If they were handing out awards for the best dressed action figure of the 1970s then you can bet that Steve Austin's boss at the OSI - that's the Office of Scientific Intelligence to any readers too young to remember cult TV show The Six Million Dollar Man – the always dapper Oscar Goldman would certainly be in the running for top prize! Kenner did a wonderful job with this 12-inch figure – the attention to detail with his plaid jacket (including buttons), dazzling green turtle-neck sweater, … [Read more...]
The Six Million Dollar Man
Steve Austin, astronaut. A man barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster.
For anybody who was a kid in the 1970s these words, spoken over the opening credits of the cult TV series The Six Million Dollar Man, are etched in our collective memory. The title role of Steve Austin was played by Lee Majors, and like many a pop culture icon of that period, he soon found himself immortalized in the form of a 12-inch tall Kenner action figure, as were the characters of Steve's boss Oscar Goldman, and enemy Maskatron.
The Six Million Dollar Man action doll featured many interactive items such as a bionic eye that you could actually look through, a bionic arm that would lift items, and surely the most memorable feature - roll-back skin on the arm that revealed interchangeable and removable bionic elements. Indeed, these early figures with those removable bionic modules intact, are highly sought after by action figure collectors.
The Bionic Woman, a spin-off show starring Lindsay Wagner as Jaime Sommers spawned its own action figures of the star and her arch adversary Fembot.
The Six Million Dollar Man on a critical assignment…to Mars!
Gentlemen, we can rebuild him... We HAVE the technology! That was the promise made, week after week, during the opening titles of the hit 1970s television show The Six Million Dollar Man. It made total sense, therefore, when Kenner and General Mills acquired the toy license to manufacture the action figure spin-off merchandise in 1975, that kids should also be given the chance to rebuild their own 13-inch version of Steve Austin, the Bionic Man. The decision to make the Six Million Dollar … [Read more...]