02/26/13: I was recently listening to an episode of
The Book Cave, one of the many podcasts I subscribe to. It's not very well recorded, but I usually am so interested in its content that I struggle through the tinny sound and audio artifacting and other technical difficulties. The hosts are very enthusiastic about their subject matter, which is typically books, comics, pulps, movie serials, or old-time radio. All things near and dear to my heart.
The guest on this particular show was one of the guys behind the resurrection of
Captain Action, a short-lived action figure from the sixties. Captain Action was a G.I.Joe-sized action figure (the full-sized '60s Joe, not the tiny '80s version) that could become other characters from TV and comics. If you (or more likely your parents) had some spare cash laying around, you simply buy a costume and your
Captain Action could become Batman or Spider-Man or the Green Hornet or Steve Canyon or Flash Gordon. Considering that all those characters were from different companies, I'm amazed that they got licenses to make all those costumes. To offer such a wide variety today would probably cost a fortune.
So the guys on the podcast were talking about what they remember of the figure from its first incarnation. One of the hosts said that he still had his original Captain Action figure, in the original box, and the guest laughed and said something about how he must have "enjoyed the character just the right way." That struck me as wrong.
The picture here is of Captain Action's hat. It's a hard chunk of rubber and is the only thing that's left of the Captain Action I had when I was a kid. (Truth to tell, this is a picture I found on the 'net. My CA cap is somewhere in storage, but if I find it, I'll replace this picture with a shot of mine.) I think the only costume I had for him at the time was Batman, but I remember him having many adventures, regardless of who he was dressed as.
We played with that toy until all that was left of him was his hat. I think that was the right way to enjoy the character. I sometimes wish I knew what happened to the rest of him, but considering that one of our GI Joes was doomed to have his body cavity stuffed with cheese and buried in the snow in our back yard, I have to assume Captain Action met a similar fate. We were boys, after all.
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