Missing: The Action Figure Carrying Case

I’ve mentioned a few times recently how playsets aren’t as common in toy lines as they once were (see “Where Kenner’s “Star Wars Collection” Failed Cloud City” and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Pop-Up Pizza Playset”), but there’s another classic action figure accessory/toy that seems to be rarer than it was back in the eighties: the action figure carrying case. Yes, what was once a fairly common — and vital! — accessory for any action figure line now appears to be something special and almost forgotten by manufacturers. Why?

The Eighties, a Decade of Radical Action Figure Carrying Cases

As a child of the seventies and eighties I was lucky enough to be a kid during a time when toy companies were producing an unbelievable number of different lines, many of which have gone on to be successes in today’s market. And if you had a great line of action figures back in the eighties then chances are there was at least one official action figure carrying case for the line . . . and sometimes even more than one case!

And cases came in all manner of shapes, sizes, and designs including:

• Basic Cases – Often made of vinyl and packed with plastic storage trays, these briefcase-like cases were fairly common and produced for lines like G.I. Joe (see yojoe.com), Star Wars (see kennerarchive.com and theswca.com), and Transformers (see finalfrontiertoys.com). This style of case was so common that there were even generic “space figure” cases released like the “Space Case” which is shown at theswca.com. I love that case artwork!

• Wearable Carrying Cases – The ultimate expression of action figure geekdom in the eighties had to be actually wearing your action figures with carrying cases like the Star Wars Chewbacca Bandolier Strap (see the swca.com), the G.I. Joe Pocket Patrol Pack (see yojoe.com), and the M.U.S.C.L.E. Battlin’ Belt (see Nathan’s MUSCLE Blog). Yeah, you were seriously comfortable with your love of toys if you wore any of these to school.

• Vehicle Carrying Cases – These cases served both to carry action figures and as a vehicle for the toys. A couple of the greatest examples of this type of case are the G.I. Joe APC from 1983 (see yojoe.com) and Kenner’s Rebel Transport from 1980 (see kennerarchive.com), but maybe the greatest example ever is the Masters of the Universe Battle Bones (which I reviewed back in 2009). Seriously, Battle Bones is an awesome carrying case and makes me ask: Why don’t we get toys like this these days?

What Happened to the Action Figure Carrying Case?

Something near-fatal happened to the action figure carrying case over the last two decades or so and I’d love to find out exactly why we don’t see carrying cases like we did in the eighties. It’s not that there aren’t any carrying cases at all — mass market releases like the Real Steel Carrying Case* and LEGO Star Wars Minifigure Case* have been released in the last few years — but I doubt anyone would argue when I say that carrying cases are not a standard action figure accessory these days.

Thinking through the situation I can come up with a few reasons why carrying cases are a bit scarcer on store shelves these days:

• Companies don’t “shoot for the moon” on lines like they once did. In the eighties it seemed like every new action figure line was banking on becoming a multi-million dollar success and companies acted like the line was a hit right out of the gate. A carrying case was an important part of a line (though not at important as a playset) and the more figures in your line the more likely you could support a carrying case or two.
  
• “Adult Collector” lines don’t demand carrying cases. DC Universe Classics, Masters of the Universe Classics, and even the Marvel Legends lines often feel more like poseable statues than toys — especially the way some of us (myself included) nitpick the sculpting and paintwork. Adults don’t carrying their “toys” around the way kids do so those lines just don’t have much use for a carrying case.
  
• Money. Yeah, just like everything else a carrying case costs money to make and when they’re big and made of plastic that’s a lot of money sunk into a single item. And tooling for a custom carrying case is expensive and doesn’t carry over well to other toys — a character head case, for example, is always that head and doesn’t lend itself to much reuse — so that’s a strike against doing any sort of weird and special carrying cases.

Maybe It’s Okay

But as I think through the drop in action figure carrying cases on the market, and I think through how many times I saw cases like the Millennium Falcon Carrying Case* on clearance back in the nineties, maybe we didn’t lose all that much when carrying cases abandoned the store shelves. After all, if carrying cases were really a moneymaker for toy companies they would be on shelves today, so it is likely best that companies recognized the situation and dropped carrying cases from their catalogs.

And for nostalgic collectors like myself there’s not only the old cases left to acquire but also completely new and customizable cases like those offered at didadisplays.com. If kids today are growing up without carrying cases and surviving — though I don’t see how the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles line from Playmates can go much longer without releasing a carrying case — then they will likely never yearn from something that was so common when I was a kid.

Makes me wanna start my next rambling post of nonsense with “Back in my day . . . “