SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: A Partial History of Action Figures

27:05We want to be a little more discerning. Yeah, that one hurts. That hurts more than the other story. The other version was that the people who could sign the contracts were out of town when George Lucas came by to offer him the franchise. And now that I'm saying it out loud, yes, that's a ridiculously dumb story. Them actually turning down the Star Wars line is even better. It's even sweeter. Like, man, what were you guys thinking? But, I mean, there's lots of stories like that. Just somebody lacking foresight. Yeah, the other story is completed by, supposedly they weren't there, so Lucas went to another, went to Kenner, who was in the same building in New York, and I guess the people that could sign their name were there.

27:48Right. But I can't find that anywhere else except for this one blog where this guy says it's true, but I would love to hear from someone if they have inside verifiable knowledge of that. Oh, for sure. George Lucas, just let us know. And I mean verifiable, not... Yeah, that's what I heard. I read the same blog. Exactly. I knew your nerd voice was going to come up in this episode. Well, sure, of course. So if you have a love of Mego or you just want to know what we're talking about, also go check out the Mego Museum online, M-E-G-O Museum. And it's just basically like this wonderful online museum dedicated to everything that Mego ever put out.

28:29It's pretty cool. I wasn't even around when these things came out, They still somehow make me nostalgic, you know? Exactly. All right, so let's jump back a little bit to 1966. And we're going to explain how they went from 8 inches, even though they were still making the 8 inchers after 66, how they eventually got down to the 3 3⁄4 inch. G.I. Joe was licensing their stuff out to other countries. All over the place. There was a U.K. company who released it under the name Action Man. and eventually they licensed it to Japan to a company called Takara. They went on to create some action figures based on G.I.

29:08Joe and then due to the oil crisis in the early 70s, they started developing smaller versions. So at three and three quarters inches, they developed Microman, released him in 1974 and that kind of led to this new thing which was smaller dudes. and kids didn't care. No, no. Not only did we not care, so now we're starting to enter my wheelhouse. Not only did we not care, these smaller ones are vastly superior to the older ones. Oh, you think? Yeah. So we agree on a lot of stuff, but I would say this is the one thing that divides us more frequently than anything else is whether the original big G.I.

29:52Joes or the second wave small G.I. Joes are better. All right, let me ask you, sir. have you ever held in your hands and played with a 12 inch G.I. Joe with a Kung Fu grip? I would not touch one. So you can't even say then? Have you played with the small one? Yeah man, I had tons of small action figures. Oh okay, alright. Oh, did you have the Star Wars stuff? Oh yeah. So you think the big one's superior? Well yeah, it's 12 inches. It articulates 19 different ways. Ew! I like the small ones, I always will. Even after playing with the big one which I have not and never will. I just know that the small one is vastly superior.

30:31I don't know if it's because I am nostalgic for the small ones and the old ones seem weird and dusty and moldy or something like that, but the small ones seem better to me. All right. At the very least, you have to admit, the wave of G.I. Joes that were released when I started playing with them, Just the line itself was better, regardless of the size of them, right? Well, let's go ahead and talk about that. Because G.I. Joe changed a lot once it became a cartoon. And we're gonna talk about some really cool political stuff that had no idea went into this. But G.I. Joe became a cartoon series. This was in the early 80s.

31:14So this is when I had kind of quit playing with action figures for the most part. Okay. Because 83, 84, I was like 13 and, you know, I was moving on to, you know. Check out this mustache. Yeah, I was skateboarding by that point. And I thought I was like super cool skateboarder. Yeah. Maybe I still played a little bit. But just only your neighborhood best friend knew about it. Your school friends did. Exactly. So G.I. Joe was a cartoon. Then they, for the first time, basically it became a commando team, an anti-terrorist commando team. that had all kinds of characters, and they had finally had a common enemy, which was, of course, Cobra.

31:55Yes, led by Cobra Commander. And this was your right in your wheelhouse, correct? Yeah, so in 1983, I was like seven. So yeah, I was really just primed and ready. I would just, let's go, Joe. And plus also, the other thing, too, that I had that you didn't have was the cartoon that not only like blew up the backstories because each this new wave of gi joe when they released it um they each character now had its own name and it wasn't rocky or rocky it was things like um duke or shipwreck or blowtorch or barbecue or dusty um and then the bad guys had their own their own names too like cobra commander serpentor tomax or zamot um or uh the whole the whole gang right tochies who was that tomax and zamot they were evil twins who were they were basically they were like um if if cobra commander had hired uh patrick bateman and then cloned him a mere version of him it would be tomax and zamot interesting I mean I know none of this stuff Right right okay so I do because I grew up with it but I also had it pounded into my head every day after school watching the G.I.

33:22Joe cartoon and that was the huge innovation that really just created this other world for kids like me to just lose yourself in with the action figures because now you didn't even need to use your imagination you could just be like oh I saw this on the G.I. Joe cartoon today So let's act that out. Right. And none of this would have ever happened had it not been for Ronald Reagan. That's right. And that sounds weird. But here's the story. So in the late 70s, there was a lot of concern about kids and advertising, about advertising to children. So the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, got a task force together.

34:04And they said, should we ban or regulate this marketing to children? they put together 6 ,000 pages of testimony from 60 oh the oral testimony 60 ,000 pages of expert testimony from all these experts on child psychology and health and nutrition because it had to do with you know food and sugary candies and stuff like that too and the conclusion across the board was that young children cannot they are cognitively unable to understand the the intent of selling ads. They can't distinguish that from reality. Right. Like if you dress up a cartoon as an ad, the kid is, he just thinks it's a cartoon.

34:45She does. Exactly. Or if the ad is a cartoon. Right. Rather than the kid doesn't know. They just think, I'm still watching cartoons on my TV. My brain hasn't made that switch. But man, could I go for some Smurf cereal. Exactly. So it was a big deal at the time. So there were all these recommendations basically on how to regulate and restrict advertising that they basically said was unfair and deceptive to kids. For older kids, they said they can tell the difference, but maybe we should have warnings on the ads and disclosures saying that this is a commercial message. And so what happens when you do this in America?

35:25The private sector said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I want to be able to sell as much sugary garbage to kids as I want. You can't restrict free trade in business. And so we're going to raise a record at the time,$16 million, to lobby against this. And they were helped out in no small part by getting the right guy into the White House. Right. So in 1980, one of the first things Ronald Reagan did was he appointed a new chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. And this was a move that basically said, you know what? there's going to be no regulation whatsoever. You've got to leave these markets free.

36:06You can do whatever you want. And that is basically how all of these cartoons were born. Right. G.I. Joe, Transformers, Smurfs. Care Bears. Rainbow Bright, Strawberry Shortcake. Yeah, you name it. It basically became marketing and selling things and cartoons became one and the same finally. Yeah, and one of the other things that definitely helped G.I. Joe too was the, I don't know if it was formal or informal, but there was basically a ban on warlike cartoons and warlike toys. Yes. That was brought back under the same ease of restrictions by the FTC. So that I think the percentage of warlike toys that was sold in the early 80s went up like 350 percent from one year over the other.

36:55Yeah. From like 1983 to 84, I think. Whereas before it was like, no, we don't. G.I. Joe's an adventurer, remember? It's like, no, G.I. Joe's going to cut Cobra's head right off. So that's in 1980. That's one of the first big things Reagan did when he got into office. Flash forward to 1988 in November, one of the last things he did was he vetoed a new measure because basically they saw what was happening. All of a sudden, kids were being bombarded with war cartoons and just terrible sugary packaged food all over the place. Like, the restrictions were nowhere to be found. So Congress came back and said, you know what?

37:36This is out of hand. Here's a measure that will restrict once again and impose some legislation on this programming aimed at children. It passed the House by 328 to 78, passed unanimously in the Senate, and Reagan vetoed it. No. And said basically one of the things they were trying to do, they were trying to limit programming to advertising to 10.5 minutes an hour on the weekends and 12 minutes an hour on the weekdays. And also require broadcasters to provide educational and informational programs as a condition of renewing their licenses. So Reagan vetoed that and said, no way. We're not going to do that.

38:19We're going to keep it as is. People that were in favor of this went crazy, basically. They were saying, like, how can you guys say you're the party of the children and education and then veto something that is clearly going to help protect our children? Yeah. That was messed up, man. I had no idea about that one. Yeah, and not only that, what happened was, along with this deregulation, the toy companies and the cartoons they actually they kind of got in bed together and they said you know what if you show if you schedule as a broadcaster our cartoons that sell toys we'll give you a profit on those toys if you run these G.I.

39:03Joe cartoons then we'll give you a little cut of what we're selling plus also we'll buy ads on those cartoons or on your network too to sell those toys when you show these cartoons, I imagine. You know? Yeah. Because I remember watching G.I. Joe, a real American hero, the cartoon, which I have to say, it was created in large part to sell G.I. Joe's true. But it had great story arcs. It had overarching story arcs that went from episode to episode. The individual ones were good. Like the voice acting was good. The animation was pretty good. Same with Transformers too. It was a pretty good cartoon.

39:44So at least they were putting time and effort and thought into this. But, yeah, it's pretty despicable marketing to kids in general. Actually, I read a blog. I'm certainly glad you were a satisfied viewer. Yeah. But I read this blog that basically said that, man, I wish I could find it. Maybe I'll post this when we release it, that the deregulation killed the creativity in children's cartoons. Wow, yeah. And they said that before you know it, there were just like things were knockoffs of one another. They didn't care about, I guess, I mean, you were a kid, so maybe you didn't realize it. Yeah, I was too stupid to know what was going on.

40:22They said that you can see a clear demarcation line between really good storytelling and then storytelling that was clearly just geared to sell things. I guess I don't, I'm trying to compare like what cartoons were in the 70s. And like they were great. They weren't high art though. Again, I'll go back to that hair bear bunch. Well, they loved the hair bears. They were drug fueled. Yeah, that was a big one. But their plots were pretty simple. It was the same plot that you would see on a Yogi Bear cartoon or like a Huckleberry Hound cartoon. Scooby-Doo was interesting and it was pretty cool, but it was basically the same storyline every single time.

41:01Like with Scooby-Doo, and I'm not trying to argue in favor of corporate America marketing to kids and ruining creativity. but like you don't there weren't any overarching storylines aside from scooby being crazy for scooby snacks and scooby-doo and there definitely was in gi joe like when they went around the world and took the dna of all of these great these great dictators and conquerors like alexander the great and um napoleon and put them all together and created serpentor um who was actually the new guy who was in charge of cobra because cobra commander was a bit of a coward uh-huh did you not know any of this how do you not know this stuff i was i was trying to kiss girls in the roller skating rink at this point and you thought girls were gross still it's true it's true but uh i i it definitely helped shape me and i i am nostalgic for it in that sense and i am appreciative but chuck i propose uh-huh that sooner than later we do an episode on marketing to kids because this whole deregulation story is just fascinating.

42:05Yeah, I mean, I didn't really know anything about it because I was still a dumb kid when this was going on. Well, let's do it though, okay? Agreed. So that was G.I. Joe, shape my childhood. You don't say. Just a tad. But prior to G.I. Joe, the first three and three-quarter inch action figure in the U.S. as far as I know was the Star Wars line. And the Star Wars line, again, when Mego passed it up, they quickly realized that we really screwed up. They released like a Buck Rogers line and a Black Hole line. Remember that movie, The Black Hole? I do. From Disney? It's really creepy, even still. So they tried to catch up, and they ended up going bankrupt in 1983, basically as a result of losing this Star Wars line.

42:55Sad. And so Kenner picked it up, picked up the Star Wars line instead, and they released them. And right out of the gate, in 1978, which I believe was the first year that they released these things, this three and three quarter inch Star Wars line of action figures, in 1978, 1979, they made$100 million each year from selling those. They sold about 40 million units a year. and from 1978 to 1985, which I think was the whole run of the Star Wars lines, the original run with Kenner, Kenner sold 300 million units. So if they're selling 40 million a year and making 100 million each year from that, they sold 300 million total.

43:42So Kenner made some serious bank off of Star Wars. Yeah, off of me and my lawn mowing fund. Yeah? For sure. I feel like I had at least doubles of most of the major characters, many of the minor characters, the TIE Fighter, the X-Wing, the Death Star. Oh, you lucky duck. You had all those? The Landspeeder. I also had the Big Dolls. I don't know if they were 12-inch. What is it with you and Big Dolls? Maybe 10. Man, they're huggable.

44:20Yeah, I had the big Luke and the big, I think the big Luke and the big Vader and maybe like one other, maybe Chewbacca, but not all of them. And basically whatever I could either get for my birthday or Christmas or save my allowance to buy, I would get. And I was all in. I didn't know that these were collectible, of course. I ripped right into them to play with them like normal children do. I didn't put it like in a box on a shelf. to try and keep it in mint condition. That's weird to do, though, as a kid. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, maybe there were kids doing it. I didn't know any. We all played with them.

45:00Sure. I mean, that was originally the point. I think it wasn't until much later that it became evident that you could sell them to people who wished they had them in the package still for a lot of money. Yeah, and should we close later on with some of the more valuable ones? Yes, for sure. So that's a tease. Okay. Everybody, should we take a break? Yeah, we should. Was that it about Star Wars, you think? I don't have anything else, really. I mean, there's a gazillion other things we could talk about, I guess, but what more do you need to know besides that they were huge hits? That's it. All right, we're going to take a break and we're going to come back and talk a little bit about how these things are actually made.

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48:31All right, so just to put a little bow on the action figure thing before we get into how they're made. Transformers came along, was huge. Throughout the 90s, then you saw Marvel and DC really come on the market. Every movie you could think of had action figures. TV shows started having action figures. Older, popular movies started having action figures. For nostalgia's sake, I literally had a Scarface doll. Oh, yeah, I've seen that. The Scarface Al Pacino that I used to have in the office. Did he come with a mound of cocaine? It did. A plastic mound of cocaine? It did. And now, you know, you can find pretty much any kind of action figure you want from politicians to older movies and TV shows and, like, things you wouldn't even imagine people would, like, Welcome Back Cotter action figures.

49:22Yeah, and I didn't realize this, but apparently companies intentionally will release a very limited run of some where they're missing their thumb or it's mislabeled on the package to make these things valuable for the aftermarket, the collector's market, which seems really untoward to me. Like gaming the collector's market by manufacturers, that's just the opposite of what you're supposed to do. So is that verified? That sounds urban legend-y to me. Well, it was in one of the articles you sent, and the person who wrote the article sounded like they knew what they were talking about. Really? But was that the same article from the guy who said that?

50:05Oh, I don't know. That Kenner couldn't sign the contracts because the right people weren't there? I don't know, because the first thing I think of if they're doing that, then what's to keep them from artificially manufacturing something that's going to be valuable and just keeping a bunch of them themselves? Well, most companies like money now rather than a little more money later, so that would probably do it. Yeah, that's true. You know? All right, so you want to talk about how these suckers are made? Yeah, again, you found some good stuff here when you put this together. Yeah, I thought this was pretty interesting.

50:41so it starts with design right right which i mean it's pretty sensible you say uh give us a thor character you sucker and um they're talking to an artist a sculptor when they say that so the sculptor gets to work like creating um like a basically a skeleton it's called armature out of wire and the wire is in basically a position thor likes to run holding his hammer so he'll be kind of like in a crouched running pose. And then they slap some clay around it, maybe bake it a little bit to make it stiff, and then they mold very, very roughly the general body shape and head shape of Thor. And then they kind of start to get to work from there.

51:24Yeah, rough Thor-ness is what they look for early on. And this, you know, it depends on the action figure. there are all different kinds that have varying levels of movement. And depending on what you're going to end up with is really going to inform the process. But let's say you're Thor and you want to move your arms, move those big pipes a little bit. They may choose to sculpt the arms separately or maybe the legs separately. They almost always do the head separately because it's got all this fine detail and you just want to work on that by itself. Right, and when you're messing with the head, your wrist is like going into the chest that you just finished.

52:07And like, why do I always do this and I have to start over? Pretty much. So they're working with this torso, perhaps, only. Put him aside. Work on the arms, work on the hands, work on the head. And eventually, once you've got this head and face like you want it, you're gonna attach that back on, build a neck, and build some hair. and if it's one that's completely plastic, you're going to do the clothes and everything and the suit. Sometimes you have real cloth, though, like in a cape. So you're not going to carve that out, obviously. No, no, they'll add that later. And sometimes an extra figure will come with a breastplate or boots or Thor's hammer.

52:52Maybe they gave Thor kung fu grip, so you'll have to mold that also separately. But then sometimes, and you'll know this already probably as the designer, they're going to be like, no, we don't want any of that weird cloth. That's like a big G.I. Joe and that just weirds people out. We want it plastic and molded. So they'll basically carve the clothing out of the original sculpture as well. Yeah, and this all takes about two weeks. Of course, it depends on who you're working with. But two or three weeks to carve this dude out to its kind of rawest form. Yeah, I'm always incredulous and stuff like that.

53:28It's like, you know, who does it take two weeks? Is that really an average? Like how many action figure sculptors did you pull to find out that it was two weeks? They probably just talk to someone at the company and they say, how long does it take? And they say, about two weeks. Yeah. That's good enough for me then. All right. As long as they spoke to somebody. All right. So now you've got your little dude and you're going to use a plastic resin when it comes to the actual materials of the thing itself. There's something called ABS, acrylino. Wow, I thought I had it. You want me to try it? Sure.

54:04I think it's acrylonitrile butadiene styrene. ABS, nice work. Three types of plastic in one. That's right. So that's the harder plastic for the main body. They may use something like polypropylene or polyethylene for the various parts or pieces. you got your fabrics if you have capes and things like that so weird well no I mean even the little small figures had had like the Jawas had capes not capes but cloaks I know I remember weirded me out too and I think finally I understand what it is that I don't like about the large G.I. Joes they had fabric clothing and it was ill fitting clothing too like did you see I don't know if you had it or not, but the original G.I.

54:54Joe, like some of them came with a raincoat, but it didn't look like a raincoat. It looked like he was wearing a sleeping bag that had a drawstring around his face. You sure it wasn't a sleeping bag? I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be a raincoat. But I think that's what it was. It was just creepy, you know? Yeah. That was all. I guess it's not actually the size. It's the creepy factor brought on by this clothing that didn't fit quite right. Like, you know, it's the kind of clothing that you would make for a son who was a serial killer, but you didn't want to turn him in. So you just keep him locked in the basement and you got to make his own clothing.

55:32You have to make clothing for him. This is the kind of clothing you would make him. That's, I think, what creeps me out about it. Well, you're working through some stuff. So I'll check in with you at the end. We'll see exactly what it is you hate about the tall balls. All right. Cool. So the manufacturing process, you've got to create the mold next. You want a master mold, or maybe it might be more than one mold. And this requires the most time. They say in this article, about two-thirds of the whole time is spent making these molds. Yeah, which makes sense. And it takes a few months. Again, is that arbitrary?

56:06Who knows? Yeah. This guy's like, probably just takes a couple months. And then once you have the molds, and you also have to make a decision when you're making the molds. Do you want to make the torso and the legs together? Is he going to move his arms? If so, you probably want to do two different molds for the arms. So there's a pretty decent amount of decision-making work that goes into just coming up with what molds you're going to make. And then once you make the molds, then yes, you have to make the molds. You have to operate them. And then you have to decide what kind of, what's the word I'm looking for, where you actually make the plastic figure molding, which I should have been able to come up with because we were talking about molds at the time.

56:51That's right. So there's different kinds. I looked up one kind called rotational molding. Yeah. I guess that's what star Wars was going to try at first, but they lost too much detail on the figure. So they went to I think an injection molding process, but with rotational molding, you've got a mold and it's on this computerized arm and this arm just kind of spins around inside an oven and inside the arm is like powdered plastic resin. And I guess it just melts it by kind of slowly spinning it around. I don't understand what the problem is, but I guess injection molding is far superior. Yeah, I guess so.

57:30I mean, the deal with injection molding, uh, they, they pump it into two pieces and then they apply pressure to those two pieces to mold them together while it cools and hardens. But I think what you get there is, which is why probably they wanted to use the rotational molding, is if you have those little Star Wars guys, or imagine G.I. Joe if they were injection molds. If you look at their body from the side, it's in two pieces. And sometimes you can see a little seam on their head or on their arm or something. Or probably not on their arm because those were separate. But, yeah, sometimes you could see the seam where the two halves were pressed together.

58:11They wanted that smooth look for the rotational molding that that provides. But, yeah, I guess the detail is the tradeoff. So that's the rotational molding. You don't have seams, but you lose fine detail. Yeah. With injection molding, you can get the detail, but you can see the seams of where the two sides of the mold came together. I guess. But, man, I mean, how bad could that detail have been? because when you look at those early Star Wars figures, I mean, the detail looks not great. No. You know? Like, had I been Mark Hamill, I would have been like, this is what you think my face looks like?

58:42Yeah. Like, I mean, they've gotten way better. Like, the stuff they're making today is amazing. But it's almost too good, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, there's some amazing stuff out there, but that was one of the great things about these, especially the three and three-quarter inch guys. They just, they were meant to be played with. They were meant to have imagination bestowed on them and little child's hands. Yeah. Not supposed to sit on your desk at work or something like that and just as adornment. Like they were meant to be played with and they were subtly downgraded from, you know, the stuff that's out today.

59:19They were downgraded to an upgrade. Yes. Like John Hodgman is literally screaming right now into his earbuds because we're nostalgic about something that was. Sorry, John. decidedly crappier. Sorry. But it's true, though, for me. Like, I think that they were great. Have I told you how I feel about the three and three-quarter inch G.I. Joes? No, we should talk about that some more. All right, so you've got this mold now pressed together if it's injection, and then you have to assemble it if you have the arms separately, perhaps, or basically anything else that doesn't come on that original mold.

59:57You're going to have to assemble it together. put all the little finishing details, maybe the clothing that you hate so much. Maybe they're painted with a little more detail, that detail that you hate so much. And all the things that make a better action figure that you hate so much. It's not that I hate it. It's just, I don't know. I get it. I'm not quite sure how to put it. I'm just teasing. Yeah, yeah. I don't hate it. I just really don't like it. The final key to this whole thing is packaging and shipping. So you think big deal, what's the big deal with the package? But a lot of thought goes into the packaging, like you were talking about earlier with the G.I.

1:00:40Joe actually advertising the other dudes on the package. Right. But that classic cardboard-backed clear plastic casing. The shell. Yeah, the shell. That was sort of became the standard, and what everyone came to think of is an action figure package. Yeah, and man, that was another thing that with the wave of G.I. Joes that I played with, it really put a lot of time and effort and thought into the packaging. And that was definitely part of it. That really helped sell the action figures in a lot of ways. Yeah. Even though I tore right into it, like I said, I disregarded the package. Well, with the later G.I.

1:01:20Joes, there was a card on the back that had their code name, their specialty, their backstory, and you'd clip them out and collect those as well. It was definitely part of it. I collected the Star Wars trading cards too. It's funny, I went back and got all my old cards not too long ago, and I didn't collect a ton of cards. I thought, ooh, maybe there'll be some Ken Griffey rookie card in here worth five grand. Foolishly, I thought I had something of value, which I did not. But I went through, and I had some weird cards that I don't even remember collecting. Like what? I had Welcome Back Cotter cards.

1:01:56No. Oh, yeah. That's twice that Welcome Back Cotter has made an appearance in this episode. I was not expecting either one. I like the show a lot, but I don't remember buying these cards. I had Jaws, the movie cards. I had lots of Star Wars cards. Some weird, like, I mean, I had football cards. I didn't even collect football cards, I didn't think. Yeah, I went through, I did the same thing you did. I got all the boxes of baseball cards from my dad's house, and I was like, where did I get all these football cards? Who even collects football cards? It's untoward. It's weird, but the cool thing about the 70s cards is just the look when you could like, you had to back the camera off so you could fit the afro into the card and all these great haircuts and hairdos that all these guys had back then.

1:02:47Yeah. It's pretty great. Why is he holding that fist aloft? And then Chuck, after the packaging, it goes to the stores and little kids like us buy it and love it. That's right. That's the end of the manufacturing process. Wow, what a journey. Yeah, that was something. We went all the way to China and back. We did. I don't think we pointed that out. A lot of times the molding process is in Asia, so that's one reason it takes so long. Right. Because they put them on slow boats. That's right. So you kind of teased this earlier. You found a list of the rarest Star Wars figures. Yeah, and, you know, I looked at other lists, and they listed different figures, so I don't know if that's something that changes a lot as far as which ones are the most valuable because I literally saw at least two different ones that were described as the Holy Grail of Star Wars figures.

1:03:44Yeah. So, you know, there can't be more than one Holy Grail. No. So I do look forward to hearing from those in the know. But instead of saying these are the most valuable, let's just say we'll talk about some that are pretty rare and fairly valuable. I think that was pretty smart. So no one holds our feet to the flame. Right. Yak Face. I had not heard of Yak Face, had you? No. So Yak Face was one of Boba Fett's either guards or mercenaries, but he worked for Boba Fett. No, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Star Wars people, stop, stop, stop your email. He works for Jabba the Hutt. He's not the same person.

1:04:27You just caused three car accidents. Three Toyota Priuses. Right. Liberty Mutual's gonna be like, this Josh Clark, we gotta work him into our actuarial tables. Yeah, so he was part of the power of the Force line. He was canceled, and you'll find, here's a common thread here, is rarity is what makes something valuable. And something can be a garbage figure and they don't make many of them and then it becomes valuable. Right. And I think he wasn't necessarily a garbage figure. He was just released at a time when Star Wars figures sales in general were waning. So they sent him over to Europe. And this thing says that he was never released in the States.

1:05:11I saw that he was, but it was for a very brief time in a very limited run. And then they sent him to Europe. I think in 1985, where Return of the Jedi had just come out. So they were crazy for anything that had anything to do with Return of the Jedi. America was already like, who cares about Return of the Jedi? We're into Temple of Doom. Oh, yeah. Which I read an article about that recently. Supposedly, Temple of Doom was so dark because both George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were going through breakups breakups at the time that they were writing and making it. So we said, what can we do here?

1:05:49Why don't he pull out his heart and eat it? Right. Because that's what I feel like. Because that's what Tina did. All right, Weequay. So this is another Jabba the Hutt's guards. Are you sure you didn't get those confused? I specifically went and looked up Yak Face. And he works for Jabba the Hutt. They even gave Jabba the Hutt's full name, and I just remember the Jabba part. Oh, he had more than that? Yeah, the Hutt was, he was a member of the Hutts, like the race of Hutts, or the tribe of Hutts. So it was Jabba the Hutt, like, you know, Chuck the American. Gotcha. Well, I think I'm on record as being, like, I'm a big Star Wars fan.

1:06:32Loved them, saw them many, many times, collected the things, but then it ended. I'm not of the other half that really went down the rabbit hole. like, oh, who are still into it as much as before? Yeah, and even back then, like new things like Jabba the Hutt's full name. Oh, oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I didn't know, I never knew that stuff, I never read the books or anything like that. Yeah. Ooh, I did have some of those comics, though. I remember that now. I never had the comics. I was aware of the books, and there was a lot of books, wasn't there? Yeah, they still write them, too, I think, don't they?

1:07:06Sure. I think it's a good thing. Sure. Right? Is that good? I think we assuage the people who are into the books. All right, so Weequay is another guard. Apparently, it's not super rare, but there is a limited edition version that is worth more. So the carded mint condition, the power of the forest line in the 90s is worth a little bit more money. Right. It says$35? That's what it's worth? No, no, no. That's what the normal one's worth. Oh, okay. The one that has a special freeze frame slide, which I don't know what that is. Ah, gotcha. That one's worth 10 times that amount, according to this guy.

1:07:52All right. I remember the vinyl-caped Jawa was always worth a lot of money because they came out with a cloth cape. I know, it was creepy. So I'm gonna throw that in there just off the top of my head. There was also, think of vinyl-caped and a cloth-caped Imperial Guard. Remember the Emperor's red cloaked guards in I think Return of the Jedi, maybe Empire Strikes Back? I don't know. I'm afraid to say anything out loud now. Yeah, I am too. Let's just press stop. Let's skip that next one. We'll go straight to Boba Fett. How does that sound? Okay. Boba Fett, very famously, in 1979, there was a Boba Fett that actually shot a missile, which as every parent knows is a chokeable, is the parent's worst nightmare.

1:08:43Is that the term, a chokeable? Yeah, a chokeable, something you can choke on. Is that a real parent's term? Yeah. That's awesome, I did not know that. Yeah, supposedly anything smaller than the size of a toilet paper roll tube. What? Is a chokeable. Smaller than that? Yeah, so like if you can fit something through a toilet paper tube, then your kid can choke on it. Gotcha. That's what they say. Who says that? I don't know. The Today Show? Dumb parenting blogs. That makes sense, though. Yeah. Can't fit a football through that. Can't choke on a football. That's correct. The system works. He could choke on a tiny football, though.

1:09:24I guess so. It's chokeable. The chokeable Boba Fett, obviously they said this is a choking hazard, so they scrapped the plans and redesigned it. And so they did eventually release the figure, but it had that, and I had this one, not the one that shot the rocket, because they never released that one, right? I specifically remember being in the same room with one that shot a rocket. Or, here's the other possible explanation. I saw it on an ad in a confusing reality with television again because it says here they never release them in stores I saw that too but I'm like I swear I saw one of these things or maybe we were just playing with it and we're like this thing sucks if it actually shot the missile it'd be so much better and I imagine what that would be like and then accidentally formed a memory who knows I'm 40 years old now I can't remember what was going on when I was 7 or 8 As far as how valuable these things are, if you can get your hands on one, I mean, I've seen things all over the place.

1:10:33One was sold for$18 ,000 last year. Wow. But then I also saw one where supposedly a$100 ,000 offer at a Sotheby's auction was turned down. What? So I have no idea the value of these dudes, but it's a lot of dough. Is that the Holy Grail one? Well, it's one of the Holy Grails. Do you remember what another Holy Grail you saw was? Yeah, the other one is supposedly the most valuable, is the double telescoping lightsaber

1:11:04for Obi-Wan, Darth Vader, and Luke. And I think Luke's is the most expensive. If you remember the little, did you have any of these? I had a couple. So the lightsaber guys had a thing on the bottom of their arm, a little groove cut out with a little plastic knob that you would shove up toward the wrist and a lightsaber would come out of the hand as if it were turning on. The double telescoping, because that's a telescoping feature, a double telescoping means that you could extend it even further out from the original telescope and those supposedly are super rare and worth a lot of dough. So that one I saw actually online.

1:11:55Oh, man, I can't remember the site, but it's a great Star Wars action figure site. And they had a picture of it. Have you seen it? Yeah, I thought I had one, but I can't find it, so I don't think I do. Like the regular lightsaber that they had was just fine. but then the double telescoping part was just like this extra thinner pointy piece of plastic that hung down at like a weird angle. It didn't keep going straight. Yeah, they always kind of bent. And it looked just, it looked broken. You know? Yeah, but even if I did have one, it's well worn so it's not like, I mean, I think all of these things it's always like mint condition in the package.

1:12:40It's worth this. Don't even talk to me if it's not mint. Yeah. That's the slogan. So I would love some of this cleared up by experts. Oh, we'll hear from them. The Boba Fett matter. Yeah, I don't even know why I'm asking. The Boba Fett matter, which one is truly the Holy Grail? What happened with the Kenner, or not Kenner, the Mego Star Wars deal? Right, and did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone? Yes, we need answers, people. You got anything else? I got nothing else. This is a big overview. There's clearly many more stories to be told. I got a couple more. I just want to give shouts out. All right.

1:13:19YoJoe.com. Okay. If you're into GI Joes and you want to feel nostalgic, go check that site out. It's amazing. And then I created a gallery a few years ago called Hilarious Knockoffs and Bootlegs of Beloved Toys. Oh, that was great. And it's just like this slideshow of toys from around the world that are, it's pretty obvious what they're supposed to be but they're not. The name's just a little off. They've tried to come up with a new brand altogether but it's just some cheap version of something great. So go check that out too. It's kind of cool. It was fun to put together. I bet. And that's it, man.

1:13:59That's all I got. Go watch the G.I. Joe PSAs by Eric Fensler again. They still hold up. Oh yeah? Do you remember those? No. Where it was like just weird dubs of those G.I. Joe PSAs, like now you know annoying is half the battle? Yeah, yeah. You haven't seen these? I don't think so. Oh, okay. I'll send them to you. You're going to die laughing. Good. Yeah, you'll love them. You've been trying to kill me for years. That's a delightful way to do it. But this time I won't be wearing gloves coming at your neck. That's it for me, man. Yeah, that's it for me. Okay, well, if you want to know more about action figures, You can type those words into the search bar of your favorite search engine.

1:14:41Since I said search engine and didn't do any buzz marketing, it's time for Listener Mail. We're going to plug Kiva, which we haven't done in a long time. That's a good idea. K-I-V-A is a micro-lending website that we have been, we've had a team now, the Stuff You Should Know team for, geez, how many years? Six or seven? I think it was 2008 or 2009. Eight years? Seven or eight years? Wow. It's been a while. All right, so this is from Jordan, and then I'm going to go over a little bit more about how our team is looking. Hey, guys, once I listened to a podcast where you promoted Kiva, I decided to Google the Kiva donation thing and eventually found it correctly as KIVA.com.

1:15:24I immediately love the site. It's the epitome of how to take the globalized world and use that for good. So often donations come in the form of awkward late-night infomercials or five-second quips at the grocery line where you begrudgingly make an enemy out of the 17-year-old clerk for saying, no, I don't want to give a dollar to needy children. While all types of donations are generally good, Kiva makes you feel even more personal, and one can certainly give their money to needs that are important to them. You probably get your money back, which is great, but no way did that motivate me to loan, and I suspect that most people who use Kiva would also be happy to have their money go to those in need without getting a return.

1:16:03However, if I do decide to receive my money back, I will certainly use those funds to circulate that Kiva site again. Yeah. In other words, reloan. That's one of the keys. I think I'm feeling preachy now for writing you an email on the basis that I just loaned what amounts to a small amount of cash, but I just want to thank you guys for sharing that site and allowing people like myself to make their lives better. That's from Jordan Batchelor, who claims to be a U.S. defector. What? He moved from the U.S. I can't remember where he lives now. Oh. He was just being cheeky. I gotcha. So we started this Kiva team a long time ago.

1:16:39And right now we have over 9 ,000 members. And we are almost at$4 million, dude. That is insane. $3 ,993 ,325 loaned. That is 143 ,155 loans. Man. Average of 16 loans per member. and just to give you an idea of how it works, you donate money, you will most likely get paid back and then they say you can check out and take your money back or you can roll that into another loan. For sure. I started off with a couple of hundred bucks way back when and that now, just because I keep reinvesting it, has grown to$1 ,125 and 47 loans and my default rate is only 4%. Nice. Yeah, the default rate is not bad at all.

1:17:33It's not bad. So you can take a little bit, you can take$25 even and keep reloaning that. And that in a few years, five or six years can be, you know, hundreds and hundreds of dollars reloaned to people. Right. Really makes a big difference. We did our research on Kiva. Yeah. They're not perfect, but we think they do a really good job. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, we have a Stuff You Should Know team. So we would love to see people sign up for it, push us over that$4 million mark. which is crazy yeah we're not exclusive we're not snobs and neither is anybody on our team it's a very very welcoming group of people who are really active on the board they're led unofficially but de facto by Glenn and Sonia who have emerged to be these great team leaders that like just keep everybody going and motivated and moderate and make sure everybody's on the up and up they send us emails and reminders about how we're doing hats off to those guys thank you guys for that yeah so kiva.org I think I said.com earlier and just go to the team section search stuff you should know join the team throw$25 somebody's way you can give to people that are doing things that are close to your heart or maybe countries you've been to that you want to help support you can give to women or men and it's just really you can really dial down and give very specifically how you want to give yeah and if you want to know even more about it you can go listen to our episode on microlending and you can we've written a couple of blog posts on it and I think there's something on HuffPo even that they published of ours but I think like why we land on Kiva and it really addresses a lot of stuff that people have raised and we've said hey man it's still totally worth it so go check it out alright if you want to get in touch with us you can tweet to us at SYSK podcast or you can hang out with me at Josh M.

1:19:27Clark. You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant or you can visit our official Facebook page at facebook.com slash stuffyoushouldknow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com and as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com.

1:19:47For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

1:19:58Hey, it's Joel. And Matt. From HowToMoney. If your New Year's resolution is to finally get your finances in shape, we've got your back. Prices, they're still high, and the economy is all over the place. But 2026 is the year for you to get intentional and make real progress. That's right. Yeah, each week we break down what's happening with your money, the most important issues to focus on, and the small moves that make a big difference. Kick off the year with confidence. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm John Polk. For years, I was the poster boy of the conversion therapy movement, the ex-gay who married an ex-lesbian and traveled the world telling my story of how I changed my sexuality from gay to straight.

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