A Brief History of Sports Action Figures

If you’ve looked at our October 5th auction, you’ve seen a ton of sports action figures. All the major national sports are represented in glorious plastic, which might make you wonder: when did sports action figures first become a thing? Well, wonder no more!

1958: Hartland Plastics Company Makes the First Baseball Figurines

The Hartland Plastics Company was founded in the 1940s and is credited with creating the first plastic toys sold in America. They followed trends as they came up, introducing western themed figurines in the early 50s. By the late 50s, the new hotness among kids was baseball. Though kids had long been fans of the game, the introduction of modern trading cards in 1951 and televised games around the same time made baseball more popular than ever. Hartland Plastics introduced baseball player figurines in 1958. Their lack of articulation will prove the standard, rather than the exception, in sports figures going forward.

1965: Rosko Industries Creates Johnny Hero

Hasbro invented the term “action figure” in 1964 to market dolls to boys, specifically G.I. Joe. Their success was imitated a year later by Rosko Industries. While Hasbro went military, Rosko went athletic with Johnny Hero. Johnny came packaged in generic track-and-field sporting togs but additional outfits could make him a player of any kid’s favorite sport. Heck, he could even play on your favorite baseball team if you bought their uniform. The line was short-lived and off of shelves by the end of the sixties, but it is interesting to note that sports action figures predate superhero figures by a whole year.

1988: Kenner Teams Up with Pat McInally for Starting Lineup

By 1988, sports figures were largely gone from store shelves. This was noticed by then-recently retired Cincinnati Bengals wide-receiver Pat McInally, who thought that the burgeoning collector’s market would eat up sports action figures. He brought the idea to Kenner, then the undisputed master of the form, and they turned it into their Starting Lineup line of figures. The line’s launch was massive, with over three hundred unique figures spread across the MLB, NFL, and NBA. They would quickly add the NHL to their licensing agreement for future waves.

Kenner distributed the figures somewhat like trading cards. Every major team got at least one figure, with New York teams sometimes receiving as many as seven. Each year, a new range of single-packed figures would be released based on which players and what teams were popular. Further, distribution was weighted based on location, meaning it was easier to find a Tiger or a Piston in Detroit than it was in Seattle.

The figures themselves were closer to figurines than typical action figures, with little-to-no articulation. They were instead pre-posed in dynamic scenes of athleticism. The line was a hit with collectors and kids alike but folded in 2001 amidst the drastic reorganization of the toy market as it calmed down from its mid-90s peak.

2001: McFarlane Toys Gets In The Game

McFarlane Toys was founded by comics legend Todd McFarlane to make the kind of toys he wanted to see. At first, this was mostly variations on his signature creation, Spawn, but throughout the 90s the company branched out into the worlds of movies and music. As Starting Lineup left the field, McFarlane picked up the ball and entered the world of sports action figures. Though McFarlane Sports Picks doesn’t make nearly as many players as Starting Lineup did at its height, they make up for it with a much higher level of detail on a larger scale. It's still going strong today, with over twenty years of sports stars under its belt.

Sports Action Figures Coming to Auction

Sports action figures have a history nearly as long as those of sports trading cards. They’ve been mainstay of collector’s shelves for over 35 years now and show no signs of going away. If you have a collection of action figures – any kind of action figures – that you’re ready to sell, let Back to the Past help! We specialize in bringing collections to buyers without any extra work on your part! If that sounds nice, drop us a line today!