Evan Ratliff

I feel like I saw other games that had Japanese writing and stuff.

all over the place.

There was a UK company who released it under the name Action Man and eventually they licensed it to Japan to a company called Takara.

Yeah?

I don't know.

Maybe.

It's a memory.

It may have just been like boot up screens or something.

So they decide – it was such an eye grabber at CES that they decided, all right, let's go to New York City and let's test it out there in one city, roll it out, see what happens.

They went on to create some action figures based on G.I.

Joe and then due to the oil crisis in the early 70s, they started developing smaller versions.

So at three and three quarters inches they developed Microman, released him in 1974, and that kind of led to this new thing which was smaller dudes.

The New York retailer said –

Hey, buddy, look at this.

I got a warehouse full of Ataris over here that I can't even give away.

I don't know about a new gaming system.

And they said, all right, here's what we'll do.

We will ship them to your store from Japan for free.

And kids didn't care.

No, no.