SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: A Partial History of Action Figures

Summary

Podcast Summary: Stuff You Should Know – "A Partial History of Action Figures" (SYSK’s 12 Days of Christmas… Toys)

Podcast: Stuff You Should Know
Hosts: Josh Clark & Chuck Bryant
Release Date: December 12, 2025

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Overview

In this festive episode, Josh and Chuck dive deep into the rich, quirky, and sometimes surprising history of action figures. From Barbie's influence and the dawn of G.I. Joe to the licensing booms of the '70s and the Star Wars toy phenomenon, the hosts trace the evolution of these beloved toys and how they shaped both the toy industry and the childhoods of generations. Along the way, they banter, reminisce, and shed light on the social, political, and manufacturing forces behind the rise, fall, and reboot of action figures.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Barbie’s Influence and the Birth of Action Figures

• Barbie set the template for ongoing toy sales, with accessories and add-ons that made her more than a one-time purchase (05:11).
• Toy companies coveted Barbie’s business model, but struggled to create an equivalent "doll" for boys.
• Stan Weston, inspired by Barbie’s multi-accessory model and his military buffs, proposes the "soldier doll"—but crucially, not calling it a "doll" (06:02).
• Hasbro VP Don Levine coins the iconic term "action figure" in 1963 (06:39).

Notable Quote

“No one had ever come up with a doll for boys. And that’s kind of what it required—coming up with a doll for boys. And no one had cracked that nut.” – Josh Clark [05:33]

2. G.I. Joe: The Original Action Figure

• G.I. Joe launched in 1964, available in 12-inch size with 21 moving parts; four different branches (Rocky, Skip, Ace).
• Unlike static toy soldiers, G.I. Joe was articulated and collectible—setting a new industry standard (08:02).
• Hasbro enforced the “action figure” term strictly, refusing to sell to retailers who called them dolls (14:00).
• G.I. Joe’s early success was immense, accounting for 66% of Hasbro’s 1964 profits (12:56).
• The Vietnam War causes sales to plummet; G.I. Joe is rebranded as an “adventurer” before going dormant (16:03).

Notable Quote

“You had toy soldiers before, but this guy could move… He was articulated so he could lift up his hand and karate chop you.”
– Josh Clark [13:12]

3. The Brand Wars & Licensing Era: Mego and Beyond

• Mego fills the G.I. Joe vacuum in the ’70s, launching 8-inch figures licensed from Marvel and DC—selling both good guys and villains (22:19).
• Their success comes from nabbing popular character licenses rather than inventing new ones (22:19).
• Mego’s big blunder: turning down the Star Wars toy license—letting Kenner make a fortune (27:00).

Notable Quote

“If you notice, that’s DC and Marvel characters in the same line. That’s unheard of today!”
– Josh Clark [22:43]

• Mego also innovates with playsets based on actual TV episodes, e.g., Star Trek’s ‘The Apple’ set (25:35).

Memorable Moment

The hosts try to suss out which “Star Wars missed licensing” story is true, ultimately favoring the explanation that Mego lacked vision:
“They didn’t want to invest…they said, ‘We’re not going to throw our money at every little thing that comes along.’”
– Chuck Bryant [27:31]

4. The Shrinking Action Figure: From GI Joe to Kenner’s Star Wars Figures

• Oil crisis in the 1970s prompts manufacturers (Takara in Japan) to shrink figures to 3 ¾ inches for cost savings (29:10).
• The smaller size leads to innovations: more affordable toys and more elaborate playsets.
• Josh and Chuck friendly-bicker over which era of G.I. Joe was superior: the original “big Joes” (Chuck’s pick) or “small Joes” (Josh’s nostalgia) [30:17–31:56].

Notable Quote

“These smaller ones are vastly superior to the older ones… They just seem better to me.”
– Josh Clark [30:17]

5. Cartoons, Deregulation, and Marketing to Kids

• Major legal and political shift happens in the '80s: deregulation lets toy companies and cartoons fully cross-pollinate, leading to properties like G.I. Joe and Transformers being designed as both shows and toy commercials (34:18–36:14).
• The Reagan administration’s FTC appointments and deregulation policies created an environment ripe for cartoons-as-merchandising-vehicles (36:28).
• Result: a surge in warlike toys, less creative programming (some critics argue), and a generation of kids blitzed by on-screen toy marketing (37:02–41:07).

Notable Quotes

“None of this would have ever happened had it not been for Ronald Reagan.”
– Chuck Bryant [34:18]

“I was too stupid to know [the decline in creativity]—I just thought it was awesome.”
– Josh Clark [40:57]

6. How Action Figures Are Made

• Design begins with a sculptor creating an armature, roughing out the pose and then shaping clay.
• Different plastics are used for various parts (ABS for bodies, polypropylene for accessories), occasionally fabric for clothes or capes.
• Molds are produced (the lengthiest part of manufacturing); injection and rotational molding discussed with their trade-offs (57:29).
• Packaging is an art form, intended to entice kids to collect the whole series (61:00).

Notable Quote

“They were meant to be played with. They were meant to have imagination bestowed on them and little child’s hands—not to sit on your desk at work as adornment.” – Josh Clark [59:44]

7. The Collectors’ Market & Legendary Rarities

• Certain Star Wars figures fetch thousands: "Yak Face", early missile-firing Boba Fett (never officially released due to “chokeable” hazard), and double-telescoping lightsaber figures are all highly prized (64:06–72:24).
• Collectibles’ value is driven by production errors, rarity, and packaging.

Notable Quotes

“There can’t be more than one Holy Grail.”
– Chuck Bryant [64:23]

“I specifically remember being in the same room with one that shot a rocket… Or maybe we just imagined that.”
– Josh Clark [70:25]

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On term “action figure”:
  "They would not do business with you if you were going to call it a doll as a retailer. This is an action figure."
  – Josh Clark [14:00]

• Cartoons as ads:
  “It had great story arcs... the voice acting was good... It was created in large part to sell GI Joe—it’s true.”
  – Josh Clark [39:52]

• Nostalgia vs. Collecting:
  “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, as a kid.”
  – Chuck Bryant [45:14]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |------------|-------------------------------------------------------------| | 04:51 | Barbie's influence and the genesis of boy's dolls | | 06:02 | Stan Weston & the invention of "action figure" | | 08:56 | G.I. Joe's key innovations & historical context | | 12:56 | Financial impact of G.I. Joe | | 14:00 | Importance of the term “action figure” | | 16:03 | G.I. Joe and the Vietnam War's impact | | 22:19 | The rise of Mego and licensing superheros | | 27:00 | Mego’s Star Wars blunder and toy licensing | | 29:10 | The shrinking of figures & Takara’s Microman | | 31:35 | G.I. Joe cartoons, Reagan, and deregulation | | 34:18 | How deregulation created cartoons-as-ads | | 41:07 | Creativity vs. commercialization in children’s programming | | 52:02 | Step-by-step: How action figures are designed and made | | 61:00 | Packaging and its marketing role | | 64:06 | Star Wars action figure rarities & collector’s market | | 72:24 | The double-telescoping lightsaber Holy Grail |

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Additional Tidbits & Fun Moments

• Friendly bickering over which size G.I. Joe was best (30:17–31:22).
• "Did you have the big Luke? Well, they're huggable." Chuck’s love for big dolls, to Josh’s amused horror (44:51, 55:15).
• Extended riff on the weirdness and ill-fit of fabric clothing on big action figures (55:47).
• Brief aside about the hosts’ trading cards collections (62:07).
• Boba Fett’s “chokeable” rocket and the parental toilet paper tube test for toy safety (69:21).
• Repeated plugs for listener corrections and nerdy fact-checks ("Stop your emails!" [65:05], meta-jokes about the “nerd voice” [28:44]).

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Resources & Shout Outs

• GI Joe nostalgia: YoJoe.com [74:10]
• Mego collectors: Mego Museum website [28:49]
• Action figure knockoffs: "Hilarious Knockoffs: Bootlegs of Beloved Toys" slideshow by Josh [74:13]
• Kiva microloans: Stuff You Should Know’s Kiva team (from Listener Mail segment, 75:26+ for details)

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Conclusion

Josh and Chuck succeed in both educating and entertaining, making this not just a timeline of toy history, but an accessible, nostalgic, and often funny exploration of why action figures matter and how they're more than just plastic—they’re a lens into pop culture, economics, and childhood itself.

Final Thoughts:

“There’s clearly many more stories to be told.” – Chuck Bryant [73:48]

Transcript

[Josh Clark]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Chuck Bryant]

Howdy everybody.

[Tour Announcer]

I hope everyone is having a loving and warm December with your friends and family. I'm here to introduce a classic episode.

[Chuck Bryant]

For our 12 Days of Christmas Toys.

[Tour Announcer]

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 size GI.

[Chuck Bryant]

Joes that I grew up with.

[Tour Announcer]

The little action figures that Josh grew up with. Let us know who's right. Thanks, everybody.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hope you love it.

[Josh Clark]

Welcome to Stuff youf should know from howstuffworks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles. Charles W. Chuck Bryant. 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 put together this episode, I should say.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, do you want to go ahead and announce the title for the people that maybe didn't read.

[Josh Clark]

Is. Well, you're going to select the title. What's the title?

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And if you do, if you have a podcast on action figures, write in, let us know. We'll. We'll tweet it out for the people whose boat this floated. And this, 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And Barbie actually makes an appearance in this one.

[Chuck Bryant]

Do you like to play with dolls?

[Josh Clark]

I like to play with action figures. I play with Barbies. I had older sisters, so like, I was. I played with Barbies whether I wanted to or not. So I made the most of it. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't remember my sister having Barbies, but surely she did, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, she was a girl in America from the 60s on. Yes. She had a Barbie.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, no. My sister grew up in the Soviet Union.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, well, there you go. She had a Martina.

[Chuck Bryant]

There probably was a Martina.

[Josh Clark]

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?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

And when she, when she and Mattel released it, it was just a huge, enormous hit. 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 cracked that nut. But Barbie made the whole thing all the more appealing, I guess.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

It's a bit of a racket.

[Chuck Bryant]

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?

[Josh Clark]

Actually, that's a big one.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Right? Yeah. Stan Weston approached Don Levine at, like, that toy fair and said, I got a great idea. And apparently he gave him a hundred thousand dollars just for the idea. And then he. Since he worked with Hasbro, he's like, guys, I've got a good idea here.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

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 GI Joe. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, that's what we've been talking about. We've talked about GI Joe a lot on this show, so it feels appropriate that we sort of go down that rabbit hole if we're going to be talking about action figures.

[Josh Clark]

Well, so. Well, yeah, because GI 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 GI Joe. And if you want to get feminist about it, every action figure, including GI Joe, ultimately came from Barbie.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's a good way to look at it.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So, all right, here's the deal that I never knew. GI 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 GI Joe was the collective name of all four of these Armed Forces dolls.

[Josh Clark]

You didn't know that?

[Chuck Bryant]

I thought the guy was Joe.

[Josh Clark]

No, the. The.

[Tour Announcer 2]

For my era, the guy.

[Josh Clark]

The main guy was Duke. And for your era, the main guy was Rocky.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, depends on which one you had. Okay, so there was. There was. Rocky was the army and the Marines. Skip. Skip was the Navy guy, and Ace was the Air Force guy, the fighter pilot.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So they. They ran out of names after name three, circle back to Rocky, they ran.

[Chuck Bryant]

Out of names, and they all were identical except for their clothing. Yeah, as far as I know. Right.

[Josh Clark]

Didn't. Wasn't their head different or was it the same. Was it the same face for each one? It was literally just. Their clothes were different.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 Franco Harris.

[Josh Clark]

Well, no. Well, they came up with an African American one at one point in, like, 60s, I think.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 Franco Harris.

[Josh Clark]

I gotcha.

[Chuck Bryant]

So maybe I just had Rocky.

[Josh Clark]

Maybe. So Rocky or Rocky? Which one?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I had Rocky, not Rocky.

[Josh Clark]

So they. They come out with this. This toy. And it's the first one of the big differences with GI Joe, because there were toy soldiers before, but did you ever have those, like, little plastic ones? The little plastic green men? We dump them out of the bucket and one had a bazooka and he was always the best one.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And. But. 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, you could do a lot more with them if you had imagination and.

[Josh Clark]

A lighter and a can of hairspray.

[Chuck Bryant]

Actually was delighted. It was Toy Story, right? Where they had those. Those guys come to life.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 to see those little dudes actually come to life was pretty, pretty awesome.

[Josh Clark]

You were like, yeah, I've been dreaming of this day.

[Chuck Bryant]

I kind of was.

[Josh Clark]

Thank you. DreamWorks.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, that's where they got the name.

[Josh Clark]

Was it DreamWorks or was that Pixar? It was Pixar. Right. I got it wrong.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

It's 100% Pixar. We're still going to get emails anyway, even though we just corrected.

[Chuck Bryant]

They're all working dreams.

[Josh Clark]

They are.

[Chuck Bryant]

So I read this great article called. Geez, what was it called Now? 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?

[Josh Clark]

Mm.

[Chuck Bryant]

The stamper.

[Josh Clark]

The Stampster.

[Chuck Bryant]

So I didn't realize this, but you can't. 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.

[Josh Clark]

That's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's crazy.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it is. And yeah, I guess they were. They were natural. Like, they didn't plan them or anything like that, but they just were happy accidents, I guess.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And actually, I've 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 Joes 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 Joes.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, it was a huge hit, though. It says here that they accounted for almost 66% of Hasbro's profits in 1964.

[Josh Clark]

That's insane.

[Chuck Bryant]

That is nuts.

[Josh Clark]

And that was the year it came out right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, like right out of the gate. It was a really big deal.

[Josh Clark]

And again, one of the reasons why was because you had toy soldiers before, but this guy could move. He had I think like 20, 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's where I came in.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, so he had kung fu grip when you knew GI Joe.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, very much.

[Josh Clark]

Gotcha.

[Chuck Bryant]

It was so kung fu.

[Josh Clark]

Right. But he still looked like Franco Harris.

[Chuck Bryant]

But he still looked like Frank O. Harris. Yes.

[Josh Clark]

And then the other big innovation was the. Was not an innovation at all. It was following the Barbie model, but for boys, it was, it was that this, this doll, which no one called the dollar. 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 Joes. This is an action figure.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

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 Joes 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, some little kid named middle aged.

[Josh Clark]

Marketing executive Don Levine.

[Chuck Bryant]

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, I had the jetpack, which you would attach to a string to simulate jetpacking and send flying like between two trees.

[Josh Clark]

Gotcha.

[Chuck Bryant]

And then I had the submarine. It was like a sea wolf. It was really cool.

[Josh Clark]

How big was the submarine? If you were playing with 12 inch GI Joes, it was. It take up the size of like the family room.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, this is not going to mean anything to anyone at home, but it's about the size of this lamp on our desk.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, so it was like a one man sub.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I feel like it was. I can't remember exactly. I feel, I feel like it was about the size of us. A little smaller than a bowling ball.

[Josh Clark]

Mm.

[Chuck Bryant]

How's that?

[Josh Clark]

Like a child's bowling ball.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Well, that's nice.

[Chuck Bryant]

And that's about all that we were. That's about all we could afford.

[Josh Clark]

That's. But that was probably quite an outlay from your parents.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, it's great. And that was over time, you know.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Several Christmases. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And it was actually kind of. I think it was. Actually went away from production for a while.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it did. They just. They basically retired them. I think the Vietnam War hurt sales, so they took him out a little bit and then they re released them again and kind of rebranded them, I think too, as rather. Rather than a soldier. They rebranded him as an adventurer. Right. So this machete is not for cutting off the hands of Sherpa who leads us into danger. It's for, you know, cutting through vegetation and on a jungle adventure to save Sherpas who are for some reason live in the jungle now.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And they, 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 him as a soldier. I thought of him as, you know. Well, I thought his name was Joe because I guess I was a dumb little kid. But I guess Rocky, the GI Joe adventure guy.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Slash Franco Harris.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And GI Joe. Actually it was taken from a 1945 movie called the Story of GI Joe. That's where that came from.

[Chuck Bryant]

Did you ever see that?

[Josh Clark]

No. No. Have you?

[Chuck Bryant]

No.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

I was just curious.

[Josh Clark]

So Chuck, GI 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. joes 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 Meego after this break. How about that?

[Chuck Bryant]

Sounds good. S Y S K S K.

[Public Sponsor]

Support for the show comes from public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. With AI it all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year. You can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like EFTs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you train transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures tired.

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[Tour Announcer 2]

Hey everybody, we're hitting the road again starting in January 2026, picking up again in April 2026 and eventually Canada will tell you year dates too.

[Tour Announcer]

That's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

We're going to do at least three.

[Tour Announcer]

Legs and the first leg is starting out in Denver, Colorado at the Paramount Theater on January 27th. We're going to go back to our beloved Seattle at the Paramount Theater there on the 28th, and then finally back at SketchFest on the 29th at the Sidney Goldstein Theater.

[Josh Clark]

Yep.

[Tour Announcer 2]

And then April 16th, 17th and 18th we're going to be in Madison, Wisconsin, Chicago, Illinois and Akron, Ohio. And if you're not keeping up with all this or taking notes, don't worry, you can get all the info you need and buy tickets@stuffyou should know.com. click on the tour button and thank us later.

[Tour Announcer]

That's right. We can't wait to see everybody again out there on the road.

[Chuck Bryant]

Alright. Is it Mego or Mego? I've been saying Mego in my head just because I'm a dumb American.

[Josh Clark]

No. Well, I think Mego is probably how they say it in the uk.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, is that where it came from?

[Josh Clark]

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, but. Or Tommy Mego, but. Yeah, I've seen. I've said mego in my head, but I don't know which one's correct, to tell you the truth.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, well, we'll just proceed thusly. I'll say Mego, you say Mego.

[Josh Clark]

Let's just call the whole thing off.

[Chuck Bryant]

So go ahead with mego.

[Josh Clark]

So. So G.I. joe'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 them 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 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 in, I think, 1972. And it was a pretty big hit, like, right off the bat.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And not just. Yeah, if you'll notice, that's DC and Marvel characters in the same line. Like, that's unheard of today.

[Chuck Bryant]

They did not discriminate back then.

[Josh Clark]

No, they did.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 vill 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.

[Josh Clark]

I know that was a real thing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or what was the other weird one? The store?

[Josh Clark]

Oh, they had. They had an exclusive with The Montgomery Ward store. So it wasn't like it wasn't a store, but at the. At Montgomery Ward only.

[Public Sponsor 2]

Oh.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, that makes much more sense. I thought they had a Montgomery Ward playset.

[Josh Clark]

That's what I thought at first too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like Bruce Wayne worked there or something, which of course he didn't even work. I don't know what thinking.

[Josh Clark]

No, he just gave orders.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And the other thing about Migo too, was that all action figures have been like 12 inch, 12 inches tall up to that point. And migos line was 8 inches. So action figures are starting to shrink a little bit now.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. And the one. The one I actually had, even though I have no idea why, I had the Star Trek Enterprise Bridge.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And then I guess 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.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

But you're into weird wizards. You still are.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, well, I am now as a grown up. I wasn't. As a kid. I was like, what is this thing?

[Chuck Bryant]

Gotcha.

[Josh Clark]

Some weird wizard.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah, they kind of. They kind of. Yeah, action figures were cool and GI Joe had really started something. But Mego. Yeah, they. 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 playsets was from one of the sets from an episode of Star Trek, the Apple episode. Like, you don't necessarily see there. You didn't see that before with action figures. It was more like, hey, you, you. You know this guy, Just buy him. This is like, you're into Star Trek and so are we. And here is some awesome playsets based on your love of Star Trek. So Mego definitely broke the mold in that. 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 US Even though a lot of people were. But they. They also dropped the ball in the most spectacular fashion anyone could ever drop the ball in the action figure world.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Like, they. It's almost. 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Yep.

[Chuck Bryant]

And allowed Kenner to pick it up.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. So how, though, which story is true?

[Chuck Bryant]

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. They want to be a little more discerning.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Tour Announcer]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

The. The other story is completed by the. Supposedly they weren't there. So Lucas went to another toy, went to Kenner, who was in the same building in New York. And I guess the people that could sign their name were there.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

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. If they have inside, like, verifiable knowledge of that.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, for sure. George Lucas just let us know.

[Chuck Bryant]

And I Mean, verifiable not. That's what I heard.

[Josh Clark]

I read the same blog.

[Chuck Bryant]

Exactly.

[Josh Clark]

I knew your nerd voice is going to come up in this episode.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, sure, of course.

[Josh Clark]

So if you. If you have a love amigo, or you just want to know what we're talking about also, go check out the Mego Museum Online. M E G O Museum. And it's just basically like this wonderful online museum dedicated to everything that Mego 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?

[Chuck Bryant]

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 1/4 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 1/4 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.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, you think?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So we've got 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 Joes or the second wave small GI Joes are better.

[Chuck Bryant]

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?

[Josh Clark]

I would. Would not touch one, so.

[Chuck Bryant]

So you can't even say then.

[Josh Clark]

Have you played with the small one?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, man, I had tons of small action figures.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, okay. All right. Oh, did you have the Star wars stuff?

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So you think the big one's superior?

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, yeah, it's 12 inches. It's. It articulates 19 different ways. You.

[Josh Clark]

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. 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right.

[Josh Clark]

At the very least, you have to. You have to admit the wave of GI 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

About that, because GI Joe changed a lot once it became a cartoon. And we're gonna 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 kind of quit playing with action figures for the most part.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

Because 83, 84, I was like 13 and, you know, I was moving on.

[Josh Clark]

To, you know, check out this mustache.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I was. I was skateboarding by that point. And I thought it was like, super cool skateboarder. Yeah, maybe I still played a little bit. So GI Here.

[Josh Clark]

Only your neighborhood best friend knew about it. Your school friends did.

[Chuck Bryant]

Exactly. So GI 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.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. Led by Cobra Commander.

[Chuck Bryant]

And this was your. Right. In your wheelhouse, correct?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So in 1983, I was like seven. So, yeah, this was. I was really just primed and ready. 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 each. 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. Their own names too, like Cobra Commander, Serpentor, Tomax or Zaymot or the whole. The whole gang. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Tochis. Who was that?

[Josh Clark]

Tomax and Zaymat. They were evil twins who were. They were basically. They were like if. If Cobra Commander had hired Patrick Bateman and then cloned him, a mere version of him, it would be Tomax and Zamot.

[Chuck Bryant]

Interesting. I know none of this stuff.

[Josh Clark]

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 GI Joe cartoon. And that was the huge innovation that really just created this. 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. And none of this would have ever happened had it not been for Ronald Reagan.

[Josh Clark]

That's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 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 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. The intent of selling ads. They can't distinguish that from reality.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Like, if you dress up a cartoon as an ad, the kid is. He just thinks it's a cartoon. Or she does.

[Chuck Bryant]

Exactly. Or if the ad is a cartoon.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Rather than the kid doesn't know. They just think, I'm still watching cartoons on my tv.

[Josh Clark]

My brain hasn't made that switch. But, man, could I go for some Smurf cereal.

[Chuck Bryant]

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. That they basically said 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.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Yep.

[Chuck Bryant]

And so we're gonna raise a record at the time, $16 million to lobby against this.

[Josh Clark]

Well. And they were helped out in no small part by getting the right guy into the White House.

[Tour Announcer]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

So in 1980, one of the first things Ronald Reagan did was he appointed a new chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. And this. This was a move that basically said, you know what? There is 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.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

GI Joe, Transformers, Smurf, Care Bears, Rainbow Brite, Strawberry Shortcake. Yeah. You name it. It basically became marketing and selling things, and cartoons became one in the same, finally.

[Josh Clark]

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 warlike cartoons and warlike toys.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

From like 1983-84, 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

So that's in 1980. That's one of the first. 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.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

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. 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 on the weekdays, and also provide. 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, they were saying, like, how can you guys say you're the. The party of the children and education and then veto something that is clearly going to help protect our children?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it was messed up, man. I had no idea about that one.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And not only that, the. 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, we'll give you a profit on those toys.

[Josh Clark]

Nice.

[Chuck Bryant]

If you run these GI Joe cartoons, then we'll give you a little cut of what we're selling.

[Josh Clark]

Plus also, we'll buy ads on those cartoons or on your network too, to sell those. Those toys. When you show these cartoons, I imagine, you know.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Because I remember watching GI Joe, Real American Hero, the cartoon which I have to say it was created in, in large part to sell GI Joe. It'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, 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Actually, I read a blog. I'm certainly glad you were a satisfied viewer.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

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. That the deregulation killed the creativity and killed in children's cartoons.

[Josh Clark]

Wow. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And that 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, but I.

[Josh Clark]

Was too stupid to know they said that.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

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 bear bunch. Well, they were loved, the hair bears.

[Chuck Bryant]

They were drug fueled, but they're.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah, that was a big one. But they're. 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 GI 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 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?

[Chuck Bryant]

I was, I was trying to kiss girls in the roller skating rink at this point. And you thought girls were gross still.

[Josh Clark]

It's true. It's true. But 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 that sooner than later we do an episode on marketing to kids because this whole deregulation story is just fascinating.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, I hadn't, I didn't really know anything about it because I was still a dumb kid when this was going on.

[Josh Clark]

Let's do it though.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, Agreed.

[Josh Clark]

So that was GI Joe. Shaped my childhood.

[Chuck Bryant]

You don't say.

[Josh Clark]

Just a tad. So. But prior to GI Joe, the first three and three quarter inch action figure in the US 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. Remember that movie, the Black Hole?

[Chuck Bryant]

I do.

[Josh Clark]

From Disney. It's really creepy even still. 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. 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, this 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. 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, off of me and my, 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.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, you lucky you had all those.

[Chuck Bryant]

The Land speeder. I also had the big dolls. I don't know if there were 12.

[Josh Clark]

Inch, but what is it with you and big dolls? Maybe ten.

[Chuck Bryant]

Man, they're huggable. Yeah, I had the, 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.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Public Sponsor 2]

Would get.

[Chuck Bryant]

And I was all in. I didn't know that these were collectible. Of course, I ripped right into them to play, 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.

[Josh Clark]

But that's weird to do though, as a kid.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I don't know. I mean, maybe there were kids doing it. I didn't know any. We all played with them, sure.

[Josh Clark]

But I mean, that was originally the point, I think. It wasn't until like much later that it, it became evident that you could sell them to people who wish they had them in the package still for a lot of money.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And should we, should we close later on with the. Some of the more valuable ones?

[Josh Clark]

Yes, for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

So that's a tease. Okay, everybody take a break.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, we should. Was that it about Star wars, you think?

[Chuck Bryant]

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?

[Josh Clark]

That's it.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, we're gonna take a break. We're gonna come back and talk a little bit about the. How these things are actually made. S Y L Y S K S K Skuff.

[Josh Clark]

You should know.

[Public Sponsor]

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[Tour Announcer 2]

Hey everybody, we're hitting the road again starting in January 2026, picking up again in April 2026. And eventually Canada will tell you year dates too.

[Tour Announcer]

That's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

We're going to do at least three legs.

[Tour Announcer]

And the first leg is starting out in Denver, Colorado at the Paramount Theater on January 27th. We're going to go back to our beloved Seattle at the Paramount Theater there on the 28th, and then finally back at SketchFest on the 29th at the Sidney Goldstein Theater.

[Josh Clark]

Yep.

[Tour Announcer 2]

And then April 16th, 17th and 18th, we're going to be in Madison, Wisconsin, Chicago, Illinois and Akron, Ohio. And if you're not keeping up with all this or taking notes, don't worry. You can get all the info you need and buy tickets@stuffyou should know.com, click on the tour button and thank us later.

[Tour Announcer]

That's right. We can't wait to see everybody again out there on the road.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 sake. Like, I literally had a Scarface doll.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah, I've seen that.

[Chuck Bryant]

A Scarface Al Pacino that I used to have in the office.

[Josh Clark]

Did it come with a mound of cocaine?

[Chuck Bryant]

It did.

[Josh Clark]

Plastic mound of cocaine?

[Chuck Bryant]

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 like, things you wouldn't even imagine people would like. Welcome Back Cotter action figures.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

So that is that verified. That sounds urban legendy to me.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Really.

[Josh Clark]

But was that the same article from the guy who said that.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know.

[Josh Clark]

That Kenner couldn't sign the contracts because the right people weren't there?

[Chuck Bryant]

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?

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so you want to talk about how these suckers are made.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Again, you found some good stuff here when you put this together.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I thought this is pretty interesting. So it starts with design, right?

[Josh Clark]

Right. Which it's 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 a. 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. 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Rough thorness is what they look for early on. 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 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 these. This fine detail and you just want to work on that by itself.

[Tour Announcer 2]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And when you're messing with the head, you're just. Oh, you're wrist is like going into the chest that you just finished. And why do I always do this knife to start over pretty much.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 gonna do the clothes and everything in the suit. Sometimes you have real cloth, though, like in a cape. So you're gonna. You're not gonna carve that out, obviously.

[Josh Clark]

No, no, they'll add that. 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 gonna be like, no, we don't want any of that weird cloth. That's like Joe. And that just weirds people out. We want it plastic and molded. So they'll basically carve the clothing out of the original sculpture as well.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

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?

[Chuck Bryant]

They probably just talked to someone at the company, and they say, how long does it take? And they said, about two weeks.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's good enough for me then.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right.

[Josh Clark]

If they. As long as they spoke to somebody.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so now you've got your little. Little dude, and you're gonna use a plastic resin. When it comes to the actual materials of the thing itself, there's something called ABS Acra. Acrylic.

[Josh Clark]

Wow.

[Chuck Bryant]

I thought I had it.

[Josh Clark]

You want me to try it?

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

I think it's acrylonitrile butadiene styrene.

[Chuck Bryant]

Abs. Nice work.

[Josh Clark]

Three types of plastic in one.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 got your fabrics. If you have capes and things like that. So weird. Well, no, I mean, even the little small figures had. Had, like, the jawas had capes.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, no, I know.

[Chuck Bryant]

Not capes, but cloaks I know, I remember.

[Josh Clark]

That 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 the. It was ill fitting clothing too. Like, did you see, I don't know if you had it or not, but the original G.I. 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

You sure it wasn't a sleeping bag?

[Josh Clark]

I'm pretty sure. It was supposed to be a raincoat, but I think that's what it was. It's just creepy, you know?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

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's the kind of clothing that you would make for a son who was. 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Hate about the tall boss. All right, cool.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Which makes sense.

[Chuck Bryant]

And it takes a few months. Again, is that arbitrary? Who knows?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, this guy's like, probably just takes a couple months. 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, 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 imagine GI Joe if they were injection molds.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

If you, if you look at their body from the side, it's in two pieces. And sometimes you can see a little seam.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's true.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 or where the two halves were pressed together. They wanted that smooth look for the, for the rotational molding that that provides. But I guess the detail is the trade off.

[Josh Clark]

So that's the, 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. That you can see the seams of where the two sides of the mold.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

No. You know, like, had I been Mark Hamillow, been like, this is what you think my face looks like?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, like they, I mean, they've gotten way better. Like the stuff they're making today is amazing, but it's almost too good.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

It was downgraded to an upgrade.

[Josh Clark]

Yes.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like, John Hodgman is literally screaming right now into his earbuds because we're nostalgic about something that was.

[Josh Clark]

Sorry, John.

[Chuck Bryant]

Decidedly crappier.

[Josh Clark]

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?

[Chuck Bryant]

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 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.

[Josh Clark]

It's not that I hate it. It's. It's just. I don't know.

[Chuck Bryant]

I get it.

[Josh Clark]

I'm not quite sure how to put it.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm just teasing.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Yeah. So I don't hate it. I just really don't like it.

[Chuck Bryant]

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. The GI Joe actually advertising the other dudes on the package. Right. But that classic cardboard backed, clear plastic casing.

[Josh Clark]

The shell.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, the shell that was sort of became the standard and what everyone came to think of as an action figure package.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Tour Announcer 2]

And.

[Josh Clark]

And man, that was another thing that, with the wave of GI 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. Really helps sell the. The action figures in a lot. A lot of ways.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. You know, even though I tore right into it, like I said, I disregarded the package.

[Josh Clark]

Well, with the later GI Joes, there was a card on the back that had, like, their code name, their specialty, their backstory, and like, you clip them out and collect those as well. Like, it was definitely part of it.

[Chuck Bryant]

I collected the Star wars trading cards too. Mm. 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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

But I went through, and I had some weird cards that I don't even remember collecting. Like, I had welcome Back Cotter cards.

[Josh Clark]

No.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

That's twice that welcome Back Cotter has made an appearance in this episode. I was not expecting either one. I like.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

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, I didn't. Where did I get all these football cards?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Who even collects football cards? You know, it's untoward.

[Chuck Bryant]

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

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it's pretty good. Why is he holding that fist aloft?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And then, Chuck, after the packaging, it goes to the stores, and little kids like us buy it and love it.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

That's the end of the manufacturing process.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wow. What a journey.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that was something. We went all the way to China and back.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Because they put them on slow boats.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

So you kind of teased this earlier. The. You found a list of the rarest Star wars figures.

[Chuck Bryant]

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. Wars figures.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So, you know, there can't be more than one Holy Grail.

[Josh Clark]

No.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

I think that was pretty smart.

[Chuck Bryant]

So no one Holds us our feet to the flame. Right, Yak Face.

[Josh Clark]

I had not heard of Yak Face. Had you?

[Chuck Bryant]

No.

[Josh Clark]

So Yak Face was one of Boba Fett's either guards or mercenaries. But he worked for Boba Fett. No, not. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Star wars people. Stop, stop, stop your email. He works for Jabba the Hutt. He's not the same person.

[Chuck Bryant]

You just caused three car accidents. Three Toyota Priuses, just right.

[Josh Clark]

Liberty Mutual is gonna be like this Josh Clark. We got to work him into our actuarial tables.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So he was part of the Power of the Force line. He was cancelled. 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.

[Josh Clark]

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. 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 to Jedi. America was already like, who cares about Return of the Jedi? We're into Temple of Doom.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

So we said, what could we do here? Why don't he pull out his heart and eat it?

[Josh Clark]

Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

That's what I feel like.

[Josh Clark]

Because that's what Tina did.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, Weequay, so this is another Jabba the Hutts guards. Are you sure you didn't get those confused?

[Josh Clark]

I specifically went and looked up Yak face. Okay. And he works for Jabba the Hutt. They even gave Jabba the Hutt's full name. And I just remember the Jabba part.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, he had more than that.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, the Hut was. He was a member of the Hutts, like, the race of Hutts or the tribe of Hutts. So Jabba the Hutt, like, you know, Chuck the American.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Oh. Who are still like into it as much as before.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And even back then, like new things like Jabba the Hutt's full name.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, oh, oh, yeah, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like I didn't know that. I never knew that stuff and never read the books or anything like that.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

I did have some of those comics though. I remember that now.

[Josh Clark]

I never had the comics. I was aware of the books. And there's a lot of books when they're.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. They still write them too, I think, don't they?

[Josh Clark]

Sure. Hey, if it's a good thing, sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right? Is that good?

[Josh Clark]

I think we assuaged the people who are into the books.

[Chuck Bryant]

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

[Josh Clark]

No, no, no. That's what the normal one's worth.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, okay.

[Josh Clark]

The one that has a special freeze frame slide, which I don't know what that is.

[Chuck Bryant]

Ah, gotcha.

[Josh Clark]

That one's worth ten times that amount according to this guy.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right. I remember the vinyl caped jawa was always worth a lot of money.

[Josh Clark]

Mm.

[Chuck Bryant]

Because they came out with the cloth cape. I know it's creepy, so I'm gonna throw that in there just off the top of my head.

[Josh Clark]

There was also, I think, a vinyl caped and a cloth caped Imperial Guard. Remember the. The Emperor's red cloaked guards and I think Return of the Jedi. Maybe Empire Strikes Back.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know. I'm afraid to say anything out loud now.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I am too. Let's just press stop.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 parents worst nightmare?

[Josh Clark]

Is that. Is that the term? A chokeable?

[Chuck Bryant]

A chokeable something you can choke on.

[Josh Clark]

Is that a real like parents term?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

That's awesome. I did not know.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Supposedly anything smaller than a. The size of a toilet paper roll tube. What is a chokeable smaller than that? Yeah. So like, if you can fit something through a toilet paper tube.

[Josh Clark]

Huh?

[Chuck Bryant]

Then your kid can choke on it.

[Josh Clark]

Gotcha.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's what they say.

[Josh Clark]

Who says that?

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know.

[Josh Clark]

The Today Show.

[Chuck Bryant]

Dumb parenting blogs.

[Josh Clark]

No, it makes sense, though.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Can't fit a football through that. Can't choke on a football.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's correct.

[Josh Clark]

The system works.

[Chuck Bryant]

You could choke on a tiny football, though.

[Josh Clark]

I guess so.

[Chuck Bryant]

The chokeable Boba Fett, Obviously, they. They said this is a choking hazard, so they scrapped the plans and redesigned it. And so they did eventually release.

[Josh Clark]

The.

[Chuck Bryant]

Figure, but it had that, and I had this one. Not the. The one that shot the rocket, because they never released that one. Right.

[Josh Clark]

I specifically remember being in the same room with one that shot a rocket or.

[Chuck Bryant]

You sure it wasn't hacked?

[Josh Clark]

Here's the other possible explanation. I saw it on an ad, and I'm confusing reality with television again, because.

[Chuck Bryant]

It says here they never release them in stores.

[Josh Clark]

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 7 or 8.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Wow.

[Chuck Bryant]

But then I also saw one where supposedly $100,000 offer at a Sotheby's auction was turned down.

[Josh Clark]

What?

[Chuck Bryant]

So I have no idea the value of these dudes, but it's a lot of dough.

[Josh Clark]

Is that the Holy Grail one?

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, this one of the Holy Grails.

[Josh Clark]

Do you remember what another Holy Grail you saw was?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. The other one is supposedly the most valuable is the double telescoping lightsaber for. For Obi Wan, Darth Vader, and Luke. And I think Luke's is the. The most expensive, if you remember the little. Did you have any of these?

[Josh Clark]

I had a couple.

[Chuck Bryant]

So the. The lightsaber guys had a thing on the bottom of their arm, a little groove cut out with a little. A little, you know, plastic knob that you would shove up toward the wrist, and a lightsaber would come out of the hand.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

As if it were turning on.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And those supposedly are super rare and worth a lot of dough.

[Josh Clark]

So that one I saw actually online. Oh, man. I can't remember the site, but it was. It's a. It's great. It's a great Star wars action figure site. And they had a picture of it. Have you seen it?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I thought I had one, but I can't find it, so I don't think I do.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. They always kind of bent, and it looked just.

[Josh Clark]

It looked broken, you know?

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Don't even talk to me if it's not mint. Yeah, that's the look. That's the slogan.

[Chuck Bryant]

So I would love some of this cleared up by experts.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, well, we'll hear from them.

[Chuck Bryant]

The Boba Fett matter. Yeah, I don't even know why I'm asking. The Boba Fett matter. The, like, which one is truly the holy Grail?

[Josh Clark]

What happened with the Kenner or not Kenner. The Mego Star wars deal.

[Tour Announcer]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone?

[Josh Clark]

Yes. We need answers, people. You got anything else?

[Chuck Bryant]

I got nothing else. This is a big overview. There's clearly many more stories to be told.

[Josh Clark]

I got a couple. Couple more I just want to give. Shouts 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, Bootlegs of Beloved Toys.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, that was great.

[Josh Clark]

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 names just a little off or. They. 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. Yeah, it was fun to put together, I bet. And that's. That's it, man. That's all I got. Go watch the GI Joe PSAs by Eric Fenzler again. They still hold up.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

You remember those? Mmm.

[Chuck Bryant]

No.

[Josh Clark]

Where it was like a. Like just a weird dubs of those GI Joe PSAs like now you know, annoying is half the battle.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

You haven't seen these.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't think so.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, I'll send them to you. You're gonna die laughing. Good. Yeah, you'll love them.

[Chuck Bryant]

You've been trying to kill me for years. That's a delightful way to do it.

[Josh Clark]

But this time I won't be wearing gloves coming at your neck. That's it for me, man.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's it for me.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

We're gonna plug Kiva, which we haven't done in a long time.

[Josh Clark]

That's a good idea.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

I think it was 2008 or 2009.

[Chuck Bryant]

Eight years. Seven or eight years.

[Josh Clark]

Wow, it's been a while.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 podcasts where you promoted Kiva, I decided to Google the Kiva donation thing and eventually found it correctly as kiva.com. i immediately love the site. It's. That'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 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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

In other words, reloan.

[Josh Clark]

That's one of the keys.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 Bachelor, who claims to be a U.S. defector. He moved from the U.S. i can't remember where he lives now. He was being cheeky.

[Josh Clark]

I gotcha.

[Chuck Bryant]

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. $3,993,325 loaned. That is 143,155 loans. 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.

[Josh Clark]

Wow.

[Chuck Bryant]

47 loans, and my default rate is only 4%.

[Josh Clark]

Nice. Yeah, the default rate is not bad at all.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's not bad. So you can take a little bit. You can take $25 even and keep reloading that, and that in a few years, five or six years can be, you know, hundreds and hundreds of dollars reloaned to people.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Really makes a big difference. We did our research on Kiva. They're not perfect, but we think they do a really good job.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

And, you know, we have a stuff you should know team, so we would love to see people sign up for it, Push us over that $4 million mark is crazy.

[Josh Clark]

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 Sonya, who have emerged to be these great team leaders that, like, just keep everybody going and motivated and moderate and make sure everybody's on the up and up and.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yep, they send us emails and reminders about how we're doing.

[Josh Clark]

Hats off to those guys. Thank you guys for that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, so kiva.org I think I said.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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And if you want to know even more about it, you can go listen to our episode 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 it's I think, like why we land on Kiva.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And it really addresses a lot of stuff that people have raised and we've said, hey man, it's still totally worth it.

[Chuck Bryant]

So yep, yep.

[Josh Clark]

Go check it out.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right.

[Josh Clark]

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 Wchuck Bryant. Or you can visit our official Facebook [e-mail] stuffyshouldknow. You can send us an email to stuff podcastowstuffworks.com and as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyou should know.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

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[Josh Clark]

Hey everybody.

[Tour Announcer 2]

We're hitting the road again starting in January 2026, picking up again in April 2026, and eventually Canada will tell you year dates too.

[Tour Announcer]

That's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

We're going to do at least three.

[Tour Announcer]

Legs, and the first leg is starting out in Denver, Colorado at the Paramount Theater on January 27th. We're going to go back to our beloved Seattle at the Paramount Theater there on the 28th, and then finally back at SketchFest on the 29th at the Sidney Goldstein Theater.

[Josh Clark]

Yep.

[Tour Announcer 2]

And then April 16th, 17th and 18th, we're going to be in Madison, Wisconsin, Chicago, Illinois and Akron, Ohio. And if you're not keeping up with all this or taking notes, don't worry. You can get all the info you need and buy tickets@stuffyou should know.com click on the tour button and thank us later.

[Tour Announcer]

That's right. We can't wait to see everybody again out there on the road.

[Josh Clark]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Chuck Bryant]

Guaranteed Human.