Evan Ratliff
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
told a couple of people, like, hey, redesign this in an hour.
There was just no competing with Migo in the U.S., even though a lot of people were.
And they did.
And Lance Barr was the guy who did it.
But they also dropped the ball in the most spectacular fashion anyone could ever drop the ball in the action figure world.
And he knocked it out of the park because the NES, as it debuted later on in North America, was essentially what he came up with in that one hour that he was given to do it.
Yeah.
Like, it's almost an elegant end of the story because it literally makes you cringe when you read it.
So they did all this.
and had it done in time for the July 1985 CES.
And there's two different versions, but both of them are like, oh, man.
Yeah, I think there's really only one version.
Like six months after that huge colossal failure, they went back to the drawing board and came back in six months with the Nintendo Entertainment System fully fleshed out, including Robot and Zapper Gun.
I literally could not find a single source other than this one guy's blog who claimed the other version.
But what we're talking about, and if you know action figures, you probably see this coming, they declined the Star Wars brand and allowed Kenner to pick it up.
Well, notably robot because that's what all anyone cared about at first.
Yeah, for sure.
Like at CES, the NES system was sort of to the side and everyone was just trying to get their hands on Rob and play Gyromite, which I'm telling you, you got to just spend five minutes watching Rob play this game
Yes.
So how, though?