Welcome back everybody! This time out I’m digging deep into the darkest recesses of the Toy Chest to present you with what I believe was my very first action figure.
The Six Million Dollar Man
Company: Kenner
Acquisition Year: 1978?
Acquired via: Unknown
Years In Possession: 40+
Like most little kids of the 70s I loved the old 6 Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman shows. Truth be told I probably watched way more Bionic Woman than SMDM, but that was more for Lindsey Wagner than the action.
This was definitely one of the first “action figures” I ever owned and I couldn’t tell you how I got it. I want to say I can remember getting it at the drug store near our house (the same place I would later get several of my early Star Wars figures) but I can’t be sure, it could have just as easily been a garage sale special.
What always intrigued me most about this guy was the fake rubber arm skin that you could roll back and reveal his bionic arm circuits. The addition of that was really a genius feature for an otherwise kinda “meh” line of toys.
You could actually remove the little circuit blocks from his limbs. I suppose this was so you could pretend to make repairs and put the parts back in, which was cool but in my case just led to pieces being lost.
The same was true for that rubber arm skin, it was difficult to roll up and down and the material itself degraded extremely fast. None of it is left on mine at all.
He also had the unique (at the time) Bionic Eye feature that let you look through one of his eyes. This same type of gimmick would be used a few years later by Kenner on their 12″ Boba Fett (to much better effect). On the SMDM the eye was cool to look through but it made for a very freaky looking face, almost like he was missing an eye completely.
One bad thing about these figures was the material they were made out of. Whereas Kenner’s later 12″ Star Wars figures used soft material similar to a Barbie doll for the human characters like Luke and Leia, the SMDM line used a very hard and brittle plastic that feels very cheap and led to a lot of cracks and broken limbs.
The plastic was so cheap and thin that it actually melted badly in the heat. This is what happened from being stored in a hot attic (against my explicit instructions I will point out)
Unlike Barbie however, Kenner molded modesty into this figure by way of tight-reddy jockey shorts. I guess they were afraid of kids seeing his bionic dong. Hilarious.
As with 75% of the soft goods for my 12″ Star Wars figures, the SMDM figures I had all lost their clothes to my sister’s Ken dolls. And no, I will never let it go.
In all I eventually had 3 figures from this line and that’s it. Austin, Oscar, and the coolest of all the figures, Mask-A-Tron, the robot that came with different faces to use as disguises. I never even knew about Bigfoot or any of the accessories/playsets you could buy until just a few years ago.
SMDM was my first real taste of action figures (along with a couple random MEGOs) but my interest in those were very short lived as almost immediately they were eclipsed by the juggernaut known as Star Wars.
Well that about does it for this edition of Toy Chest. Come back in December when I go full “first world problems” and list the highest highs and lowest lows of Christmases past!
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With all due respect,
I believe that you can give a better review than you did
Can I though?
Why sure you can.
That SMDM figure represents over 40 years of history. ?
Have a wonderful day.