Action Figures

Action Figures

Many people out there will credit Hasbro with 12” GI Joe as the toy that started the action figure craze. And to be fair you would probably have to agree with that, but really it was the 1980's that just saw the action figure craze shoot to dizzying heights. It was actually though Hasbro who coined the term action figure. They did this to sell their GI Joe toy line back in the 60's to little boys who would not play with something that was called a doll. Once the action figure name was out there toy companies never looked back.

Star Wars is really what deserves the bulk of the credit for making boys (and girls too of course) just go nuts for action figures. After Star Wars action figures blew up all over the world you have toy companies falling over themselves to license the latest movie, comic book or Saturday morning cartoon. Or in some cases come up with their very own line of action figures.

In the early 70's before the Star Wars craze started. We had Mego making action figures. They had amazing success with their Marvel and DC line of action figures. As well as this they also had a few other lines such as Star Trek and Planet Of The Apes to name a few. Mego though did not get the rights to make Star Wars figures. And as a result Kenner would change the way that action figures were made.

The 1980's and 1990's just saw an action figure boom that has carried on to this day. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Masters Of The Universe, Gi Joe, Transformers, Thunder Cats and many more lines were created in the 1980's. Many 80's lines are still popular to this day. A Saturday morning cartoon and a line of action figures was a way for a company to just print money back then.

Towards the end of the 1980's collecting action figures was becoming more and more predominant. Keeping a cool figure in the packaging was something now that more than a few people would do. The action figure collector market was pretty big back then, but it was the introduction of the internet that really made action figure collecting grow.

Before for a collector you would have to deal with people via mail or at conventions and setting up a deal took quite a bit of effort. These days if you are looking for that G1 Transformers Starscream figure you can just jump online and within five minutes you can find one. The internet has made tracking stuff down so much easier, but at the same time it has also made it so that action figure collecting is more expensive now than it has ever been.

When it comes to toy collecting there is nothing bigger than action figures. It's not just the collecting of the action figures that is cool, but it's getting to meet and trade with other collectors with similar interests and the chance to relive a small piece of your childhood that make it such a fun hobby.