Blood for the Baron!

The Kraken wrote:Man thats bad what were they full shop shelves? or displays for stuff? Did you see they were selling everything even the massive shelves and wall shelves?

They were freestanding metal units that the gift cards were sold off. One of the guys I work with went into a store to pick the unit unit up, and caught some old guy walking out with it, having purchased it for £20.

Whilst I feel the pain they were having to go through, it takes the pi$$ somewhat that when you already owe suppliers money, you then feel you have the right to sell what is not yours in order to get money that will never go back to the any of the suppliers you owe money to. It's a move that has made the debt owed considerably larger as they know they can get away with it and there can be no comeback.

It's a double whammy for us, which does have serious knock on effects, and there are a lot of suppliers who are worse off and owed a lot more too, Hasbro for example.

jamarmiller wrote:

sf1378 wrote:Other stuff I collect/own/have collected include:

M.A.S.K. vehicles and figures,
.....

did you see the new Matt Trakker figure that was done in the GI JOE line? I actually bought him and hes pretty cool! nice little nod to mask with the whole logo in the corner as well.

Yeah I've seen that, weird choice I thought as MASK was a Kenner product, not Hasbro, and had no relation to GI-JOE as such until Hasbro bought Kenner, by which point MASK had been discontinued.

I reckon it must be an ex-Kenner employee at Hasbro, like Mark Boudreaux championing the character.
Now if that was the case, maybe we should all lobby John Harper, an ex-Palitoy employee now MD of Hasbro UK for an Action Force revival

Dave.

Dave Tree wrote:
I reckon it must be an ex-Kenner employee at Hasbro, like Mark Boudreaux championing the character.
Now if that was the case, maybe we should all lobby John Harper, an ex-Palitoy employee now MD of Hasbro UK for an Action Force revival

Dave.

now that is a good idea man, a very good one, how do we go about that?

jamarmiller wrote:

Dave Tree wrote:
I reckon it must be an ex-Kenner employee at Hasbro, like Mark Boudreaux championing the character.
Now if that was the case, maybe we should all lobby John Harper, an ex-Palitoy employee now MD of Hasbro UK for an Action Force revival

Dave.

now that is a good idea man, a very good one, how do we go about that?

Dave Tree wrote:

jamarmiller wrote:

sf1378 wrote:Other stuff I collect/own/have collected include:

M.A.S.K. vehicles and figures,
.....

did you see the new Matt Trakker figure that was done in the GI JOE line? I actually bought him and hes pretty cool! nice little nod to mask with the whole logo in the corner as well.

Yeah I've seen that, weird choice I thought as MASK was a Kenner product, not Hasbro, and had no relation to GI-JOE as such until Hasbro bought Kenner, by which point MASK had been discontinued.

I reckon it must be an ex-Kenner employee at Hasbro, like Mark Boudreaux championing the character.
Now if that was the case, maybe we should all lobby John Harper, an ex-Palitoy employee now MD of Hasbro UK for an Action Force revival

Dave.

Yep, got the figure meself matey boyo! I really liked his filecard, they've tied in MASK with Joe and Venom with Cobra neatly.....I am hoping for a revival line soon in A.F. scale...would be dead cool.....!

As for John Harper? Simplest way would be if we created a letter/pettition and all signed out names on it? Or call them up at Hasbro UK....

What shocks me is if Mr Harpers an ex Palitoy man then why o why in Gods name did they make a naff modern Action Man?! Don't get me wrong, I own some of the modern stuff and even used some stuff from it for customising my vintage A.M. chappies....but compared to the original he wasn't a touch on that!

Its a shame peeps like us-who know our shite and have a real passion for A.M. or such like don't work at Hasbro UK, believe me I've tried! Perhaps then we'd get the sorts of things made we really would like to see revived.....like A.F.....

sf1378 wrote: As for John Harper? Simplest way would be if we created a letter/pettition and all signed out names on it? Or call them up at Hasbro UK....

What shocks me is if Mr Harpers an ex Palitoy man then why o why in Gods name did they make a naff modern Action Man?! Don't get me wrong, I own some of the modern stuff and even used some stuff from it for customising my vintage A.M. chappies....but compared to the original he wasn't a touch on that!

Its a shame peeps like us-who know our shite and have a real passion for A.M. or such like don't work at Hasbro UK, believe me I've tried! Perhaps then we'd get the sorts of things made we really would like to see revived.....like A.F.....

Without going too much into detail, I think that's a hugely skewed view.

You'll find that the team is massively passionate and more so about toys than most collectors. The Action Man team in particular was addressing the needs and demands for the toy market for that period of time, not the wish list of collectors. Resurrecting a toy line is tough to justify, resurrecting it and taking it in new directions is even tougher.

In recent years Hasbro has come to work and produce items for the collecting martket, the 40th line is testiment to that, but I would ask to consider the wider picture about toy product before stating things like that, if toys wer produced that ticked every box, they would so expensive that collectors would boycott and snub them for being too expensive - and in my expereince, no-one moans more than a collector

Dave.

Dave Tree wrote:You'll find that the team is massively passionate and more so about toys than most collectors. The Action Man team in particular was addressing the needs and demands for the toy market for that period of time, not the wish list of collectors. Resurrecting a toy line is tough to justify, resurrecting it and taking it in new directions is even tougher.

In recent years Hasbro has come to work and produce items for the collecting martket, the 40th line is testiment to that, but I would ask to consider the wider picture about toy product before stating things like that, if toys wer produced that ticked every box, they would so expensive that collectors would boycott and snub them for being too expensive - and in my expereince, no-one moans more than a collector

Their 40th stuff is expensive enough. Never even seen any of it in shops in Aussie. GI Joe is rare here too for that matter. TBH you'd have to be motivated by the almighty dollar (or pound) otherwise there will be no business left to complain about. I'm just grateful when some obscure toy appears that appeals to me. Like the current Star Wars range, there is a heap that is targeted at the collector and I'll doubt they are making a fortune in Sy Snootles sales. So in summary, if you get the odd tasty tit-bit enjoy it and support Hasbro in doing it if you can. If they make enough they can throw it around like they just don't care, then we'll see more of what I'd call adult indulgences than toys.

You have to admit, the current range of SW toys is awesome, the 25th Joe's are great for the casual collector as is 40th AM. I never expected to see anything like these again. Even the tooling is brilliant these days. My bro-in-law is a die maker, I showed his co-worker the Falcon the other day and he thought it was a brilliant example of fantastic tooling. He's been in the trade for about 30 years.

Dave Tree wrote:I would ask to consider the wider picture about toy product before stating things like that, if toys wer produced that ticked every box, they would so expensive that collectors would boycott and snub them for being too expensive

Chopper wrote:Their 40th stuff is expensive enough.

exactly where I was coming from, the production values are high, but it comes at a price and the more it is, the less will be sold.

The justification becomes very difficult when projects don't start paying for themselves and wages and overheads need to be paid, but that doesn't mean the passion isn't there, it just means things aren't viable.

I took the plunge at the weekend when I was at a show, and picked a 40th up for £15 and have to say it's freakin sweet.



I might pick up a few more, as it's the only toyline I had as kid, but have nothing left through either losing, swapping or blowing it all up.

Dave that looks really good. I wonder if I could sneak one or two of those in! I got my 1/48 scale TSR 2 today as well, the kit is huge, need to put it away untill I have more room for it.

Dave Tree wrote:I took the plunge at the weekend when I was at a show, and picked a 40th up for £15 and have to say it's freakin sweet.



I might pick up a few more, as it's the only toyline I had as kid, but have nothing left through either losing, swapping or blowing it all up.

Nice Dave. I have my original brown hair EE in my lounge. Got that uniform too (amongst others), from 1975. Every kid should have an Action Man. My son has 3 of the new ones. Still lust after the SAS outfit, a real Eagle lookalike.