With Halloween nearly upon us this seems like an excellent time to take a look at a recent vintage find that combines of two of my favourite action figure collecting passions – Universal Monsters and Mego. This wonderful Frankenstein Monster was released in 1974 as part of the Mad Monsters series, an offshoot of the hugely popular World's Greatest Super-Heroes 8-inch figure line. The set also included the Dreadful Dracula, the Horrible Mummy, and the Human Wolfman, and while they may have been … [Read more...]
Mego
The Mego brand name was synonymous with action figures during most of the 1970s. The Mego Corporation displayed enormous business acumen in its purchasing of the licensing rights to many successful movies, television shows and comic books, such as classics like Planet of the Apes and Star Trek, as well as their bestselling The World's Greatest Superhero line which featured Marvel and DC Comic book heroes.
Production features of interest:
- the Mego Bubble Card placed the clear plastic bubble containing the action figure in the middle of the card;
- action figures were made with interchangeable heads so that generic bodies could be more easily mass produced then transformed with the addition of only different heads or clothing;
- in 1976 founder David Abrams turned down an offer to license toys for a certain upcoming Sci Fi flick...that film was Star Wars!
The Mego Corporation closed shop for good in 1983 and vintage Mego action figures have since become highly collectible.
Ming the Merciless – The evil emperor of Mongo by Mego
Every super-hero needs an arch-nemesis, and every toy manufacture knows that too! Action figure giant Mego, the company behind some of the most collectible action figures made during the 1970s, even released an 8-inch “Super Foes” line in 1974 to mirror its Super-Heroes line. And when Mego launched a new 10-inch figure design in 1976 with a stunning Flash Gordon playset, one of the finest characters in the series, aside from Flash himself of course, was the big baddie in all three of the 1930s … [Read more...]
Flash Gordon – A Mego Masterpiece!
For kids growing up in the UK during the 1970s Saturday morning picture shows at the local cinema were a highlight of the week! This was a long time ago, of course, and it certainly feels like we were living in a galaxy far, far away...Indeed, in those distant, pre-Star Wars days a staple of kids programming was the 1936 sci-fi film serial Flash Gordon, starring Olympic swimming star Buster Crabbe in the title role, and Charles B. Middleton as his arch-enemy Ming the Merciless. A forerunner of … [Read more...]
Ernest Borgnine as Harry Booth – The Black Hole by Mego
One of the most unlikely – but nonetheless wonderful – additions to my vintage action figure collection over the last couple of months must surely be this beautifully detailed 12 inch Mego figure of legendary Hollywood and television character actor Ernest Borgnine. Borgnine died at the grand old age of 95 in 2012 after a glittering career, which saw him win an Academy Award for Best Actor in 1955 for Marty, and star in classics such as The Wild Bunch, The Dirty Dozen, and my personal childhood … [Read more...]
Maximilian Schell is Dr. Hans Reinhardt – The Black Hole by Mego
The Black Hole, Walt Disney’s 1979 sci-fi blockbuster, with its multimillion dollar state-of-art special effects and a star-studded cast featuring such notables as Ernest Borgnine, Anthony Perkins and Maximilian Schell, was clearly intended to be the studio’s answer to Star Wars. That was the plan, anyway. Instead the film has become one of those forgotten movies to which the epithet “cult” is often applied. My own memories of the movie were very dim, so I watched it again on DVD recently, … [Read more...]
Spider-Man: Mego Pocket Super Heroes
Kenner rightly deserves its place in toy making history for popularising the 3 ¾ inch figure through its vintage Star Wars line of the 1970s and 80s, with the huge success of the movie franchise proving to be a massive marketing lucky break for the company. The Mego Corporation definitely deserves a nod as the very first pioneer of the 3 ¾ inch scale, however, with their Comic Action Heroes line launched way back in 1976, and its revamped series three years later known as the Pocket Super … [Read more...]
Friar Tuck: Robin Hood and his Merry Men by Mego
The legendary Medieval outlaw Robin Hood has been a hugely popular figure in English folklore for centuries. Armed with bow and arrow and sword, he would steal from the rich to give to the poor, and then head back to his hideout in Sherwood Forest with his band of fellow “Merry Men”. With love interest in the shape of Maid Marian, and the Sheriff of Nottingham as his arch enemy, the story of Robin Hood has been a perennial favourite with Hollywood filmmakers since the early days of silent … [Read more...]