1980s | Vintage Action Figures

Jelly baby, anyone?! Tom Baker as Doctor Who’s Fourth Doctor

The BBC television science-fiction series Doctor Who, which will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary next year, owes its longevity in great part to a very clever device the writers dreamt up decades ago – when the Doctor is close to death he can regenerate into a brand new body. This has allowed a series of completely different actors to play our hero over the years, from the 1960s when William Hartnell as the First Doctor changed into the Second Doctor played by Patrick Troughton, right through to the present day and Doctor number Eleven as played by the rather wonderful Matt Smith.

Whilst Tom Baker, the Fourth Doctor may not be the very first Doctor I remember – that honour goes to his predecessor Jon Pertwee – the wonderfully eccentric and flamboyantly dressed Baker is certainly the Doctor I recall best from my childhood.

He IS the Law! G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero

After unleashing Dreadnok uber-villain Zanzibar from Hasbro’s G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero line a couple of weeks ago, let’s redress the balance by taking a look at one of the G.I. Joe Team good guys – the Military Policeman known as “Law”.

First released as part of the sixth series in 1987 Law was one half of the team “Law & Order”, with his sidekick being a mean-looking Alsatian K-9 police dog – code name “Order”. As his original G.I. Joe filecard warns: You don’t want to mess with him and that dog of his! I picked this Law up loose recently and Order was nowhere to be seen, but am still delighted with my find – he’s a classic and certainly my favourite of the 3 ¾ inch versions of Law.

It’s Ol’ Blue Eyes himself…Squid Head!

If poor old Walrus Man was a rare example of a Kenner Star Wars action figure which saw the toy company cutting corners on movie-likeness accuracy in the design, their work on Squid Head shows just how good they could be when at the very top of their game. Making his first outing on the Return Of The Jedi 65 back cards in 1983, this may be a later figure in the Star Wars original trilogy figures, but he’s certainly on my list of must-haves thanks to the sheer attention to detail.

And if don’t remember him from the movie…? Don’t feel bad – you may well have blinked when he appeared as an extraterrestrial extra seen in the background when Luke enters Jabba the Hutt’s palace!

Zanzibar the Pirate… so nasty the other Dreadnoks hate his guts!

Every toyline of action figure heroes needs bad guys to fight against and the G.I. Joe Team had the Cobra Command. A dastardly bunch, they hired the even meaner Dreadnoks as mercenaries to do their dirty work, and as action figure villains go, they just don’t get nastier than Dreadnok member Zanzibar. First released as part of the sixth series of Hasbro‘s hugely popular G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero toyline in 1987, he was packaged exclusively as the pilot of the Dreadnok Air Skiff toy and was issued with three useful accessories – a handgun, hammer and spear. According to his G.I.Joe file card this guy was “so nasty that the other Dreadnoks hate his guts!”

Don’t get this action figure wet! It’s Gizmo from Gremlins by LJN!

The 1980s were a wonderful time for the comedy horror movie, and two of my absolute favourites from that decade were released on the very same day on June 8, 1984 – Ivan Reitman’s Ghostbusters and Joe Dante’s Gremlins. Those pre-CGI times were something of a heyday for animatronics and puppetry workshops, and the marionettes created for Gremlins still look impressive to this day.

Gizmo the Mogwai here, may have looked cute and cuddly, but if three golden rules – never expose it to bright light; never get it wet; and never, ever feed it after midnight – were broken, it would spawn a brood of downright evil offspring capable of wreaking havoc!

The Real Ghostbusters Screaming Heroes: Egon Spengler

To kick off the New Year I thought I’d look at a vintage golden oldie from the hugely popular 1980s Kenner action figure line The Real Ghostbusters. First launched in 1986 as a tie-in product for the animated cartoon TV series of the same name, the series ran until 1991 when the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles won over fickle hearts and a younger generation, knocking Dr. Peter Venkman, Dr. Ray Stantz, Winston Zeddemore, and Dr. Egon Spengler from toy store shelves.

Kenner really raised the bar with these 5 inch figures, creating some of their most inventive toys ever – they may have only had 5 or 6 points of articulation, but every sub-series in the Real Ghostbusters line had an original interactive gimmick.

Kenner Super Powers: Firestorm!

Andy over at Action Figure Blues wrote a great review of two recent DC Direct Brightest Day figures – Mera and Firestorm. This has inspired me to take a look back at another classic Firestorm figure from one of my own absolute favourite vintage action figure lines – the Kenner Super Powers.

Kenner’s utterly cool version of Firestorm first appeared in 1985 as part of the second series, and was closely based on Al Milgrom’s designs in the comic book. Compared to other DC Comics characters in the Super Powers line, this character was somewhat of a new kid on the block back then,

Dracula – Mini Monsters by Remco

Halloween is almost here so what better way to mark the occasion than with an absolute classic horror film action figure from what has to be one of my favourite vintage lines – the Remco Mini Monsters.

This version of the most famous vampire of them all, Count Dracula as played by Bela Lugosi in the 1931 film Dracula, was issued in 1980 as part of Remco’s 3 ¾ inch action figure series. These figures may have been small, but they really were perfectly formed with all six Universal Monsters – Dracula, the Wolfman, Frankenstein, the Mummy, the Creature from the Black Lagoon and the Phantom of the Opera – bearing extremely accurate movie likenesses.