Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Collection of the Week: Wonder Woman (Mego; 1977 - 1978)


Lynda Carter's Wonder Woman (1975 - 1979) captured the imagination of a generation of kids during the era of The Six Million Dollar Man (1974 - 1978) and The Bionic Woman (1976 - 1978).  While Kenner had licensed those particular superhero programs, Mego released several large-scale, 12-inch action figures from Wonder Woman.

The first and most important such figure was Wonder Woman herself. This Amazonian came equipped with a magic lasso, tiara, and bullet-proof bracelets.

She was also released with Diana Prince's eyeglasses and Navy's uniform (yeoman), so she could maintain her disguise in America

In Canada, additional costumes were released for Diana Prince, though not in the United States.  The toy figure had a re-release in 1978 with "new fly-away action!," though today I can't recall what that descriptor actually means.


Steve Trevor -- a character played by Lyle Waggoner on television -- was also released in action figure format as well, so that Wonder Woman had someone to rescue.


The final two figures in the line were Queen Hippolyte (Cloris Leachman on TV), the queen of Paradise Island, and more interestingly, fellow Amazonian Nubia, a character described as a "super foe" for Wonder Woman.


Nubia was black, gorgeous, and wore silver body armor.  The character never appeared on the TV program, though plans had been afoot for her to do so before the series switched networks for its third and final season.

The extremely rare Nubia came equipped with a shield, and a sword, and is one of those toys which I really wish I had bought, back when I was a kid.  She looks....bad.

You can see Mego Wonder Woman battle Nubia below:


1 comment:

  1. The fly away action was a string you could pull the figure along to make it look like they were flying. Here's a video for it:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUOj1qun8CU

    ReplyDelete

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