Action Figures purely brightens a little boy’s imagination

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The first G I Joe Action figures were developed at 12” in height inspired by some French figures with Napoleon attire that already at the time had some articulation. Then G I Joe was born.

G I Joe action figure was developed as a military man with different names for each category of armed personnel i.e. Rocky for Army and Marines, Skip for Navy, Ace for Air force pilot. G I Joe Action Figure was named as G I Joe after a Movie called “Story of G I Joe” by its creator Don Leven after he watched an old movie about a character called Ernie Pyle engaged as a war correspondent.

In 1966, the license to develop Action figures was given to a UK based company which released these as Action Man. After this other countries got licenses and followed suit. One of these licenses was given to a Japanese toy company by the name of Takara which created an Action Figure with Robotic parts but with the original Hasbro concept with the original size being 12”. But in 1970 due to the oil crisis and high cost of plastic to produce such big action figures Takara started developing smaller versions of action figures of 3 ¾ and  named them as micro man and released it in 1974. But in 1978, G I Joe toy line was discontinued for almost a year due to the oil crisis which led to increase in the price of plastic.

A toy line based on the popular movie Star Wars was introduced by a company called Kenner products.

They manufactured 3 ¾” size action figures to cut cost and although detailing was crude it was affordable to buy and produce and other accessories and vehicles were easy to design on smaller action figures.  Star wars dominated the toy industry for many years and by the 1980’s the G I Joe new line of comic books and animated cartoons became a merchandising success story to be repeated by the other companies.

Since the ban on TV shows based on toy product was lifted in 1983, a new era opened for the Action figure like He-Man, Thunder cats, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, Silver hawks, Transformers, Mask which is based on cartoon series became large marketing action figures. 

In late 1980’s action figures became more of a collecting hobby than playing with these figures because the children who played with these figures such as G I Joe and Star wars were adults and they preferred to collect them. These action figures became a collect’s pride and these were reserved in their original packing and kept them carefully so that someday it will appreciate in value.