By David Weiner
As a kid growing up in the early ’70s, the colorful box art of the Hasbro G.I. Joe Adventure Team toy line sparked my imagination.
Just thinking about the excitement of their daily lives depicted on the packaging, I wanted to plunder the treasures of the deep, guarded by a killer octopus. Or scale the highest snowy mountain in Search for the Abominable Snowman. Or dig up a cursed mummy from my own sandbox with the yellow 6-wheel ATV (Adventure Team Vehicle), complete with working crane and rugged bearded figure.
Hell, just knowing that I could enhance my manly adventure with a “Kung-Fu Grip” or “Eagle Eye” action “with eyes that move from left to right” with a Joe figure that could go toe-to-toe with my Kenner SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN figure kept me daydreaming through any given school day.
But the reality was that in my world, collecting the 12″ tall G.I. Joe Adventure Team figures and the variety of sized-up vehicles and accessories was a costly endeavor. I’d lose steam bugging my parents to buy them when I’d always get the “maybe for your birthday or Christmas” automated response. It was tough enough for me just to get an adversary for Col. Steve Austin to battle, like Maskatron or Bigfoot.
Time to press that red button on Steve’s back to lift that plastic car engine one more time!
Relatively speaking, perhaps these Joe and Bionic figures and vehicles/playsets weren’t all that expensive. But I was a kid, entirely dependent on my parental ATMs for the big stuff. And my weekly two-quarters allowance always went straight to Bazooka gum, candy, and comics. AmIright?
For my parents, the slightly smaller, 8″ Mego figures seemed much more affordable, so I had much easier access to the STAR TREK crew and aliens, PLANET OF THE APES characters, and THE WORLD’S GREATEST SUPERHEROES (with Batman, Superman and Spider-Man topping my personal-fave heroes list).
The smaller the figures got, the more likely I was able to get a playset or vehicle to go with them on a birthday, holiday, or as a special treat. I spent hours and hours indoors and out conjuring up adventures with my Batmobile and my PLANET OF THE APES Treehouse (which, truthfully, was really my Action Jackson Jungle House, since I had that first; when my parents saw the APES version, they declared, “It’s the same.” No it wasn’t!!!!). I played with my Enterprise playset so much that I broke the Transporter “spinner” and my poor Klingon was trapped in there for weeks. Wait, he was a Klingon. Klingons are the bad guys. Served him right!
And frankly, in addition to their prohibitive size, the might of the G.I. Joe Adventure Team and their globe-hopping exploits could never truly overcome the power of recognizable, licensed characters tied in to my favorite TV shows and cartoons. Like so many GenX kids in the ’70s, I was glued to my black-and-white TV watching the short-lived PLANET OF THE APES TV series and films on THE 4:30 MOVIE, as well as daily ’60s reruns of STAR TREK, Adam West as BATMAN, and George Reeves in ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN from the ’50s.
Somewhere in the middle of that BSW timeline (before STAR WARS), I recall M.A.C. Men — Mobile Action Command — dominating my play attention. The early-to-mid ’70s Matchbox line of colorful figures, vehicles, accessories and playsets with the M.A.C. “world” logo stickered to their chests and machines were a staple of my childhood.
When I think back on those M.A.C. Men adventures, their appeal had a lot to do with both their miniature 3″ size, and the fact that they were a faceless rescue team that could take on any situation in your home: A “Fire Fighting Unit” to battle flames at the living room fireplace; “Emergency Medical Unit” trucks and jeeps with winches and an “Air Rescue Unit” helicopter (also with winch/hook!) for shag-carpet staircase rescue operations; an aquatic pontoon boat “Sea Rescue Unit” (that may or may not float; I can’t remember!) with flippers and Scuba tank for splashy bathtub heroics.
The vintage ’70s catalog ads aimed at retailers described it best: “WE HAVE A MAC RESCUE TEAM FOR ANY EMERGENCY A KID CAN DREAM UP. Mobile Action Command is everything a kid could want: Beautifully detailed, fully articulated figures. Just about every possible type of vehicle. The MAC mountain. The MAC Commando Challenge. Mobile Action Command is everything a retailer could want: A complete line kids can’t resist. A huge variety of price points. A very healthy profit margin. And all this, complete with the ‘Matchbox’ name.”
(catalog scans courtesy of the great PlaidStallions; watch great Brian Heiler’s thorough Toy Ventures video about M.A.C. Men!)
My favorite pastime was tying a taught white string from the top of the staircase handrail all the way downstairs to a chair leg in the nearby dining room — a straight 45-degree plummet if you did it right — and bending paper clips in such a way that the M.A.C. Men could slide, zipline style, all the way down. Good times!
Of course, the ultimate Mobile Action Command toy was the sizable Rescue Center playset — a tall, killer plastic mountain fortress, hollowed out to become a secret command center.
Again, I leave it to the vintage ’70s catalog ad copy: “On the ready for any emergency, the men and equipment from M.A.C. can do the job. And now the Mobile Action Command Rescue Units have a secret mountain headquarters! A realistic rock ridden (17″ high) mountain with five secret hinged openings, ramps and passageways. The mountain top opens and the rotating recon tower with working rescue crane swings into position. Inside the headquarters, there are three separate floor levels complete with operating elevator plus a full-color interior designating separate repair, research and computer control areas.”
I begged my parents for the Rescue Center playset, and lobbied Santa super hard too. But alas, no dice. At least my pal Billy had one, and we could play with it at his house. The Rescue Center playset remains on my bucket list of childhood toys to claim. But since I recently re-acquired a SPACE: 1999 Eagle Playset just like the one I had as a kid (those things are massive, and expensive!), I’ll just have to continue to pine away.
Also, somewhere along the line, Matchbox decided to change or “upgrade” the M.A.C. Men to be slightly taller and much beefier than the original, boxy nature of the lean and articulate figures. I didn’t care for the new look back then (much like many years later, I scoffed at the steroid-styles of the ’90s-era Power of the Force STAR WARS figures), but I still played with the “new and improved” M.A.C. men and machines because they were so undeniably awesome.
And thinking about how my action figures started at 12″, down to 8″, down to 3″, it makes perfect sense that I would not think twice about how small the 3 3/4″ Kenner STAR WARS figures were when they first arrived on the scene in the spring of ’78 — complete with vehicles that were just the right size.
It made perfect sense to me. And the STAR WARS figure invasion was mostly affordable for my parents. Mostly.
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