Wolverine and Ton Up

[Dave Tree]

Coalville is a wee place very well known for its pubs with light entertainment.

Seriously, is it me or did the company pay more attention to Star Wars than to Action Force? I cannot recall so many errors with Star Wars (maybe because I am not so deep into Star Wars), but there are so many variants with Action Force that every figure tends to be a one of a kind unique figure...

It's actually more to do with organisation and breifing. Star Wars was an international product led by Kenner in the US, and standards were set and the standardization across the products were easy to follow. Action Force was led by Palitoy and really only handled by them, so it was a little more chaotic as it was all handled in-house.

Dave.

[The Baron]

That's what I was about to postulate. I'm guessing there were many more Star Wars processing plants.

One thing you might be able to answer, Dave, is how many actual Action Force factories there were? This was one of our early theories on the variant Red Shadow debate (which we now think is simply wave 1 and wave 2).

[Dave Tree]

Good question and the honest answer is I don't know.

Under Palitoy itself there were three sites in Leicester UK, one in Calais and one in Singapore. Singapore was responsible for the majority of the plastic injection molding and this was all contracted and subbed out, the Office was project managing the manufacturing, not manufacturing itself. I've yet to find out how many factories were used, or how that side was handled. I know some molding was done in the UK, but was blow-molding for Tiny Tears and Action Man vehicles as far as I know. i don't think any Action Force was molded in the UK, but I could be wrong.

However, some assembly and the packing was mostly done back in the UK, at which stage is where a lot of the mispacks and errors would have happend.

I hope to find out more, but so far the info has been fairly sketchy.

Dave.