You mean you’d pass up Kung fu Grip, flocked hair and Eagle eyes for a teeny angry man with a teeny plastic gun?!?!?
No Way.
12" dolls can’t have great accessories?
Don’t tell Barbie that.
As to the OP.
How could you ask if the USS Flagg was awesome. The awesomeness of the USS Flagg is self-apparent.
You should have it changed to "Just how freaking awesome was the USS Flagg?
You can get an idea of the scale from this picture. The deck was a little small, IIRC. The GI Joe fighter jet was much too big to take off from that thing, but it was close enough to fake it.
“Strutinize?” We’re getting into a Gaudere recursion loop, here. We’d better stop before we fracture the time-space continuum.
kingpengvin, exept for the very first run of figures, the 4" Joes had kung-fu grip, too.
This is actually something I’ve wondered about. I’d be interested to know just when you were a kid. As I was growing up here in America, there had been a steady progression of hit action figure series going from the 70’s through to the mid 90’s. You had He-Man, original GI Joe, then you had Star Wars, Voltron, and Transformers, little GI Joes, Thundercats, Ninja Turtles, then I guess Power Rangers, but what after that?
I know Power Rangers lasted for a long time, but it seemed to me that after the first couple seasons it lost a lot of ground. Sure there were toys for the Bruce Timm-produced DC superhero cartoons, but much like Ghostbusters in the 80’s, they didn’t seem to ever really reach GI-Joe/Transformer levels. The only thing I can think of during the long draught of the mid-late 90’s was the new Star Wars toys: where they a hit?
Kids had Pokemon and other stuff like that, but it always seemed like action figures just kind of faded away. Maybe I’m way off base, but I don’t really know of a cartoon & action-figure franchise that’s had the kind of success the previously listed stuff managed. Isn’t it mostly Pokemon/Yu-Gi-Oh!/Beyblade8 collectible stuff now? Lego’s done some really cool stuff I wish they had when I was a kid, has the bionicle stuff become the new action figures?
*I’ll be the first to admit GI-Joe and Transformers (generation 1) were little more than glorified 30-minute toy commercials, but at least they tried to have a narrative that wasn’t exclusive about how rare, awesome, and valuable this latest product is… and look at all it’s features! The couple times I watched Yu-Gi-Oh! to try and see what the fusss was about, it was always “My Blue-Eyes white dragon!” this, or “My Black Magician Girl!” that. Characters going on and on about these mighty cards! I mean, even Pokemon, with it’s insidious “gotta catch 'em all!” chant never quite descended to that level, IMHO. I loved the Penny Arcade jokes about what the next era of cartoon/merchandise franchising will be (The Merch!).
All the old action figure properties got brought back, H3Knuckles.
Toy Biz, a new company at the time, got the Marvel Comics license in 1990 and made Marvel superhero figures until late last year, when the license turned over to Hasbro. They got really good in about 2000, with the first release of super-articulated Marvel Legends figures.
Kenner made Batman/DC superheroes and Star Wars figures throughout the '90s until they got absorbed by Hasbro. Star Wars toys really peaked around the release of the prequel films, but they are still making them today, and people are still buying them. Hasbro relaunched its two most enduring original properties, G.I. Joe and Transformers, more than once over the last two decades, but there was rarely a year they weren’t coming out with new products. New interest in Transformers thanks to the movie has made the license more popular and successful than it has been since 1984, and G.I. Joes are once again going back to the basics with the current 25th Anniversary line (all 3 3/4" figures, of course).
Meanwhile, Mattel dusted off its classic '80s Masters of the Universe license in 2002, but while the new figures were far superior to the old ones, they didn’t market or distribute them well and the line died. Mattel currently holds the DC Comics license (including Batman and Superman), but despite making some great toys, distribution problems have plagued most of the DC-related lines from their inception. Most toy collectors agree Mattel knows how to sell Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels, but they have no idea what to do with action figures and are squandering the DC license with one boneheaded business decision after another.
McFarlane Toys, an upstart company founded by comic book artist Todd McFarlane, exploded onto the action figure scene in the mid-'90s and really changed the entire market for figures. They virtually ignored kids and made their products for older collectors, decreasing articulation and poseability while improving sculpting quality to make collectible, statue-like figurines of licenses most kids wouldn’t care about anyway. While McFarlane stuff isn’t as popular as it was in the '90s (which was insane back then, trust me on this), they definitely contributed in both good and bad ways to the modern state of action figures.
Then you have your anime-inspired lines, your Power Rangers, your Pokemon, and stuff that has always been kid-oriented from the beginning. Jakks Pacific has been making action figures of WWE wrestlers since the mid-'90s, and their quality has definitely improved over the years. Playmates had a huge hit with their Simpsons line, but it ended a few years ago when even collectors started losing interest in the fading cartoon.
Nowadays, most of the popular action figures (especially among collectors) are just the familiar trademarks and classic characters, sculpted nicer and made into cooler toys, 10 and 20 and even 30 years after their original releases. While the collectors’ market has grown, kids buy fewer action figures than ever, and the corresponding rise of video gaming is a major cause for that.
In the 70’s it was Major Matt Mason, the astronaut, & all his moonbase stuff.
I had his space station. Very cool, & in the Flagg zone.
I’m pretty ticked off about the Transformer situation.
I was hoping to get an Optimus Prime for my desk, but the only model I can find that actually transforms is this overpriced model.
It looks to be made of plastic. :mad:
I don’t know if there are others, but who can afford them at that price? Kids could definitely not afford something that costly.
Of course it’s made of plastic. All toys are made of plastic. Even in the '80s, most Transformers were made of plastic. Some had a few die-cast metal parts, but a lot of people misremember them as being all metal.
There is also the Voyager Optimus Prime, which is smaller, less detailed, and therefore less expensive than the Leader version:
thanks Lou, that was an interesting read.
Heh, I knew Hasbro was something of a monolith, but I didn’t realize they had absorbed Kenner and acquired the Marvel licensing rights from Toy Biz.
I had some Marvel toys around the early 90’s (I think they came before Fox even had that sucky X-Men Cartoon). They were pretty solidly built, but that’s about the only good thing I can say about them. They only looked okay, and they didn’t have much for features. But they held up to a hell of a lot of abuse. I guess I always thought of them as being kind of second- or third-tier as far as action figures went. shrugs
Check out these archives of Marvel action figures, if you want your socks knocked off:
http://www.marveltoys.net/ (Mostly the older 5" figures you remember from the '90s)
http://marvellegends.net/ (For the awesome Marvel Legends and related lines, from 2000 to the present)
Really big nothin…I once checked out some screenshots of the Flagg from the G.I. Joe cartoon. Sketchy model sheet reference and scaling aside, that baby was still obviously a lot bigger than a Nimitz-class carrier.
Anyway, for historical interest, I present a fairly good rundown of the U.S.S. Flagg.
And…a lovely conversion of the playset into a Cobra aircraft carrier, courtesy of Joecustoms.com. 
I had one in the '80s. I was going to give it to a g/f (long story) but we broke up so I kept it. I ended up selling it on eBay for a nice profit.
I just found this! The original commercial for the Flagg!
Now I’m more pissed that I never had one.
I had the Evil Knievel action figure, motor bike, and RV.
I had the Star Trek bridge playset.
But I never saw the U.S.S. Flagg! Wow! (Of course, the thing doesn’t look like it would have fit in my room anyway.)
I had the Flagg.
correction : I have the Flagg. Disassembled and in boxes, to be sure, but still in my possession, until I work up the motivation to send it sailing towards eBay.
And yes, it was awesome.