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1971 Hasbro GI Joe Adventure Team Catalog

 My earliest memories of action figures are Hasbro’s GI Joe Adventure team, I would spend hours staring at those wishbook pages, drooling at those fuzzy faced guys having adventures.  The sights of these toys are so hard-wired in my brain, they’re pure happiness. That’s why I’m excited to be showcasing the 1971 Hasbro GI Joe […]

Banana Splits Mania

I’m a little young for the original run of the Banana Splits but their reruns are a really happy early memory. So I totally dig these pages from the 1969 Hasbro catalog,  I never knew how much merch they got. I especially would have loved these! I’m a sucker for bendy figures and these are […]

Palitoy Commander Power; Fearless Defender of the Galaxy

Fortune smiled on me last month in the form of managing to pick up a Commander Power action figure.  Known to us kids as Super Joe, the British toy firm Palitoy made some fun changes to the line such as marketing the characters (Palitoy only selected 3 Super Joe characters) in large boxes and more […]

The Lost Dark Crystal Toys

This toy trade ad from Spring 1982 showed a rather ambitious merchandise campaign for the Dark Crystal including Hasbro (actually their subsidiary Aviva) tapped for an action figure line. Like many Science Fiction and fantasy properties of the early 1980s, like Krull, V and the Last Star Fighter the action figures got left on the run […]

Live long and Prosper

I admit, I didn’t know I needed a 25 foot mylar Mr Spock Dragon Kite but now, I can’t live without it. I really need to be “That guy” in my neighbourhood, the “oh you know, the guy with the kite” guy.

GI Joe’s 50 Adventures

Moving things around yesterday I looked at the back of GI Joe package for the first time in years and was kind of blown away at how striking it is.  It really shows how powerful this artwork was, no wonder I’m a junkie for it some 40 years later. 

Jerry Lewis for Hasbro games

Jerry Lewis’s passing this week saw much reflection on his film and television career but I didn’t see any mention of his time as a games spokesperson for Hasbro.  Celebrity spokes people for games was an interesting phenomena in the 1970s and Lewis joined other notables such as Don Adams, Lucille Ball and Dick Van […]