Archives

The Six Million Dollar Man Trading Card

It pretty much had to happen, Card #20 is the Six Million Dollar Man and for good reason. My own mother will tell me how she was almost trampled to death at a Zellers store trying to get me this guy for Christmas 1975, (she succeeded) One of the problems of working on this blog […]

The End of the line for the Bionic Man and Woman

1978 saw the end of Kenner’s wildly popular Six Million Dollar man line. Despite dwindling sales, Kenner revamped Steve with “Bio Sonic” power and gave him a new villain to fight in the form of the Venus Space Probe. So while Steve Austin might have been on his way out, he certainly went with a […]

SEPTOR!

This is one from the “toys we never got” file. Sometime in the late Seventies, toy make Funstuf proposed this combination of Stretch Armstrong and a Cylon. Sadly, it doesn’t look Septor ever materialized, which is probably good for Funstuf because Kenner sued the pants off Mego back in the day for their Elastic Superheroes. […]

Hardy Boys by Kenner

The 1977 ABC TV series made the then fifty year old characters of Joe and Frank Hardy into super styling studs of the late seventies. These teen heart throbs didn’t go unnoticed by the good people at Kenner (seeing as they had more than their fair share of success with another ABC series) and in […]

Tree Tots

I mocked this stuff plenty when it came out (as a seven year old boy would upon seeing an icky girl’s toy) but honestly I’ve always thought this set was really cool. Please don’t call me a sissy, I really couldn’t handle that right now….

Star Wars is Gone it’s Sales “Force” isn’t….

December 12, 1977- “Star Wars” is gone, but don’t think it’s forgotten. Though the movie closed out a 20-week run in Traverse City last week, sales of spinoff merchandise still are expected to run strong this Christmas gift-buying season. The “Star Wars” collector can startwith authorized editions of paperback books, comics, calendars and iron-on transfers […]

1980 Kenner Stretch Armstrong Catalog

By 1980, Stretch Armstrong’s popularity had begun to decline, his roster of characters had dwindled down to two Gone were favorites such as Stretch Monster and Stretch Octopus, it was now just Stretch and his alien enemy X-Ray. Boxed Stretch X Ray courtesy of Bill Frost More Kenner Goodness:

Kenner’s Duke

Before becoming a true 70’s juggernaut with licensed lines like “Star Wars” and the “Six Million Dollar Man”, Kenner was more experimental with their action figure branding, often creating fun generic lines such as Steve Scout and Duke The Dog. Duke truly was an original concept, never had a toy line such as this been […]

Hugo: Man of a Thousand Faces

In 1975, Kenner produced a doll that was the brain child of special effects artist/director/writer Alan Ormsby who directed the film “Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things” and authored the classic scolastic book Movie Monsters which probably spawned a legion of Monster kids by itself. Hugo was a great concept, a puppet version of Lon […]