Palitoy's Action Force - HISTORY of SPACE FORCE! Vintage 1980s Toy Documentary

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Captain Connor's Space Force. Expect the unexpected. [00:00:05] Speaker 2: As we go through the records of toy history, it's time once again to go back to the British-based toy company Palatoy and the Space Force range within the Action Force toy brand. And within that context, there's a fair bit to discuss in terms of the various figures and vehicles. [00:00:20] Patrick Lennon: The Triad has just so much going for it. Another Bob Reakin kind of classic vehicle. The two little mini-ships. The fact that those wings can move into various different formats. [00:00:30] Speaker 1: We actually get to see how the space engineer evolved. [00:00:34] Patrick Lennon: It's kind of a process to how it went through the whole iteration of the figure from start to finish. [00:00:39] Speaker 2: Now this particular topic goes way past the items that we saw at retail because there's a lot of unproduced items that never made the final cut that are worth a discussion here. [00:00:49] Patrick Lennon: We do have concept sketches for a moonwalking exotute. [00:00:53] Speaker 1: Very detailed, very complex ideas. It's very preliminary. I don't think it was ever casted out. [00:00:58] Patrick Lennon: The unproduced troop transporter. This did make it to a full-sized prototype mock-up. The person who built that prototype did take it with him when he left Palatoy. So it is out there. [00:01:09] Speaker 2: And of course, there's a certain amount of storytelling that occurred on the pages of Battle Action Force as produced by IPC magazines. [00:01:16] Patrick Lennon: They use his mechanical hand to hack into NASA. Don't ask. [00:01:22] Speaker 1: Codename Sky Raider Story offers a suggestion as to who Baron Ironblood might have been before he became Baron Ironblood. [00:01:29] Speaker 2: And with all of that considered, we have quite the history lesson for you here. So stay tuned for the story of Palatoy Action Forces Space Force Team. Let's begin. [00:01:47] Patrick Lennon: After Action Force released in 1982, the first year of Action Force was just release the top-selling Action Man toys in the smaller scale. Those best-selling outfits were reduced down in size. When they reimagined Action Force for 1983, they were given a brief to be a bit more fantasy with it. And this is the result. You got four sub-teams for the good guys. Z-Force, Q-Force, Space Force, and SAS, and an enemy team. Officially they're called just the enemy, but everybody calls them the Red Shadows. [00:02:38] Speaker 1: There's definitely a blend of modern military, you know, special forces, but then you've also got this sort of fantasy science fiction element too. [00:02:48] Patrick Lennon: But this kind of rebranded relaunch strategy was there to really bring in a bit more storytelling to the toy line that wasn't there in the 1982 lineup. Obviously, today's call, we want to talk about Space Force, my favourite sub-team. I'm Patrick Lennon. I have been on the channel before. My side hustle is as writer. And in that context, I've worked on a number of books with Total Toy Books here, but probably the ones we're most well known for are our Action Force books, the Total Action Force series. I also work a little bit with Total RoboSchool for Skeletron. [00:03:19] Speaker 2: You can find these various publications by visiting either TotalToyBooks.com or Skeletron.com. Buy these books today and start learning everything you can about Palatoy's Action Force. Okay, so before we get too deep into the Space Force topic itself, I do want to take a step back and point out how the company Palatoy did explore some options to at least incorporate some level of space themed figures into their existing 12-inch Action Man toy line in the 1960s and 70s. [00:03:48] Patrick Lennon: I actually think these are kind of interesting. Obviously, Palatoy took American G.I. Joe outfits from Hasbro. And the first two here on this slide, the Crash Crew and the Astronaut, were of course released in the G.I. Joe line. The one that's probably more interesting is the Space Explorer from 1971. And it's also one of the rarest Action Man outfits. I'm not a huge Action Man collector, but I am aware that this is one of the rarest Action Man items and it's something that doesn't even really show up on the aftermarket all that often. And I think part of the reason why it might be so rare is because, as you may know from reading our Star Wars book, retailers didn't like taking space things prior to, you know, Star Wars basically creating a whole new market. There wasn't much interest in space toys in kind of the early 70s from retailers in the UK. That all changed in 1977. Star Wars wasn't released until the very, very end of 1977 in the UK. It literally came out at Christmas time in cinemas. Star Wars figures came out in 1978 and they were as successful in England as they were anywhere else. And because of this, Palatoy said, "Space toys are cool again. Retailers want to take them." So they launched the Action Man Space Ranger assortment. This particular line was 100% [00:05:04] Speaker 1: inspired by Star Wars. Remember that at this time, Action Man was still Palatoy's number one selling toy. Star Wars hadn't had any kind of negative impact on its 12-inch line. But Palatoy could see that the Star Wars toys were selling like hotcakes. They figured, "What can we do? Can we bring some of this kind of space fantasy into our action man line?" And to tap into this kind of new science fiction, science fantasy market. And the Space Ranger series was born. They continued that kind of series up until [00:05:37] Patrick Lennon: 1983. An interesting conclusion is that ROM, Space Knight, which is a toy from Parker. ROM was kind of a flop as a toy. Parker, I believe, only sold a couple of hundred thousand units of him. But Palatoy, being a member of the General Mills toy group, as Parker was, got the option to release it. So they released him as part of Action Man. Obviously the Marvel comic of ROM was massively more successful than the toy ever was. You've also got Captain Zargon here. Captain Zargon's also had a kind of interesting afterlife, at least in the indie toy scene. We've seen a couple of homages to him, let's just say. And they finished out the assortment there with the Talking Space Ranger Commander in 1982 and the Space Ranger Commando in 1983. I've always liked these outfits. Also, they've got this kind of British science fiction sensibility that I don't think you see in kind of American toys. And, you know, honestly, the Talking Space Ranger Commander is wearing, effectively, a Union Jack on his chest. So it's very, very British. As Action Man started to give way to the [00:06:37] Speaker 2: smaller Action Force toy line, we should go back and have a look at some concepts that were developed all the way back in 1981. Now this would be ahead of even the initial branding of Action Force in 1982, as well as the rebranding and basically the second series of Action Force in 1983 that included Space Force and the four main sub-teams. In developing this concept, Chief Designer Bob Breakin would explore a narrative whereby an alien group known as the Jarmans would go up against a heroic band of [00:07:07] Speaker 1: Action Men. So, you know, Bob Breakin is a kind of a self-professed science fiction fan. And this was a concept that Bob put together for what Action Force could be, which is he wasn't, you know, prompted by his kind of bosses in Palatoy for this. This was something that he worked on on his own. He put together a little backstory with a very heavily kind of science fantasy feel to this particular approach. And we can see some of these kind of designs maybe for the Jarmans, which would be the bad guys, which you see at the top row here. They show a line of design thinking by Bob that would evolve when he gets deeper into developing this new mythology for Action Force Series 2. Also, as part of the development for [00:07:51] Speaker 2: Action Force as it moved from that initial 1982 range to the 1983 sub-team driven range, we have some early color explorations for Space Force. [00:08:01] Speaker 1: So I think that this shows kind of an evolution of that sort of German kind of colorway or design. But we also get to see the emergence of the Space Force insignia, that kind of the lightning bolt. And some of these concepts would eventually be worked up as prototypes. But the colorways, they're not a million miles away from what Bob was trying to do with Special Weapons Force. Again, this is part of that evolution. And I think there might have been a tug of war between what marketing wanted to do within Palatoy, which is lean into a special forces contemporary military theme. And then you've got a design team who are sci-fi enthusiasts, and they're pushing this kind of future war. It's ultimately that kind of tug of war pays off where you get this kind of blend, which is a mix of modern military and then crazy fantasy as well. [00:08:53] Patrick Lennon: The first appearance of Action Force comics, Space Force does have a very brief appearance. [00:08:58] Speaker 1: These are great stories written by Jerry Finlay Day, kind of Space Force makes its debut. I suppose the writing team hadn't really worked out how they sort of fit with this kind of modern military counter-terrorist squad. So in the very first story, Space Force's role is really more about [00:09:16] Patrick Lennon: observation. What's interesting about this first story is that you see prototypes. So obviously, when they were drawing the comic, they didn't have finished product ready to go yet. [00:09:26] Speaker 1: The design team were kind of being a little bit kind of fluid still. Things hadn't been locked down at the time. From the comic side of it, they needed, you know, weeks and weeks and weeks to get the artwork and the editorial, you know, created before they could get it into their pipeline, get it to print, get it released. So you see a lot of conceptual and prototype material showing up. And one great example, we see the Cosmic Cruiser and it is clearly a prototype version of the Cosmic Cruiser, which is noticeably different from the production release. So it has additional parts that the retail version [00:10:01] Patrick Lennon: doesn't have. You'll see it has the large engine bolted onto the top, for example. Another thing that's interesting about this appearance of Space Force is the appearance of that kind of spherical Space Force base. That was just based on a promo shot that Palatoy had done. So that was like a mock-up diorama piece. And so obviously the Space Force base was never released. But as they got a bit more [00:10:24] Speaker 1: comfortable with the role that Space Force could play, the stories very much lean into kind of James Bond meets sci-fi, you know, Moonraker, that type of stuff. And you can see that kind of James Bond, Moonraker inspired kind of space battle as the Red Shadows attack the space station, they take it over. You know, other contemporary sci-fi influences are kind of making their way into the storytelling there. [00:10:47] Patrick Lennon: There's been multiple appearances of a Space Force satellite that doesn't actually obviously appear in the toy line. It makes it appear in, say, Crossfire, for example. Crossfire, which is from Battle Action Force Annual. It comes from this annual, the Battle Action Force Annual from 1985. Don't let the title fool you, it was actually released in 1984 because that's how they worked annuals in the UK at the time. They would be issued generally around September time for the Christmas market. This is my childhood one, and I was given it for Christmas. And so Crossfire is one of the stories in that annual. It is an interesting one because it has a satellite defence in it, which is my favourite Space Force toy. It is a retool of an existing AF vehicle, just with some guns put on it. And then of course, we've got Operation Spearhead. Operation Spearhead, the guys appear briefly in this [00:11:39] Speaker 1: story. Again, it's an attempt to bring the Space Force characters into the story, but not necessarily giving them their own kind of action and adventure. They're just collaborating with the other team [00:11:50] Patrick Lennon: members in that particular story. They don't really get a long story, Space Force, in the Battle comic. Whereas, you know, Z-Force get quite long stories over the course of the comics run, and the SAS obviously get a couple of the big, you know, Operation Bloodhound. You know, it's a very, very long story. Space Force never really got that in the comics, so I think they did kind of get [00:12:11] Speaker 2: shortchanged. As we look at the individual characters, you'll see that each figure is listed as per their function within the Space Force team. However, each character also has a codename, much like their GI Joe counterparts. For example, the space engineer takes on the codename of Kiwi, the space pilot has the codename of Hawk Jets, and the space commander has a codename of Sky Raider, though we also know the space commander by his real name, Chuck Connors. Chuck Connors aka Sky Raider, [00:12:39] Patrick Lennon: 1983 release, came single carded, came with a blue Uzi. Great little figure. He was one of my favourite [00:12:45] Speaker 1: figures as a kid. I just think that the look, the design, the cap, the blue Uzi, loved it. In the mini-comic, he actually wears a Stetson. I think that's a nice kind of, you know, character callback. Even though he's not from Texas, there is a link there with the Stetson. It only features in one panel, but I think that's something that could have been developed more, maybe if Space Force had gotten a bit more, you know, time in the comics. He did get a little bit of backstory in [00:13:12] Patrick Lennon: God Named Sky Raider, which tells a little bit about his previous experience working on the space shuttle. And part of the reason why I like it very much is, again, calling back to that kind of British sci-fi aesthetic. If you read the story, it's very Dan Dare-esque. And for those of you who aren't familiar with Dan Dare, he would have been kind of Britain's space superhero going back to the 60s. He's probably as famous as like Judge Dredd in terms of British comics. So we get Sky Raiders backstory here. Like I said, his encounter with a terrorist called Carl Vagan, who may or may not be Baron Ironblood. Sky Raider, at the end of the story, suspects he may have been, because he had very similar world domination plans and obsessive followers in the same way that Baron Ironblood [00:13:57] Speaker 1: ends up having. Codename Sky Raider story, I think it's great, but it offers a suggestion as to who who Baron Ironblood might have been before he became Baron Ironblood. Carl Vagan is, you know, a play on the famous physicist Carl Sagan. Carl Sagan's a much nicer guy. And somebody pointed out to me before, when Baron Ironblood wears his mask, all you can see are his eyes. But Carl Vagan has kind of this band across his eyes. So it's the only part of his face that you can't see. So that kind of inverse aesthetic compared to Baron Ironblood, I think it's a deliberate relationship [00:14:34] Patrick Lennon: there. The next main character is the Space Force Patroller. Palatoy are a bit weird about their releases. Is he the Space Patroller or is he the Security Trooper? Because he's called both. Essentially, you have two basically identical figures released at the same time. One is yellowish and one is orangeish. Officially, the yellowy version is supposed to be the Space Patroller, aka Blast Off in the comics. He is an Australian guy. And because he's Australian, obviously his [00:15:03] Speaker 1: character trait is that he can use a boomerang. Blast Off, Greg Taggart with his trusty boomerang. I really love this aesthetic here of the Space Force Patroller. He is a high altitude freefall [00:15:15] Patrick Lennon: parachutist is kind of his background. Like I said, he's yellow, the other guy is orange, but your mileage may vary with them. He's orange in the data file and then the figure is yellow, like I said, and he's shown there piloting satellite defence, whereas it's supposed to be [00:15:28] Speaker 1: the Security Trooper with satellite defence. The reference material coming from Palatoy may not always have come across clearly to whoever was doing these kind of editorial pieces. You often see where the designs were still kind of, you know, fluid or in flux on the Palatoy side before they [00:15:42] Patrick Lennon: were fully locked in. The best thing to do is just buy one orange one and one yellow one, [00:15:46] Speaker 1: and that way you know you have both of them. I think of these guys more as army builders than individual characters because you can't take off the helmets, you can't see an identifiable face [00:15:58] Patrick Lennon: underneath. Here's the Security Trooper. Again, this is supposed to be the orange version of the figure. This is the one that is supposed to come with satellite defence. Obviously very little change in [00:16:09] Speaker 1: the aesthetic of the figure, just a slight colour change. He is from Sweden and he's a martial arts [00:16:15] Patrick Lennon: expert, judo and karate. He was available single-carded and packed in with a satellite defence. We see these [00:16:21] Speaker 1: early concepts for the space patroller and security officer. With the different helmets, where they [00:16:27] Patrick Lennon: more have a head inside a helmet rather than just a single piece helmet. Those concepts got all the way to [00:16:32] Speaker 1: the catalogue photos and the reference material that went out to the comic book publishers. And you can even see those characters in the background in their first comic appearance. It's something that got very far down the line. Obviously the removable helmets, something changed and then a solid helmet torso piece was produced in the end. Satellite Defence, underrated vehicle. I love it. The Satellite Defence is a [00:16:56] Patrick Lennon: fantastic vehicle. Again, easy to army build. The radar dish underneath of the Satellite Defence, I don't want to say it's taken from the Millennium Falcon. It's heavily inspired by the Millennium Falcon's radar dish. So when Palatoy were tooling this up, essentially they took an impression of the Satellite dish from the Millennium Falcon for the tech detail and they used it in the production tooling. It's more obvious on the prototype which we have images of in Total Action Force Volume 3. You can see the original kind of prototype and it's very clearly a Millennium Falcon dish. They did tone it down a bit for the retail version but it's got that little bit piece of Star Wars nostalgia in there if anybody's interested in taking a closer look. So Hot Jets, Yuri. Again, was he available individually or with the Cosmic Cruiser? It's a bit of a boat. Sometimes you'll get a Cosmic Cruiser has the same figure with orange boots which is Moon Dancer officially. So again, buy one of these figures with blue boots, buy one of them with orange boots and you have both. Cosmic Cruiser, I didn't realise this was a retooled shadow track for years until I put them both on a shelf beside each other when I was dusting one day. You can see elements of the [00:18:11] Speaker 1: shadow track in there because both the shadow track and the Cosmic Cruiser both came from the AF5 multi-mission craft. That chassis got repurposed for both the shadow track and the Cosmic Cruiser. Obviously it was heavily modified for the Cosmic Cruiser but we can still see echoes of it here. Ron Turner, when he draws the Cosmic Cruiser in his stories, there's two pilots like a pilot and a co-pilot sitting up front suggesting that the vehicle is way bigger than it actually was. But a superb vehicle packs lots of firepower. You definitely want it in your Space Force fleet. With the [00:18:44] Speaker 2: success of Action Force in its opening years, the Space Force lineup would see an expansion as 1983 headed into 1984. And perhaps the centrepiece of any Space Force collection would be the Triad Fighter. [00:18:56] Patrick Lennon: 1983, the designers in Palatoy are told, "Hey, there's some money here. Action Force has done quite well in its first couple of years. Would you like some money for new tooling?" And this is one of the results. [00:19:06] Speaker 1: The Triad, another Bob Breakin classic vehicle, created and designed it at the same time as the [00:19:12] Patrick Lennon: Roboscope. The Roboscope gets all of the praise and all of the interest and all of the, "Ooh, it's the best toy of the 1980s." Which is true, but I also think the Triad is up there. So released in 1984, alongside new vehicles, this is the best Space Force vehicle by default. The Triad has just so much going for it. The two little mini-ships that clip on to the main body. The fact that those wings can move into various different formats. The fact that they can hold three figures, and the fact that it interacts with the Kiwi figure as well. So if you have a Space Force engineer, he came with hoses that could plug into the back of the Triad. The pilot is Moon Dancer, or is it? Because sometimes it's hot jets. Again, buy one of these figures with blue boots, buy one of them with orange boots, and you have both. It was released in 1984, and then it was given a second release in 1985, in a new box and with new stickers. This is the same production run as the 1984 one. Essentially, they repacked up the overstock, gave it a new sticker sheet, and gave it a new Moon Dancer figure. With the design team being let go, [00:20:11] Speaker 1: in '84 it meant that Pallethoys marketing team just kind of leaned into their relationship with Hasbro, and started to bring over Hasbro material with minimal changes to them. So in this case here, Moon Dancer gets an upgrade. Short Fuse gets recoloured to become this kind of second version of Moon Dancer. So not having the design team of Pallethoys to kind of review and refine some of these decisions meant that things like Moon Dancer, who's a pilot for a spacecraft, comes with a mortar and a backpack with rockets. Probably not the right kind of accessories, and even the colourway, which is just a plain grey-black colourway. It's a very sudden departure for the look of the team. At the same time, they created, by chance and by coincidence, we got one of the holy grails of action figure collecting, and Moon Dancer is very sought after and very difficult to get these days. That Moon Dancer [00:21:06] Patrick Lennon: figure can be quite expensive to get on the aftermarket, although I believe one of the people on this call [00:21:11] Speaker 2: has one. And I'll be right in thinking that Ken. Sometimes you get lucky and find one while toy hunting. The one here in my collection is graded by the company UKG, and it's one of my favourite [00:21:23] Patrick Lennon: pieces within the collection. So he does appear in the aftermarket. A lot of that kind of pallet toy overstock ended up being at the 1992 GI Joe collectors convention. So the American collectors ended up getting him. Moon Dancer is a former friend and trained alongside Red Wolf. They both flew with NASA at one point. [00:21:41] Speaker 1: We know there's some history back in their NASA days. We know they're kind of rivals. And so that was the [00:21:45] Patrick Lennon: kind of link between two characters. And that's explored a little bit more in the code name Moon Dancer comic series. Written by Scott Goodall, illustrated by Jeff Campion. Which came out late 1984. Those issues were released. I believe it's issues 501 on. So the story involves Moon Dancer training some new cadets, and on their first mission to the moon, the two cadets get themselves killed. They find evidence of a secret Apollo 18 mission, which obviously nobody believes actually happened. The two cadets get killed close to the moon. And so Moon Dancer is not believed when he comes back and says, "Well, this Apollo 18 capsule basically killed my guys." He goes rogue to undiscover what was the truth about [00:22:26] Speaker 1: this secret Apollo 18 mission. What's interesting about this, you can see Scott Goodall is leaning into other stories like, it's not a million miles away from, I say, The Fugitive. You know, taking a bit of inspiration from that and kind of informing the narrative. Moon Dancer, he uses Kiwi to help him [00:22:42] Patrick Lennon: hack into NASA's computers. And they find out that there was a secret Apollo 18 mission, but it wasn't organized by NASA. A thing to describe as moon fanatics launched their own Apollo mission. Eventually, it ends up that the Red Shadows had a base on the moon and had attacked this secret Apollo 18 mission. Moon Dancer and Kiwi go up and destroy the Red Shadows base, but not before getting entangled [00:23:06] Speaker 1: with Red Wolf and Groboskull. Well, what makes this one particularly interesting, we see Red Wolf unmasked and get a chance to get a sense of the character of Red Wolf. And then finally, we've got Engineer. The Space Engineer came out in '84 as part of the additions to the line. It's an [00:23:23] Patrick Lennon: interesting figure and he's very expensive to get, like complete, because he's got little parts that come off. He has interchangeable accessories for his hand because he has a mechanical hand, which is used in the Moon Dancer story. They use his mechanical hand to hack into NASA. Don't ask. There were a few iterations of the Space Force Engineer and we see some examples of kind of sketches here. He was due to come with a kind of a more open helmet and indeed prototype images of him with a kind of more [00:23:51] Speaker 1: open-faced helmet. This is great. We get to see some of Bob's concept drawings for the Space Force Engineer. You even see him like brainstorming, like what is this character? He's got an idea for a character. Is it a pirate? Is it a commando? Is it a controller, communications officer? And of course, he settles on Engineer. I love seeing the progression in Bob's sketches. These, you know, drawings have survived and we get these insights into Bob's design thinking. Brian put this in Total Action Force [00:24:18] Patrick Lennon: Volume 3. It's kind of a process to how it went through the whole internal pallet toy kind of iteration of the figure from from start to finish. Today, you would design this in PowerPoint. You'd [00:24:30] Speaker 1: pull all your images in. You'd type in your fonts. It would all be drawn digitally. These guys actually made a diorama and they hand wrote on on a sheet of paper all the different steps, obviously for an internal presentation. We actually get to see how the the Space Engineer evolved. We go through the different stages of how it's produced, with the initial kind of armature, the sculpting on top of that, how that's used to make a kind of a mould to produce a model, tooling aids, right through to a production figure. It's a great diagram. This is something that Bob would have worked on directly. It's a great piece of history. The head toys were made back in 1984. I think the battle packs are always worth giving a shout out to. And to be honest, I would hoover these up today to kind of kid out all my Action Force figures that have no accessories. All of the teams got these gear sets, [00:25:22] Patrick Lennon: but I like the Space Force one a lot. It's interesting because a lot of these are GI Joe parts that you would [00:25:28] Speaker 2: probably recognise. While that covers the retail releases, there's still a fair number of items [00:25:32] Patrick Lennon: that never saw the light of day. Unproduced. So we see here the original goal of the Space Force Engineer. Again, very, very different to how he eventually turned out. And then the female pilot, which for the longest time, that image we have on the screen there was the only image of the Space Force female pilot that existed that was out there. This was the only image we had and then we found the wax sculpts. We don't exactly know where she was supposed to come out. It's possible she would have been a single card release, but it's also possible she might have been packed in with the Space Force troop transport and obviously never got made. I suspect that she wasn't released because female figures weren't really a priority at the time. It's a shame it would have been really nice. She was inspired by the first woman in space, according to Bob Reakin. Valentina Tereshkova, [00:26:20] Speaker 1: the first woman in space. A little inside here, the head, that is actually a cover girl head that's [00:26:26] Patrick Lennon: been modified. And I think her colors really work very, very nicely. That white, orange, blue. Had she been released, she would have been probably released in kind of more standard Space Force colors. So speaking of the unproduced troop transporter, and again, this is another one of those things where for the longest time, there was only one image of this. And then Bob Reakin gave us a box of Polaroids. [00:26:44] Speaker 1: You can see Bob's creative thinking here. He's looking at something that's kind of modular [00:26:48] Patrick Lennon: with the design. Initially, those pods would have come out and acted as almost like drop pods. [00:26:52] Speaker 1: That can pop off. Troopers can jump out into battle. You can see how the shape evolves into this more kind of hexagonal type structure in the body. And that's not dissimilar from another pallet toy designer. Brian Turner was working on these modular mini rigs that could combine together. And I wonder if some of Brian's design thinking was also influencing Bob with some of his thinking, or vice versa. Idea sharing was definitely part of the culture in the design studio at Palatoy. [00:27:21] Patrick Lennon: This did make it to a full-sized prototype mock-up, which is the thing you can see here. As far as we're aware, the person who built that prototype did take it with him when he left Palatoy. So it is out there. It's just we've not been able to track it down. [00:27:36] Speaker 2: And regarding some of the paperwork that discusses 1984 unreleased troop transport, Brian and Patty did uncover a schedule that shows some of the planning that went into the 1984 range. It's a great piece of history. [00:27:49] Patrick Lennon: So this is a Gantt chart, which they use for project management within Palatoy. I think this is from June 1983 because the various projects all start in July 1983. [00:28:02] Speaker 1: Again, this is something that Bob would have had to, as part of his job as our chief designer, he would have had to draw this up. This is for toys that were being designed in '83 to be released in '84. Having a process Gantt chart like this was essential so that the designers could look at the [00:28:19] Patrick Lennon: schedule, lock in their various tasks. It discusses the schedule of when the various vehicles are going to go to tooling. All the vehicles would go into tooling almost simultaneously. They would take about five months to get the tooling done and then they would go into production in April and May 1984. And as you can see there, the production at the Triad is due to start in April 1984, as in production at the factory. And they would also start production run of the Robo Skull at the same time, to have those two vehicles launch simultaneously. [00:28:51] Speaker 1: We have the troop transporter listed in there. [00:28:53] Patrick Lennon: And it was supposed to start production late April 1984, as in production at the factory. Obviously sometime they decided we're not going to do the troop transporter. [00:29:03] Speaker 2: Further, I'll point out that Brian and Patty also have some other design documents from 1983 and 1984. There's a set of meeting minutes from 1983 for the 1984 line, with some items like the Triad fighter that did make it, and the troop transporter that did not make it. And there's also a very important design brief that was written in 1984, with plans for the 1985 line. So we'll discuss these two documents collectively here. [00:29:28] Patrick Lennon: Space Force was supposed to continue into 1985 had the line continued with Palatoy design input. [00:29:35] Speaker 1: In 1984, Action Force was the brand that was thriving for the company. The documents that Bob Breakin saved includes this design brief for the most ambitious expansion of Action Force to date. This was an actual locked in brief. This is what they were signing off on. They were getting the green light to go and produce everything listed in this document. And from Space Force's perspective, that meant that they were going to bring in a new character. [00:30:04] Patrick Lennon: One they specifically mentioned is they would move away from the Space Patrol and the Security Trooper and do a new Space Force Commando figure. We don't know what the Commando was going to look like. [00:30:12] Speaker 1: Things never got involved enough so that we could see that. [00:30:16] Patrick Lennon: They'd also planned to retool the Shark into a Space Force vehicle. They would change the interior. [00:30:23] Speaker 1: So that a figure could sit inside, rather than lie down. [00:30:26] Patrick Lennon: In the kind of Shark, Deep Space 6 kind of has to lie down to fit in the vehicle. I think the idea would be they would retool it so the figure would be able to sit up in the cockpit. [00:30:34] Speaker 1: And of course, I mean, the design of the Shark is perfect to become a space vehicle. [00:30:38] Patrick Lennon: And it would have been done in Space Force colours. [00:30:41] Speaker 1: But unfortunately, it wasn't to be because after that design brief got locked in, corporate changes in the structure of Palatoy and its role within the General Mills toy group kicked in and the entire design team were laid off, which left marketing. They were committed to a line expansion, but they had no designers to actually execute the new ideas. So the only simple solution they had was to take Hasbro product and just re-box it, repackage it as Palatoy and get it out for $85. [00:31:11] Patrick Lennon: Now, we do have concept sketches for a Space Force kind of unproduced moonwalking exosuit. There's a lot of moving parts in this, a lot of pieces, a lot of play features. [00:31:22] Speaker 1: Even its own separate communications satellite accessory. [00:31:26] Patrick Lennon: It essentially transformed from a lying down mode to a standing up mode. [00:31:30] Speaker 1: Very detailed, very complex ideas. And what we see here are sketches that were done by Sean Woodward, who worked for Raffo & Pape at the time. They were an outside design studio. It's very preliminary. And John Hawkes, who was the design director of Palatoy, he would talk to this third party Raffo & Pape. He would ask them to come up with what he would call blue sky thinking. So just radical, crazy ideas to interpret some of these internal concepts that are being developed within Palatoy, just to get a different perspective. So we have something that looks complex, but there was never an opportunity to evolve this. I don't think it was ever costed out beyond this initial concept. One thing Palatoy were great at was tooling reuse. [00:32:16] Patrick Lennon: Satellite Defence. So again, we found this in the box of Polaroids that Bob Breakin gave us. And we asked Bob, what do you think this was? And he wasn't sure what this was for. But then we found this memo. This was for a new product development meeting. They discussed possibly doing a recolour of the satellite defence in red shadows deco. [00:32:34] Speaker 1: Never let a cool vehicle go to waste if you can just change the colour. [00:32:37] Patrick Lennon: So obviously this is a mock up somebody did as part of this meeting that the memo was for. [00:32:42] Speaker 1: I would have loved to have seen a red shadow space trooper pilot that craft. [00:32:48] Speaker 2: While it's always fun to have a look at the cancelled items from 1984 and 1985, we do need to discuss the actual line up from 1985 that we did get at retail. [00:32:58] Patrick Lennon: Palatoy's design department were all effectively laid off in August 1984. Essentially they produced that memo thinking 1985 is going to be our year. New tooling, new toys, new figures. The hammer came in from General Mills and they said, you know, you're not doing any new design work in the UK. [00:33:13] Speaker 1: All those great ideas to either repurpose existing vehicles or create brand new craft and brand new figures, they were all abandoned. [00:33:21] Patrick Lennon: All the great plans from 1985, you know, Space Force Shark and whatever, were pushed to one side. And regional toy firms will basically just become distributors. So what happened in 1985 was they basically asked Hasbro, hey, can you just give us whatever you've already produced? And we put it on Palatoy cards. So that's how we got figures like Duke, Scarlet, and so on here in the UK and Ireland, put on Palatoy card backs. [00:33:46] Speaker 1: The new Refresh line, which was almost entirely Hasbro product, got released in 1985. It was really successful for Palatoy, we've got to remember that. So while it might mark the end of kind of Palatoy's unique original designs, those Geo Joe toys, they were new and fresh on this side of the Atlantic. It was a great boon for Palatoy. But what came with that were expensive licensing fees that Palatoy would have owed to Hasbro. And as part of the General Mills toy group, top brass in the General Mills toy group, they just weren't going to be happy with Palatoy paying a competitor royalty fees. [00:34:23] Patrick Lennon: 1986, the line was winding down. [00:34:26] Speaker 1: At this point, it's almost entirely Hasbro product. [00:34:28] Patrick Lennon: In September 1986, they transferred the Action Force trademark. [00:34:33] Speaker 1: We have a scenario where they assigned the trademark for Action Force over the Hasbro. [00:34:37] Patrick Lennon: In anticipation of Hasbro relaunching Action Force in 1987. [00:34:40] Speaker 1: And it's a reasonable assumption to think that that might have been in an effort to offset any royalties because Action Force would have had fantastic brand equity. [00:34:52] Patrick Lennon: The comic with IPC ended in November 1986, and that would make sense. So if they were told in September that Action Force is moving, it would make sense that the comic being planned in advance would wind down in November. And then things went quiet for a few months. And then March 1987, Action Force was relaunched by Hasbro in the UK, where we got, you know, an English comic, but using the American characters. [00:35:18] Speaker 2: That gets us to the end of this particular era of Action Force. And hopefully you can all appreciate the role that Space Force played. And while cancelled products, Triad Fighters, Moondancer Holy Grails all played a very important role in what Space Force became. As a final talking point, I do want to further reiterate the somewhat lack of use that Space Force got during the comics. And I believe the reason for that was, as Space Force was coming out in 1983, that was kind of towards the end of the Return of the Jedi, Star Wars era. And a lot of what we were seeing in pop culture at that time was trending more towards military, realism, more grounded fictional storytelling. For better or worse, that may have worked against Space Force a little bit. So just keep that in mind if you decide to look further into this particular team. [00:36:04] Patrick Lennon: Space Force just don't get that love. [00:36:05] Speaker 1: There's some great stories, some great artwork. But Space Force didn't get as much time in the comics as the other Action Force teams. Z-Force and SAS Force really dominated the comics lore. [00:36:18] Patrick Lennon: Things like the SAS stories and the Z-Force stories are a lot more grounded. Whereas with Space Force, you kind of have to go science fiction with it. You know, there are bases on the moon and you can tell that the writers of the comic weren't all that interested in it. Like, Jerry Finlay Day didn't really use Space Force very much at all. [00:36:34] Speaker 1: But that doesn't take away from the genius of Palatoy's designers. I think they created a great line. [00:36:40] Speaker 2: For what it's worth, I certainly had fun sitting here and taking in information from Brian Hickey and Patty Lennon. And hopefully you all learned something from this video as well. [00:36:50] Patrick Lennon: So that kind of brought that whole Palatoy era of Action Force to an end. Or did it? Because apparently we're still talking about it. [00:36:56] Speaker 1: I think Space Force is one of those Action Force teams that has some of the best unproduced ideas that never made it. [00:37:02] Patrick Lennon: They obviously did something right. And, you know, I think it worked. It's my favorite sub team. The science fiction vibe really always gets me. So I'm happy to have come out and talk about them. [00:37:13] Speaker 2: And if you like videos such as this one, I'm going to put another Palatoy Action Force related video for you to click on right over here. Or to choose your own history topic from an existing playlist, you can click on that playlist right over here. Otherwise, thanks for watching and I'll see y'all next time. Take care.