, was the cartoon that not only, like, blew up the backstories. Because this new wave of G.I. 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 Command or Cepentor or Tomax or Zaymott or the whole gang who was that? Toomax and Zaymot they were evil twins who were they were basically

they were like if Cobra Command had hired Patrick Bateman and then cloned him, a mere version of him, it would be Tomax and Zaymott. Interesting. I mean, I know none of this stuff. Right, right. Okay, so I do because I grew up with it.

But I also had it pounded into my head every day after school watching the G.I. 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 G.I. Joe cartoon today. So let's act that out. Right. And none of this would have ever happened had it not been for Ronald Reagan. That's right. And that sounds weird. But here's the story. So in the late 70s, there was a lot of concern about kids and advertising, about advertising two children. So the FTEs,

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 is, he just thinks it's a cartoon, she does. Exactly, or if the ad is a cartoon. Right. Rather than the kid doesn't know, they just think, I'm still watching cartoons on 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 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. Right. And so what happens when you do this in America? The private sector said, 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. Yeah.

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. G.I. Joe, Transformers, Smurfs, care bears. Rainbow Bright, Strawberry Shortcake. 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.

G.I. Joe, too, was the, I don't know if it was formal or informal, but there was basically a ban on on warlike cartoons and warlike toys. Yes. That was brought back under the same ease of restrictions by the FTC. So that I think the percentage of warlike toys that was sold in the early 80s went up like 350% from one year over the other. Yeah. From like 1983 to 84, I think. Whereas before it was like, no, we don't, G.I. Joe's an adventure, remember? It's like, no, G.I. Joe's going to cut Cobra's head right off. So that's in 1980.

That's one of the first big things Reagan did when he got in 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. Right.

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 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 going to do that, we're going to keep it as is. People that were in favor of this went crazy, basically. and 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 kind of got in bed together

and they said, you know what, if you schedule as a broadcaster are cartoons that sell toys, we'll 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, A Real American Hero, the cartoon, which I have to say it was created in large part

to sell GI Joe's true but it had 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.

Yeah. 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. Wow, 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 what was going on. They said that 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 harebear bunch. Well, loved the hare bears. They were drug-fueled. But they're, yeah, yeah, that was a big one. But their, I mean, their plots were pretty simple. It was the same plot that you would see on a Yogi Bear cartoon or like a Huckleberry Hound cartoon.

Scooby-Doo was interesting and it was pretty cool, but it was basically the same storyline every single time. Like with Scooby-Doo, and I'm not trying to argue in favor of corporate America marketing to kids and ruining creativity. But like you don't, there weren't any overarching storylines aside from Scooby being crazy for Scooby Snacks and Scooby-Doo. and there definitely was in G.I. Joe, like, when they went around the world and took the DNA of all of these great dictators and conquerors, like Alexander the Great and Napoleon, and put them all together and created Serpentor, who was actually the new guy who was in charge of Cobra, because Cobra Commander was a bit of a coward. 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 uh i i it definitely helped shape me and i i am nostalgic for it in that sense and i am appreciative but chuck i propose uh-huh that sooner than later we do an

episode on marketing to kids because this whole deregulation story is just fascinating yeah i mean i had i didn't really know anything about it because i was still a dumb kid when this is going on let's do it though okay agreed so that was g-i-jo shaped my childhood you don't 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 Migo passed it up, they quickly realized that we really screwed up. They released like a Buck Rogers line and a black hole line. Remember that movie, The Black Hole?

I do. From Disney. It's really creepy. still um but so they tried to catch up and they ended up going bankrupt in 1983 basically as a result of losing this star wars line sad and so kenner and so kenner picked it up picked up the star wars line instead and they released them and right out of the gate in 1978 which i believe was the first year that they released these things is three and three quarter inch star war's line of action figures um in 1978 1978 1979 they made a hundred

million dollars each year from selling those yeah they sold about 40 million units a year and from 1978 to 1985 which i think was the whole run of the star wars lines the original run with kenner kenner sold 300 million units so if they're selling 40 million a year and making a hundred million each year from that yeah 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? For sure.

I had, 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, duck. You had all those? The Lanspeeder. I also had the, the big dolls.

I don't know if they 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. Right.

I would get. And I was all in. I didn't know that these were collectible, of course. I ripped right into them. Oh, yeah. to play with them like normal children do. I didn't put it like in a box on a shelf to try and keep it in mint condition.

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. Should we close later on with some of the more valuable ones? Yes, for sure. So that's a tease. Okay.

Everybody. Should we take a break? Yeah, we should. Was that it about Star Wars, you think? I don't have anything else really. I mean, there's a gazillion of the 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 how these things are actually made. S-Y-Y-O-W-Y-S-K-S-K-K-K-K-K-K-B-B-T-B-T-V-E-T-V-E-S-E-H-P-Y-P-T-E-H-P-E-P-T-E-P-E-P-E-P-E-P-E-P-E-P-E-LINZOR. You have never experienced the wizarding world like this before. They've taken it to another level. The cast is perfect. Hugh Lorry is Dumbledore, Matthew McFaddy and is Baltimore, Riz Ahmed as Snape, and Cush Jumbo as the narrator. And there are too many others to name. There's even a brand new musical score.

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Canada's number one meal kit delivery service. 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. 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 he come with a mound of cocaine? it did plastic amount of cocaine it did uh and now you know you can find pretty much any kind of action figure you want from politicians to uh older movies and tv shows and like things you wouldn't even imagine people would like welcome back cotter action figures yeah and i didn't realize

this but apparently companies intentionally will release like a very limited run of some where like they're missing their thumb or like it's mislabeled on the package to make these things 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 legendy 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. But was that the same article from the guy who said that Kenner couldn't sign the contracts

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 you again you found some good stuff here when you put this together yeah i thought this is pretty interesting so it starts with design right right which i mean it's pretty sensible you say give us a thor character you sucker and um they're talking to an artist a sculptor when they say that so the sculptor gets to work like creating um like basically a skeleton it's called armature

out of wire and the wires in basically a position thor likes to run holding his hammer so he'll be kind of like in a crouched running pose um and then they slap some clay around it maybe bake it a little bit to make it stiff and then they mold very very roughly the general body shape and head shape of thor um and then they kind of start to get to work from there yeah rough thorness right is what they look for early on um and this you know it depends on the action figure, there are all different kinds that have varying levels of movement. And depending on what you're gonna end up with

is really gonna 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 wanna work on that by itself.

Right, and when you're messing with the head, you're just, oh, your wrist is like going into the chest that you just finished and like, why do I always do this and I have to start over? Pretty much. So they're working with this torso perhaps only, put him aside. Work on the arms, work on the hands, work on the head.

And eventually, once you've got this head and face like you want it, you're gonna attach that back on, build a neck and build some hair. And if it's one that's completely plastic. You're going to do the clothes and everything in the suit. Sometimes you have real cloth, though, like in a cape. So you're not going to carve that out, obviously. No, no. They'll add that later. And sometimes, like, an action figure will come with, like, a breastplate or boots or Thor's hammer. Maybe they'll, 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. That's like a big GI Joe, and that's just weird 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 of 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 is 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. Acrolineo Wow, I thought I had it. You want me to try it? Sure. I think it's Acrylo-nitrile, butodyene styrene. ABS, nice work.

Three types of plastic and 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 javas had capes yeah no i know not capes but cloaks

no i know i remember that weirded me out too and i think finally i understand what it is that i don't like about the large gi jo's 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 joe like some of them came with a raincoat But it didn't look like a raincoat. It looked like he was wearing a sleeping bag that had a drawstring around his face. Are 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 was 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've got to make his own clothing. You have to make clothing for him. This is the kind of

clothing you would make him. That's, I think, what creeps me out about it. Well, you're working through some stuff, so I'll check in with you at the end. We'll see exactly what it is you hate about the tall balls. Okay, all right, cool. So, uh, the manufacturing process, you've got to create the mold next. Uh, you want a master mold, or maybe it might be more than one mold. And, uh, this requires the most time. 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, and 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. 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 mold, 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, is if you have those little Star Wars guys, or I imagine G.I. Joe, if they were injection molding, If you look at their body from the side, it's into pieces, and sometimes you can see a little seam on their head or on their arm or something, or probably not on their arm, because those were separate. But yeah, sometimes you could see the seam

or 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. Yeah. With injection mold, 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, I mean, how bad could that detail have been? Because when you look at those early Star Wars figures, I mean, the detail was not great. No. You know?

Like, had I been, Mark Hamill, I've been like, does it's what you think my face looks like? Yeah, like they were... 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 it's... That was one of the great things about these, especially the three and three quarter inch guys, they just, they just, they were, they were meant to be played with. They were meant to have imagination bestowed on them and little child's hands. Yeah. It's not supposed to sit on your desk at work or something like that and just as adornment. Like they were meant to be played with, and they were, they were subtly downgraded from, you know, the 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 Sorry But it's true though for me

Like I think that they were They were great Have I told you how I feel about the 3 and 3 quarter inch G.I. Joe's? 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 arm separately perhaps or basically anything else that doesn't come on that original mold. You're gonna 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, the final key to this whole thing is packaging and shipping. So you think, big deal, what's the 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. Right.

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 that with the wave of G.I. Joes that I played with that really put a lot of time and effort and thought into the packaging.

And that, I mean, that was definitely part of it. That really helps 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 G.I. 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. And 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. Like, what? I had Welcome Back Cotter cards. No. Oh, yeah. That's twice that Welcome Back Cotter has made appearance in this episode. I was not expecting either one.

I like the show a lot, but I don't remember buying these cards. I had Jaws, the movie 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 great. Why is he holding that fist a lot? loft and then Chuck after the packaging it goes to the stores and little kids like us buy it and love it that's right that's the end of the manufacturing process wow what a journey yeah that was something we went all the way to China and back well he 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 so because they put them on slow boats that's right So you kind of teased this earlier,

the, 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 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 did you no so yak face was one of Boba Fett's either guards or mercenaries but he worked for Boba Fett No, no, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Star Wars people stop, stop, stop your email. He worked for Jabba the Hut. He's not the same person. You just caused three car accidents.

Three Toyota Priuses, just. Right. Liberty Mutual is going to be like, this Josh Clark, we've got to work him into our actuarial tables. Yeah, so he was part of the power of the force line. He was canceled, and you'll find here's a common thread here. is rarity is what makes something valuable and something can be a garbage figure

and they don't make many of them and then it becomes valuable. Right. And I think he wasn't necessarily a garbage figure. He was just released at a time when like Star Wars 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

and 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 to the Jedi. America was already like, who cares about Return of the Jedi? We're 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 in, making it. So we said, what can we do here? Why don't why don't he pull out his heart and eat it? Right. That's what I feel like. Because that's what Nina did. All right, Wequay.

Mm-hmm. So this is another Jabba the Huts guards. Are you sure you didn't get those confused? I specifically went and looked up Yack face. Okay. And he works for Jabba the Hutt. They even gave Jabba the Huts full name and I just remember the job apart. Oh, he had more than that?

Yeah, the Hutt was, he was a member of the huts, like, race of huts or the tribe of huts so it was java the hut like you know chuck the american gotcha well i think i'm on record as being like i'm a big star wars fan loved them saw them many many times collected the things but then it ended i'm not of the other half that really went down the rabbit hole what like oh who are still like into it as much as before Yeah, and even back then, like, knew things like Jabba the Hut's full name. Oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, I never knew that stuff. I never read the books or anything like that. Yeah. Ooh, 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, wasn't there?

Yeah, they still write them, too, I think, don't they? Sure. Hey, if it's a good thing. Sure. Right? Is that good? I think so. I think we assuage the people

who were into the books. All right, so Weekway is another guard. Apparently is not super rare, but there is 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.

This is $35? That's what it's worth? No, no, no. That's what the normal one's worth. Oh, okay. The one that has a special freeze frame slide, which I don't know what that is. Ah, gotcha.

That one's worth ten times that amount, 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 was creepy. So I'm going to throw that in there just off the top of my head. There was also, I think, a vinyl-caped and a cloth-caped imperial guard. Remember the emperor's red-cloaked guards in, I think, Return of the Jedi,

Maybe Empire Strikes Bank. I don't know, I'm afraid to say anything out loud now. Yeah, I am too. Let's just press stop. Let's skip that next one. Go straight to Boba Fett. How does that sound? Okay.

Boba Fett very famously, in 1979, there was a Boba Fett that actually shot a missile, which as every parent knows, is a chokeable. Is it the parent's worst nightmare? Is that the term, a chocable? A chocable. something you can choke on. Is that a real, like, parents' term?

Yeah. That's awesome, I did not know. Yeah, supposedly anything smaller than a, the size of a toilet paper roll tube. What? Is it chokeable? 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. The Today Show? Dumb parenting blogs.

No, it makes sense, though. Yeah. Can't fit a football through that. Can't choke on a football? That's correct. The system works. He could choke on a tiny football, though. I guess so.

It's chokeable. The chokeable boba fat, obviously they said this is a choking hazard. So they scrapped the plans and redesigned it. And so 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. Or...

You sure it wasn't hacked? Here's the other possible explanation. I saw it on an ad and a confusing reality with television again. Because it says here they never released them in stores. I saw that too. But I'm like, I swear I saw one of these things. Or maybe we were just playing with it and we're like, this thing sucks.

If it actually shot the missile, it'd be so much better. And I imagine what that would be like and then accidentally formed a memory. Who knows? I'm 40 years old now. I can't remember what was going on when I was seven or eight. As far as how valuable these things are, if you can get your hands on one,

I mean, I've seen things all over the place. One was sold for $18,000 last year. Wow. 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 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-1, 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. So 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. Yeah. As if it were turning on. Right.

The double telescoping, because that's a telescoping feature, a double telescoping means that you could extend it even further out from the original. telescope right and those supposedly are super rare and uh worth a lot of dough so that one i saw actually online um oh man i can't remember the site but it was it's a it's a great star wars action figure site um and they had a picture of it have you seen it yeah i thought i had one but i can't find it so i don't think i do like the the regular lightsaber that they had was just fine, but then the double telescoping part was just like this extra

thinner, pointy piece of plastic that hung down at like a weird angle. It didn't keep going straight. Yeah, they always kind of bent. And it looked just, it looked broken. 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 Fet matter.

Yeah, I don't even know why I'm asking. The Boba Fet matter, the, like 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 more. I just want to give shouts out. All right. If you were into G.I.J.J.O.S. 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 this slideshow of toys from around the world that are, it's pretty obvious what they're supposed to be.

but they're not like the name's just a little off or they've tried to come up with a new brand all together but it's just some cheap version of something great so go check that out too it's kind of cool yeah it was fun to put together I bet and that's that's it man that's all I got go watch the G.I. Joe PSAs by Eric Fensler again they still hold up oh yeah you remember those no where it was like a like just weird

dubs of those G.I. Joe PSAs Like, now you know annoying is half the battle. Yeah, yeah. You haven't seen these? I don't think so. Oh, okay. I'll send them to you. You're going to die laughing.

Good. Yeah, you'll love them. You've been trying to kill me for years. That's a delightful way to do it. But this time, I won't be wearing gloves coming at your neck. 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 listener mail. We're going to plug Kiva, which we haven't done in a long time. That's a good idea. K-I-V-A is a micro-lending website that we have been, we've had a team now, the stuff you should know team, for, geez, how many years, six or seven? I think it was 2008 or 2009, maybe.

Eight years, seven or eight years? It's been a while. All right, so this is from Jordan. then I'm going to go over a little bit more about how our team is looking. Hey guys, once I listen to a podcast where you promoted Kiva, I decided to Google the Kiva donation thing. It eventually found it correctly as k-I-V-A.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 to 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 what amounts to a small amount of cash, but I just want to thank you guys for sharing that site and allowing people like myself to make their lives better. That's from Jordan Batchelor, who claims to be a U.S. defector.

He moved from the U.S. I can't remember where he lives now. Oh. I see what you. He was just being cheeky. I got you. So we started this Kiva team a long time ago, and, um, Right now, we have over 9,000 members, and we are almost at $4 million, dude. That is insane. $3,993,3,3,000, $325 loan.

That is $143,155 loans, 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. 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. So you can take a little bit, you can take $25 even, and keep reloaning that. And that in a few years, five or six years, can be, you know, hundreds and hundreds of dollars re-loaned to people. Right. Really makes a big difference.

We did our research on Kiva. They're not perfect, but we think they do a really good job. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, we have the 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, 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 Sonia 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 and 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 it 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 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 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 microlending 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. Yeah.

And it really addresses a lot of stuff that people have raised, and we've said, hey, man, it's still totally worth it. Yep. Yeah, go check it out. All right. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast, or you can hang out with me at Josh Um-Clark. 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 stuff you should know. You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at How StuffWorks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, Stuff You Should Know.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit How StuffWorks.com. I know he has a reputation, but it's going to catch up to him. Gabe Ortiz is a cop. His brother Larry? A mystery Gabe didn't want to solve until it was too late.

He was the head of this gang. You're going to push that line for the cause? Took us under his wing and showed us the game, as they call it. When Larry's killed, Gabe must untangle a dangerous past, one that could destroy everything he thought he knew. Listen to the brothers Ortiz on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Stefan Curry, and this is Gentleman's Cut.

I think what makes Gentleman's Cut different, is me being a part of developing the profile of this beautiful finished product. With every sip, you get a little something different. Visit gentlemen's cut bourbon.com or your nearest total wines or bevmo. This message is intended for audiences 21 and older. Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, Boone County, Kentucky. For more on Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, please visit gentlemen's cuthuburn.com. Please enjoy responsibly.

Hey, everybody. As is our annual custom, we are raising money for our favorite charity, the Cooperative for Education, which helps break the cycle of poverty in Guatemala by making sure that kids who otherwise wouldn't have an education get to school. That's right. And here is this year's call to action. You can join co-ed for $20 a month to collectively sponsor students in the Rise Youth Development Program. And if you set up that gift by December 19th, you can have a chance to win a virtual Zoom hangout with Josh and I. We do it every year and it's a lot of fun. That's right. You can go to cooperative for education.org.

org slash sysk set up your $20 a month sponsorship you can also go make a one-time donation if you like and we may see you for a virtual hangout this January thank you for giving this is an iHeart podcast guaranteed human