Out of the Toybox (54): Adventure!

 

When Kenner’s Star Wars action figures first appeared in 1977 in the 3 & ¾ inch format they were not entirely without precedent. In fact, Fisher-Price’s Adventure People were first released in 1975 and repaints of some of these to resemble ‘Star Wars’ characters were actually used to provide ‘proof of concept’ for the Kenner line.

We did not start to get any Adventure People, however, until we were well into Star Wars and needed to plump out the then rather limited cast with more characters. As I’ve noted, the one we called ‘Uncle Owen’ is broken, and the female scuba swimmer (who I hereby dub ‘Holly Diver’) is somewhere else. We also had and have the Fisher-Price ‘Sea Explorer’, a boat that rolled on a wheel and which was used as a land speeder for quite a while. Also our original Boy action figure (who I named Will and who, dressed in a Jawa robe, went on many a magical adventure), broke and was replaced by Tom Villareal when he saw how I mourned his passing.