Mattel’s Heroes in Action
After the Vietnam war, toy soldiers sure weren’t such a hot item. G.I. Joe retired to beome an adventurer and the only soldier type toys were usually knock offs, many major companies shyed away from anything too military.
Mattel’s Heroes in Action were an interesting throwback to the 60’s, a 3 3/4″ action figure line that was part toy soldier and all man! These muscular, aggressive looking brutes even made a “rat-a-tat-tat” sound to simulate machine gun fire. In 1976, Mattel added a new line, the S.W.A.T Team, sadly the trend never caught on and Heroes in Action were retired this year. I’ve heard the line enjoyed more popularity in Europe, where war toys were still in fashion.
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Although I had a few figures from this line as a kid, it (like most Mattel figures at the time that weren’t Barbie) was a fairly low quality line.
A step above solid plastic soldiers, but nowhere near G.I.Joe or Mego as far as play value. They also re-used molds for the S.W.A.T. line.
Nice!
I wanted that S.W.A.T. van when I was little, I ended up with the Mego sized one, which was better in my young opinion!
I know this comment comes far to late for this post but I just had say something. I liked these a lot, they weren't great but they look as though they enjoyed killing whatever enemy they were fighting.
Still, to this day that disturbs me about them is when you attached them to the base, the long peg had to be inserted into it's ass.
I had a lot of them and some of the swat. I also had the chopper. They all reside in toybox heaven.
~UU~
useduniverse.blogspot.com
I had the base it was card board it had a gaurd tower and a hue transport chopper like the gun ship but no wepons and i also had the jeep to pull the canon and missiel luncher
I remember some more about the base it came with a hue chopper and a jeep that pulled a traler for the choper the jeep was big held three and one manned a machine gun in back i was six at the time remember the cannon could shot I lost all the shells and the missel could shot allso use to see ads for the line in comics
Where did that submarine come from? I dont remember that. I would have been all over that back in the day.
I thought the SWAT figures were cool. Wonder why they never caught on?