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1978 European Big Jim Catalog

Mattel’s Big Jim line may have been gone from US toystores in 1977 but he had a long and prosperous life in Europe up until the mid 1980s thanks to some very creative moves. Big Jim was no longer just a sportsman/spy in this new world but a character free of the constraints of time, […]

The Origin of Slade

It should be obvious by now that I have a mild obsession with the Shindana Slade doll, which most would instantly recognize as being a non licensed doll version of Richard Roundtree in Shaft, it’s pretty obvious but as I explored a little further I noticed some other factors that inspired the so called “Super Agent’s […]

1975 Big Jim Catalog

Exit sportsman, enter Super Spy In 1975, things had started to wind down for the good natured adventures of sportsman Big Jim and his crew. A hasty insert to the toyfair catalog this year gives the first traces of the P.A.C.K and the direction that Big Jim would take for the remainder of his shelf life […]

The P.A.C.K on Clearance

Seeing this awesome (and now pretty darn rare) stuff marked down gives me the chills. When I was about ten or eleven, my mom took me to “Consumer’s Distributing” a catalog showroom store. I wandered around and found a book marked “Clearance items” in it was pages from their 70s catalog including spreads of Big […]

Filming a Big Jim Commercial

Just found this cool still of behind the scenes of filming the Big Jim P.A.C.K Beast commercial, you almost never see stuff like this but the main reason I like this is that it means there are commercials for Big Jim’s P.A.C.K out there! One of these days I will track these down, mark my […]

The 1975 Mattel Toys Show Room

Thanks to some tremendously thoughtful efforts from a good friend, I have a bit of toy history to unveil today. It’s one of those things I’ve always wanted to see but never thought possible. But these rare shots featuring both the massive Big Jim and Barbie displays for that year have finally been unearthed. While […]

Bozo gives away Mattel Toys

I’m loving this 1976 press release about Bozo and Mattel, a lot of the things being given away are really collectible right now. Of course my favourite of the shot is the Big Jim P.A.C.K Beast that is front and center. Look at that sweet Jack Kirby Goodness, all toy companies should have had the […]

Big Jim Pirates

While Big Jim was a memory in North America by 1978, European kids were getting cool new figures with kung fu grip hands. These pirates were mostly recycled P.A.C.K characters but they’re so cleverly done (especially the Zorak character) that it deserves praise.

Torpedo Fist Trading Card

The final new card is Torpedo Fist, one of my favourite action figures as a kid mostly because, he could punch other action figures! I didn’t plan on doing two Big Jim characters so close together but when Livio from Bigjim.es put this image on the fourm, it was just too tempting not to.As an […]