The year was 1984, which was a staggering 30 years ago. The ’80s were in full swing and Marvel had no toys. DC had toys, but Marvel had none. This could not stand. So Mattel came to Marvel to create a synergistic comic/toy brand that would put Marvel action figures into the explosive toy aisles. Along with then Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter, “Secret Wars” was born. A year-long fun-as-hell comic book followed, with accompanying toys all under the Secret Wars banner.
While it would never be an all-inclusive line, they managed to hit a number of high-profile heroes and villains in the first wave. Just being able to buy an Iron man, Spider-Man, and Captain America to fit in more or less equal scale with the DC Super Powers figure was a big enough deal.
I was born at the tail end of MEGO’s domination of superhero toys. Due to Star Wars and GI Joe, toys were getting smaller. Until Secret Wars, my childhood had been devoid of proper Marvel figures. Being able to have a good battle involving Dr. Doom, Magneto, Doctor Octopus, Spider-Man, Iron man, Cap, and Wolverine was awesome.
Secret Wars did have a few problems. First was the strength of their paint. I was always super-careful with my toys, but even with regular play these figures seemed allergic to their own paint jobs. As you can see, the front red stripes and black belt had to be repainted on this figure. In addition, despite every figure coming with a shield, Captain America’s was missing his signature look. So my mom stepped in and made one out of felt to stick in his shield. It wasn’t perfectly comic accurate, but imagination shored up the edges between reality and what I wanted it to be.
Speaking of his shield, there’s a lenticular quality that’s supposed to give life to scenes on cardboard inserts that snap into the shield, but it’s hard to capture at best, and it never worked as well as I’m assuming they wanted it to work anyway. I was never too bothered about that. Cap was the only one that needed his shield as far as I was concerned anyway.
The back of the cards had extremely brief little episodes accompanied by a bio. Like a lot of my obsessive compulsive toys back then, I still have these filed in the order in which I got the toys. I have some issues.
Holding this toy 30 years later, it’s amazing how primitive it is compared to toys nowadays, but a toy from childhood is measured by its ability to allow you to escape reality, not by the precision of its sculpt—something I think is forgotten in today’s nitpicky, shelfworthy-obsessed adult collecting. Not that I want toys to go back to this level of detail by any means, but this is the Captain America whose adventures were shaped by JM DeMatteis and his work on Cap, or by Jim Shooter and Roger Stern’s work on Avengers. This is the Cap that I could grab when the “Seven Little Superheroes” episode of Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends came on featuring Cap, Shanna, Dr. Strange, and Namor (that’s not water, it’s AL-CO-HOL!).
This was the Captain America figure that helped me build my imagination, let me reenact scenes from comics, or let me have completely new ones. It, like all toys from my childhood, is priceless.
nice article for i actully have that figure minus sadly his shield along with the iron man one. for mattel deserves props for their first time trying super hero toys. even if the paint job made the figures look like they were having an reaction to something.
I had many of the Secret Wars figures, and I remember thinking they were just the greatest things. I haven’t seen any in years, though, probably not since the ’80s. During that time, I guess I sort of equated them to ML1 Cap and Iron Man in my brain, so these pictures were absolutely shocking to me. For the life of me, I can’t remember their being this simple, but I guess I can attribute that to my imagination making them more than they were back then.
This whole article was great. From beginning to end