Buck Rogers

Buck Rogers is another of Mego's failed lines of licensed toys. Although the show proved fairly popular and ran several seasons, the toys never really took off, which leaves modern Buck Rogers collectors paying rather high prices for collectibles from the TV show.

There were a variety of different products created for the Buck Rogers line. The common 3 3/4 inch figures, the much less common and unpopular 12 inch figures, play sets , miniatures, and games.

The 12 inch figures are similar to the 12 inch Black Hole and Star Trek dolls. They feature removable clothing and weapons, and can be easily found boxed. Like all Mego dolls, boxed Buck Rogers 12 inch dolls frequently suffer from the asphyxiated gray face as you can see in the picture. They also frequently come with broken rivets. Despite their problem, I find the big guys rather cool, especially the Tiger Man and Twiki toys.

The card art on these figures is far more appealing than some of the toys themselves. The card fronts all feature this montage of images from the TV series pilot, though, so once you have one carded figure, that's really all you need unless you're a completist.

The ships and play sets for the Buck Rogers line were also pretty cool and very easy to break. Because of the toy line's relative unpopularity and the fragile plastics, ships like the Draconian Marauder and Buck's Starfighter are difficult to come by.

Another ship, the Laserscope fighter, was also created for the line, but was not based on anything in the show. The same ship was repackaged for the Black Hole toys as well. One of the hardest to find Buck Rogers ships is the land rover which only appeared in the pilot episode of the series.

In an attempt to capitalize on the TV show's ratings, Milton Bradly released a board game as well. Aside from the box art, there isn't actually much of interest for this item as the game itself is lame and the board graphics and playing pieces seem very much like an afterthought.