Taking It Back... Way Back Vol #3 by Joe Esq

Hiya kids! Your boy JoeyEsq is here with Volume 3 of “Takin It Back… Way Back”, the article where I highlight for you some of the forgotten toy lines of that most magical of decades, the 1980’s! Unlike the previous two articles (which you can check out here and here) today’s has a theme – He-Man knockoffs. Now with the exception of maybe Star Wars, He-Man was probably the most important and influential toy line of the 80’s, and I’m not only saying that because both properties were copiously ripped off by less creative minds in the toy industry.

Back in the 60’s and 70’s the FCC had all kinds of rules in place about the amount of advertising that could be run during children’s programming. Why this was any of the government’s business in the first place I’ll never understand, but the bottom line was you couldn’t use kid’s programming to try to sell stuff to kids. ABC and Mattel found this out the hard way in 1968 when the FCC decided that the Saturday morning cartoon Hot Wheels was just an extended commercial for the toy cars (never mind that the show was about a racing team and specific cars were never actually featured).

***Please click Read more below to see more of Joe Esq. "Takin' It Back... Vol#3"***