Action Man

Action Man

2.32 minutes

[613 kb]

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Indoors the toys, you know from a very early age from as far back back as I can remember I think it was Action Man was one of my favourite toys and I started collecting that in the late sixties sort of about sixty-eight or something like that.

Q: How, how, how did you start with your Action Man collection.

Erm, I don't know, I can't remember actually er, I just, its like he's always been there. [laughs] it seems to have been, yeah. I think he was awarded some kind of toy of the year in 1967 and I think he only came out in the late sixties in the States as GI Joe probably it was. But then he suddenly sort of appeared and I had him er em you know and then every Christmas after that I'd get more and more of his stuff and birthdays. He was the main toy, we had games as well erm, you know.

Q: Could you just describe what you ended up with and how you accumulated it all.

Er, well, I was collecting I say from er, like er, it didn't seem like collecting, you just kinda had it and then you had some more cause you fancied that piece and little catalogues, and ... look at catalogues and fantasise that you had that next thing, an you know, that tent or whatever, or that trailer or that tank. So from about the late sixties, sixty-eight, through to the erm, the mid-seventies, yeah, that'd be about, yeah about seventy-five, seventy-six even maybe, erm in the end I finished up with about eleven different, er, er, Action Men, not dolls, action figures [laughs] and er erm, and er various things like er, Scorpion Tank, er personel carrier, I had a small erm space capsule, a helicopter, a trailer, a jeep, a Land Rover, erm lots of different uniforms mainly kind of Second World War things which were popular then er lots of er you know sort of German uniforms, British, American, then specialist things like er, Action Man footballer, Action Man astronaught, and then er dress uniforms er like the household cavalry, then something maybe like the Mounties. I remember the Mounties where you couldn't buy in the shops. What you had to do to get a Mounty, it wasn't available in the shops. You had to collect tokens from the boxes of other Action Man articles that you bought, collect them and stick them on a er er er a little card til you filled it all in, then send it off to Palatoy, who er made Action Man and no no longer do, erm and then they'd send you back you know what you'd chose and a Mounty Uniform so they were sort of special you know to sort of. I don't know an then, there were other things like I'd a horse and a little dog, and a little guard dog and you could get a cardboard sentry box and er, yeah, some great stuff.