Television & Film
(1972 – 1981)

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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 and Planet of the Apes. Mego signed licensing deals with both companies and were able to release toys for both lines in 1974. Both lines would become some of the biggest selling products that Mego ever produced (other than WGSH of course). Star Trek and Planet of the Apes gave Mego some real clout in the toy business, and the years 1974 and 1975 proved to be the biggest and most profitable that Mego ever saw during its amazing run.

Mego would go on to release multiple other action figure and toy lines during the 1970’s and early 80’s of some of the biggest shows and movies of the time. For movies, Mego acquired the toy license for Wizard of Oz for 1974, which turned out to be a big hit for them. They would later release toy lines based on sci-fi properties, Black Hole and Moonraker. On the television side, Mego released toy lines based on Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, Starsky and Hutch, The Walton’s, Our Gang, Dukes of Hazzard, CHIPS, Doctor Who, Buck Rogers, Love Boat, the new Star Trek Movie and many more. Every child growing up during this period knew the name Mego because it meant fun toy lines based on the hottest franchises 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”.

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