Toltoys Kid

Things were getting a little wacky for ole’ GI Joe by 1975. Hasbro USA had ended his military duties in 1970 and enlisted him in the boy scouts as an Adventurer instead of a soldier. His English cousin, Palitoy’s Action Man, had stayed in (increasingly elaborate) uniform but added adventure sets to the line.

Here in Oz we enjoyed Hasbro’s GI Joe (Albeit with Canadian produced bodies for a time) all the way through his military career and into his adventure days. Concurrently Toltoys offered re-badged “Action Man by Palitoy” figures and sets from the early 70′s to 1980-81. Into this mix came Melbourne firm Kenbrite, who in the middle of the 70′s began reproducing the old GI Joe “Soldiers of the World” military outfits and marketing them under the dual banner of GI Joe and Action Man (And even “Man of Action”). Confused? Me too.

I hope to sort out all the timings of these concurrent releases one day, if any of you Aussie Joe / AM collectors have info I’d like to add it here.

Anyway I’m sure you’ve stopped reading by now and have skipped down to the pics, so I’ll shut up now…

Kenbrite Action Man / GI Joe French Foreign Legion set

Kenbrite Action Man / GI Joe German Staff Officer

Kenbrite Man of Action / GI Joe British Infantryman

Note the change from “Action Man” to “Man of Action”, or was it vica versa?

The list of available Kenbrite sets.

Kenbrite GI Joe / Man of Action German Stormtrooper Window Box

Another intriguing piece of the puzzle, a panel from a Hasbro Adventurer Box (Hunt for the White Tiger?) with Kenbrite copyright info. I know, it contradicts stuff I just wrote 10 minutes ago, clearly more to the story here!

Will

Well here we are over at WordPress, after Blogger in their wisdom decided to stop servicing FTP users after many years of smooth service.

I must thank the migration team lead by Harsh Agarwal over at http://bloggertowp.org/ who did all the fiddly stuff for me, thanks guys!

I’m still learning how to WordPress properly so if stuff goes a bit wonky give it a day or two for Mr Interweb here to fix it. See in the new header, how the text is white and quite hard to read? Well it should be red. I tried to make it red, but I failed. Looks like I’ll have to email Harsh again shortly, sorry buddy!

The other thing that is new is the name of the blog. I’ve decided to go with “Toltoys Kid” instead of just Toltoys.com, since I’ve ended up showcasing so many different sorts of items from many different companies, not just Toltoys. The title is a new term that I feel encompasses the experience of being a kid in Australia in the 70′s. Most of the best stuff was made or sold by Toltoys, but I remember just about everything that caught my eye back then, and this blog is about all of it.

So what’s coming up? Too much to tell, but here’ s a little peek at some of what has been posted before and some of what is to come…

Seen and unseen on Toltoys Kid

Will

Cheers!

To most Star Wars collectors that item above appears to be your run-of-the-mill Kenner Star Wars C3PO 12 Back figure. The keen eyed collectors will note that the blister has been reattached to the card-back for use as a display item, but that is not of consequence here.

Kenbrite GI Joe Adventure Team Commercial

This is the ad for both items, and while we can confirm the price and the three figures included, I’m not sure we can say which figures came with which! The photo suggests that Han Hoth came with the Wampa and the other two with the Tauntan, but it could just as easily have been the Snowtrooper with the Wampa (Bad guys together?) and the other two with Tauntaun.

More Toltoys Star Wars mysteries will be revealed this week…

More pages coming soon…