Fellow Crivvie Doctor Andrew May has decided to spoil us all once again with another guest post. This time he's looking back on one of the most popular toys for boys ever created, which is yet available today in 2024. Good toys never die, eh? Over to Andrew...
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I mentioned in a comment on this blog a few months ago that I still had some Action Man figures from the 1960s, so I'm grateful to Kid for this chance to say a bit more about them. The four that I still have are pictured above - they're lying flat on their backs because the internal elastic has become so loose they can't stand up on their own. Apart from that, though, they're in pretty good condition given how much I used to play with them. One of the brown-haired figures is missing a foot, and the yellow-haired one is minus both hands, but otherwise they've survived the years pretty well.
As you can see, these are all "first generation" Action Men with painted-on hair - originally bought circa 1966-67 when I used to play with them constantly with my best friend of the time, who was the same age as me and lived in the same village. We were constantly swapping toys between us, so the ones I ended up keeping weren't necessarily mine to start with. My own first Action Man was the yellow-haired one (who, as you can see, quickly got stereotyped as a German), though the oldest toy in the photo is the black-haired one on the left, which originally belonged to my friend and subsequently came to me in a swap.
At one point I also had an Action Man "Talking Commander", which I never really liked, as well as a Tommy Gunn - an Action Man clone from a different manufacturer (Pedigree), which I also didn't like much. I suspect I ended up swapping one or other of them for that black-haired Action Man, which was always my favourite.
Technically, in fact, that one isn't an Action Man at all but a G.I. Joe - the original American toy from which the first generation Action Man was copied. You can see this by comparing the inscription on the black-haired figure with one of the others:
The first one reads: "G.I. Joe reg. T.M. copyright 1964 by Hasbro (R) Patent Pending Made in Canada", while the second one says "Made in England by Palitoy under licence from Hasbro (C) 1964".
As discussed recently on this blog, Action Men weren't cheap - the equivalent of over £30 in today's money. But many years later my mother told me that, after initial misgivings about "boys playing with dolls", she and my father decided it was the best money they'd ever spent on me, because I played with them constantly from age 8 right up until I was 11 or 12. By that time I was too old for toys as such, but (with a new and more sophisticated circle of friends after starting high school), they became more like today's modern "collectors" action figures for adults, being put on display with different uniforms and equipment. I even remember adding stubble to one of the brown-haired figures to make a "Sgt Fury" lookalike!
Back in their early days, however, the figures really got their boots dirty fighting endless back-garden battles. Here's a couple of photographs from that era:
As you can see from the second of the above garden pictures, I used to have an Action Man "frogman" outfit in those days, complete with wetsuit and scuba tank. None of that's survived, but I do still have a few miscellaneous accessories - of which the most interesting (to me) is the spacesuit pictured below. The silver fabric is reminiscent of the iconic Mercury spacesuit (1961-63), but I think it's actually meant to be a Gemini suit (which would have been bang up to date at the time I bought it), because it includes a hand-held manoeuvring gun like the one used by Gemini astronauts on spacewalks.
It's been good to look back on my childhood playthings and I only hope that it's reminded you of many happy moments playing with your Action Men. Any of you still have them?
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Thanks, Andrew, for taking the time to prepare this post for your fellow Crivvies. I'm sure they'll have enjoyed looking back just as much as you did. Hopefully, they'll be so moved with nostalgia and emotion that they'll leave lots of lovely comments.
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