Action Jackson

If you were to judge a products popularity by it's TV commercials, you would think Mego's Action Jackson had sold like Beanie Babies. The commercials were crammed with testosterone and produced with character animation & a manly theme song ("Think of what you want to be and count on meeeeee."). Watching the commercials today makes me want to start an instant Ebay collection, but in his time, Jackson wasn't a runaway hit.

Action Jackson was Mego's entrance into the action figure market in the US. Like GI Joe, Action Jackson was a fully articulated figure with outfits, accessories, cool vehicles and a strong TV campaign. Also like GI Joe, Mego's man of action had spent some time abroad in some undisclosed quasi-military capacity. Now semi-retired, he split his time between thrill seeking, treasure hunting and his volunteer work as park ranger & fire fighter.




The biggest difference between Jackson and all the other figures of the time was his size. Action Jackson was the first 8 in figure (Big Jim was released by Mattel in 1972) making him about 3/4 the size of GI Joe. The new size was cost effective for Mego and it also made AJ cheaper. In the world of kids on a small allowance, cheaper meant more bang for your buck and that gave the new figure enough traction to stay on the pegs for three or four years.

While Action Jackson was never a huge hit, he got Mego into the action figure market. An American hero to the end, Jackson's last act was to donate his body to "The World's Greatest Super Hero" series of action figures which helped make Mego one of the largest toy companies of the mid 70's & 80's. It's rumored AJ's original scary head without a beard is in a cryogenic freeze waiting for butt ugly sculpting to make a comeback.



Looking for Action Jackson info? Try the Mego Museum or the 3 aMego's

want to see a few commercials? Try these at YouTube:

Jeep & parachute ad

6 of AJ's outfits (I especially like the ever so macho voice whispering "Action Jackson" in the background)

AJ's motor scooter, fire rescue copter and what may be the funniest 'vehicle' any figure ever had, the "bucking bronco".

The jungle house [not to be confused with the Elvis jungle room at Graceland]

Jeep & personal helicopter

Ding-A-Ling Robots Topper Toys

At the end of the 1960's Topper Toys released a series of 6 inch tall robots known as the Ding-A-Lings. Each Ding had it's own personality which usually revolved around their occupation. They also had some manual function they performed, usually by pushing down on their heads. [For instance, the fireman squirted water, the chef shook salt, the boxer would punch etc.]

The thing that makes this small line of robots stand out is the track. Topper designed a suspended track system that let the Ding-A-Lings run both over and under their track. Dings ran right side up on the top and traveled upside down on the bottom. Three separate playsets could combine to create a sort of robot train layout in infinite combinations.

While you could just roll your Dings across the kitchen floor for imaginary adventures, getting them to run on the track required a little juice. The traveling Dings were powered by 2 AA batteries from a power pack purchased separately. You could run as many robots on the track as you wanted as long as you had a power pack for each one. It wasn't long before tykes like me were begging for more than one power pack and more track.

Toy catalogs of 1971 reveal that Topper had bigger plans for the robot line with more Dings and more accessories, but Topper's president was charged with mismanagement of funds and the company was forced to file bankruptcy. It wasn't long before Topper closed down completely.

In it's short run, the Ding-A-Lings series produced approximately a dozen robots, three playsets, the Ding-A-Lingmobile and a huge King Ding the Ding-A-Ling king. There are also a few Ding-A-Lings that were only available overseas.

Usually a toys name has something to do with it's function, but in the case of the Ding-A-Lings, I don't know the connection. What makes them dingy-lingy? Did they have some bell that rang in the prototype stage? Is it something incredibly obvious I've missed? Above are five of the 12 to 15 dings still in their individual packages. Every Ding-A-Ling came in it's own packaging and one or two also came in the playsets.





This big guy is King Ding, leader of the Ding-A-Lings. King is run by Brain one of the small Ding-A-Ling's who fits inside. He had his own elevator that slowly took him up into King Dings big empty head. This was the guy you wanted to see under the tree.

If you're interested in this line of toys, I'd start with these three sites:

Big Red Toybox is one cool site for vintage toy collectors. Besides selling reproduction parts for hard to find toys, it's got a great encyclopedia of toys.

Toppersdingalings.com & the dingalings.com have a lot of info as well.

This last tidbit is a link to a 4 minute Ding-A-Ling commercial. I tried to embed it here but my computer skills suck. It was created to get retailers excited about the new Ding-A-Lings and track. If you had these toys in your youth, you may notice a few old favorites look different. That's because they were using prototypes for the commercial. Prototypes are the Holy Grail of collecting. It's every collectors dream to find an early edition of a prized toy.