11 Facts About Action Man

Action Man was originally produced and sold in the United Kingdom and Australia by Palitoy Ltd of Coalville, Leicestershire from 1966 until 1984.

The first Action Man figures were Action Soldier, Action Sailor and Action Pilot.

Action Man was then developed with primarily British themes from 1970 onwards: military, adventurers, and sportsman, as Palitoy wanted to distinguish their product line from the US counterpart.

Military style Action Man toys made a brief resurgence in the early 1990s, but between 1996 and 2006 Hasbro used the name without any military theme as a modern adventurer complete with arch-enemies Dr X and Professor Gangrene.

Action Man character was again rebooted by IDW Publishing in 2016 for a four-issue limited comic book series.

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Second innovation for Action Man was a form of flocking giving the effect of a short "fuzzy" hairstyle in 1970, very similar to the hair flocking used on early "Ken" dolls produced by Mattel.

The only Action Man that came with sideburns and not a full beard, was the "Georgie Best" footballer figure.

All original Action Man uniforms were tagged inside the neck collar; the early issue even had the bullet holes of the box logo; this was later discontinued.

Three of them were variations on the standard Action Man; a cyborg Atomic Man, a dark-skinned Commando Tom Stone, a red and silver superhero Bullet Man, and lastly a brutish Neanderthal look-alike; The Intruder, which was a minimally articulated figure.

In 1980 one more figure not based on the Action Man doll was added: "ROM" the Robot, licensed from Parker Brothers and originally called Rom Spaceknight, that would be adapted into a long-running comic book series by Marvel.

Joe, during the 1960s, Action Man had a wooden footlocker with plastic tray insert to store his accessories in.