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5196 total appearances

Appearances Over Time

Podcast Appearances

Stuff You Should Know
SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: How the Nintendo Entertainment System Changed Gaming Forever

told a couple of people, like, hey, redesign this in an hour.

Stuff You Should Know
SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: A Partial History of Action Figures

There was just no competing with Migo in the U.S., even though a lot of people were.

Stuff You Should Know
SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: How the Nintendo Entertainment System Changed Gaming Forever

And they did.

Stuff You Should Know
SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: How the Nintendo Entertainment System Changed Gaming Forever

And Lance Barr was the guy who did it.

Stuff You Should Know
SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: A Partial History of Action Figures

But they also dropped the ball in the most spectacular fashion anyone could ever drop the ball in the action figure world.

Stuff You Should Know
SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: How the Nintendo Entertainment System Changed Gaming Forever

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.

Stuff You Should Know
SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: A Partial History of Action Figures

Yeah.

Stuff You Should Know
SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: A Partial History of Action Figures

Like, it's almost an elegant end of the story because it literally makes you cringe when you read it.

Stuff You Should Know
SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: How the Nintendo Entertainment System Changed Gaming Forever

So they did all this.

Stuff You Should Know
SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: How the Nintendo Entertainment System Changed Gaming Forever

and had it done in time for the July 1985 CES.

Stuff You Should Know
SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: A Partial History of Action Figures

And there's two different versions, but both of them are like, oh, man.

Stuff You Should Know
SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: A Partial History of Action Figures

Yeah, I think there's really only one version.

Stuff You Should Know
SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: How the Nintendo Entertainment System Changed Gaming Forever

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.

Stuff You Should Know
SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: A Partial History of Action Figures

I literally could not find a single source other than this one guy's blog who claimed the other version.

Stuff You Should Know
SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: A Partial History of Action Figures

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.

Stuff You Should Know
SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: How the Nintendo Entertainment System Changed Gaming Forever

Well, notably robot because that's what all anyone cared about at first.

Stuff You Should Know
SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: How the Nintendo Entertainment System Changed Gaming Forever

Yeah, for sure.

Stuff You Should Know
SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: How the Nintendo Entertainment System Changed Gaming Forever

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

Stuff You Should Know
SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: A Partial History of Action Figures

Yes.

Stuff You Should Know
SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: A Partial History of Action Figures

So how, though?