Historical & Legends

Historical & Legends
(1973 – 1980)

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American Western

One Million B.C

Robin Hood & Merry Men

Super Knights

Super Pirates

Tex Willer

When you think of iconic toy lines for each decade, Mego’s action figures of the 1970’s stand out as one of the biggest things that ever happened to toys. Along with Star Wars and GI Joe, Mego has earned their place on the action figure Mount Rushmore, but their journey to becoming an iconic toy brand went through quite a few trials before finally becoming the mighty toy line we all know and love. The Mego Toy Company was founded in 1954 by David Abrams in New York City. The company was a big producer of dime store type toys and dolls with steady sales for many years. Mego Toys was a known name in the toy industry but very far from the household name that it would later become. When David Abrams’ son, Marty, came to power within the company, he decided to change things up a bit and created a brand new line of action figures to compete with the mega successful GI Joe line. Marty Abrams decided to shrink the figures down a more cost effective 8 inch size, which would also reduce the size of the vehicles and accessories. Another new concept introduced was the concept of interchangeable bodies. Mego created three different head sculpts, but only one body type so each head sculpt could be used on the same body. This helped to reduce production costs and proved to much more effective for future Mego lines. The first line released under this new innovative plan was the Action Jackson action figure line, which ran from 1971 – 1974. Action Jackson was never considered to be a huge success, but it was successful enough to produce a couple of different waves of figures and accessories. The biggest thing that Action Jackson was known for however, was that it laid down the groundwork for all future Mego action figure brands and showed their new 8 Inch action figure system would definitely work!

Being the innovator that he was, Marty Abrams reached out to an untapped resource for his next magic trick, Comic Books. He signed a licensing deal with Marvel and DC Comics to produce toys based on their characters and called it, the World’s Greatest Super Heroes line. During its unprecedented 9 year run from 1972-1980, Mego gave us some truly iconic figures and accessories for the World’s Greatest Super Hero line, which included some ultra popular characters from both major comic book lines. Since Mego had already proven themselves with Action Jackson and World’s Greatest Super Heroes lines, they began branching out to other properties, such as Star Trek, Planet of the Apes and Wizard of Oz. Mego released multiple toy lines based on established properties and they would go on to become some of the biggest selling products that Mego produced (other than WGSH of course). These toy lines and brands certainly gave Mego a lot of clout in the toy industry at the time and established them as some serious players in the global toy market.

Since Mego was having such massive success with their established brands and properties, they could afford to take a few gambles on non-IP brands. Among those brands and lines were several lines based on historical and fictional characters of the past. Mego began with the World’s Greatest Super Knights and Super Pirates lines in 1974. Neither line was incredibly successful, but they were certainly well made figures . Mego would follow with Robin Hood and his Merry Men series and a line based on the American West. A similar Old West theme was used for the Tex Willer line, which was an Italian exclusive series. Finally, there was the One Million B.C series in 1977, which was a bit of a flop at the time. Mego brought a level of creativity and innovation to the toy industry that no one had seen up until then. Marty Abrams truly ushered in a golden period of toys for an evolving generation of youth, who has truly earned the title of “The Father of the Modern Action Figure”.

American Western

Wyatt Earp