8-Inch World's Greatest Super-Heroes Human Torch Figure from Mego
Mego went all out in 1976 with the addition of the Fantastic Four action figures. These characters, along with Conan the Barbarian and The Mighty Thor, were the last new ones be added to their extremely popular World's Greatest Heroes line of action figures.
With no holds barred, the entire Fantastic Four team was added by Mego including Mister Fantastic, The Thing, The Invisible Girl, and -- of course -- The Human Torch.
You have to give Mego a lot of credit here for not copping out and simply making a Johnny Storm figure, which would have been much easier for them (although adding a Johnny Storm Mego action figure would have been seriously cool). Think about it... they could have simply taken an existing male figure and dressed him up in the same exact uniform used for the Mego Mr. Fantastic figure. Voilá! Of course, many of us did exactly that on our own in order to to actually obtain the alter ego of the Human Torch which was never actually created by Mego.
In any case, there was nothing new about the body used for the Human Torch other than the fact that it was uniquely sculpted entirely from red plastic. The head was sculpted exlusively for Torch and attempted to capture the way the character had been -- and continued to be -- illustrated in the Fantastic Four comic books.
The one piece body suit also stayed true to the comic book version of this era. A simple black and yellow flame pattern was printed across the primarily red material. While looking back at the figure now it may seem a little hokey, it was a very good attempt from Mego at turning a super-hero whose power is to ignite as flames into an action figure that portrays this power.
The Human Torch action figure from Mego commonly suffers from head graying over time. This has even been seen in figures that are still in the package and have never been removed.
Mego originally released The Human Torch in 1976 in a boxed format and then in 1979 this figure was sold in a carded format. The Mego carded version of The Human Torch is much more common versus the Mego boxed version of the same character.
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