The 70s were cool in so many ways, one of the reasons was The Six Million Dollar Man: the show that made it cool to run in slow motion while making weird sounds; the show that cemented the fascination I have with the Sasquatch; the show that had the cutest secretary, Peggy Callahan, played by Jennifer Darling. But I’ll always remember the cool toys for the show the most.
As expected, there was a Steve Austin doll, with various bionic parts. The head had a weird looking bionic eye in it. You could look through it by peering through Steve’s head. However, it kinda made his face look a little distorted. The arm was covered in a flexible plastic skin that you could roll up to reveal some electronic modules you could remove. It worked very well: you could still flex the arm with the skin in place. The arm was also removable and replaceable: you could buy other “mission-specific” arms for him. The arm itself had the ability to lift up to two pounds: a lever on the back of the doll made the arm act like a jack of sorts. Of course, we attempted to have good old Steve try and lift everything we could find: the included goofy engine block, rocks of various sizes, and whatever else we could find. He could bench press any G.I. Joe with ease.
Hasbro jumped on the bionic bandwagon, too, with their G.I. Joe compatible Mike Power, Atomic Man. He looked like a G.I. Joe with a transparent arm and leg. He had a cool hand-held helicopter accessory, but the doll itself looked weird. The neck was messed up and the G.I. Joe’s of that era had real hair, not the painted hair that Mike sported. Steve Austin could easily kick his ass.
I was never able to find a Sasquatch doll and I still regret not picking up the Oscar Goldman when I had the chance. I did have the command center/repair center/rocket thing: came with various tubes you could hook up to his arms. It also acted as a carrying case for Steve. Never saw any Jaime Sommers dolls, either, but would not have had one, anyhow: all her accessories were purses and dresses, never any cool replacement arms. If they had made a Callahan doll, though, I would have owned it.
- Great photos of the various toys
- More information on the Steve Austin doll
- Even more information on the set
- An ad for Steve Austin
- An ad for Jaime Sommers
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 19th, 2006 at 8:25 pm and is filed under Toys. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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