We Had That

Buck Rogers: Killer Kane (Mego, 1979) As years pass from an event, the facts surrounding that event sometimes become less and less clear.  I'm confident that the Buck Rogers 1979 movie / TV pilot was made because of the success of Star Wars, but I've read conflicting information about some of the details with Buck Rogers.  We know that Mego acquired the license to manufacture the toys, but the circumstances surrounding the acquisition of that license are a little fuzzy.  I have read that Mego picked up the license as a favor and didn't really have high expectations for the line, but I've also heard that they were willing to gamble on this line because Buck Rogers was a space-themed property with an existing track record.  Maybe both are true.  I've also heard that the figures sold well for Mego and I've heard that they sold poorly.  I guess it's possible that some characters sold well while others didn't.  Either way, kids who played with the figures w...

  Buck Rogers Emperor Draco action figure (Mego, 1979) The unexpected, massive success of Star Wars in 1977 led to huge surge of Science Fiction movies, TV shows, and books.  Along with the popularity of the movie, Kenner's 3 3/4" Star Wars figures had quickly become the most in-demand toy of the late 70s.  Toy manufacturers scrambled to get a piece of the SciFi pie.  Mego, who had missed out on the licence for Star Wars didn't want to make the same mistake twice, so they seemed to jump on any license that came their way, Science Fiction or otherwise.  They ended up making action figures for everything from The Black Hole and Star Trek: The Motion Picture to The Dukes of Hazzard and CHiPs and even The Love Boat!  It was around this time that Mego was offered the license to manufacture toys for the re-boot of the Buck Rogers franchise. Mego 3 3/4" Draco with his Draconian Guards Although the toys for Buck Rogers in the 25th Century didn't achieve the popular...

Flash Gordon "Beastman" action figure (Mattel, 1980) In the late 1970s, a producer named Lou Scheimer got the rights to make a movie of the old 1930s comic strip character, Flash Gordon.  Since the amazing success of the movie Star Wars in 1977, science fiction was extremely popular at the time and Scheimer was able to convince NBC to back a live action Flash Gordon for prime-time.  Unfortunately, it would have cost too much to film what he wanted to shoot, so he reluctantly went back to NBC with the idea of switching to an animated format instead of live action.  NBC agreed and Filmation was brought on board to make the cartoon. Beastman poses beside the 1979 Flash Gordon card back Star Wars action figures had made so much money for George Lucas and Kenner that I would imagine once the cartoon was underway, it wasn't very difficult to set up a deal with Mattel to make a line of Flash Gordon action figures in scale with the Star Wars toys.  In 1979, the first four Fl...

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century: Draconian Guard action figure (Mego, 1979) When Star Wars came out in 1977, it caught the world unprepared.  The movie was a hit and, even though Kenner had purchased the license to produce Star Wars toys, they weren't ready in time for the massive demand.  For the next few years after Star Wars, all sorts of Science Fiction movies and TV shows were being approved in Hollywood in an attempt to catch lightning in a bottle with another similar franchise.  "Buck Rogers In The 25th Century" was one such project.  Mego rolled the dice on a 3 3/4" line of figures (as well as a 12" line of figures) in hope of similar success to Star Wars. Draconian Guard: standing around and missing a thumb! Unfortunately for Mego, the Buck Rogers line of action figures wasn't the phenomenal hit they had wanted.  Still, those of us who thought these figures were cool as kids were lucky that we got them at all.  Not only that, but Mego had enough fa...

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century: Twiki (Mego, 1979) When the Kenner Star Wars figures first came out in the late 1970s, they sold so well that many other toy companies wanted in on the game.  Action figures for a wide variety of movies and TV shows started arriving at toy stores across the country with each manufacturer hoping that they had the "next big thing" on their hands.  It seemed like Science Fiction was an especially popular genre to gamble on and in 1979, when the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century movie was in the works, Mego acquired the license to manufacture the accompanying action figures Twiki outside of the city (Mego, 1979) The figures didn't sell terribly well and the single wave that was released only consisted of 9 figures, which actually isn't that bad when you consider how many toy lines had only around 4 characters back then!  Regardless, I thought they were pretty cool!  They had more points of articulation than Star Wars figures and several coo...