All the Bionic Action

Recently, my favorite comic book blogger posted pages from a comic book from 1976 including some of the ads. Including this ad.

The Six Million Dollar Man was Steve Austin,  an astronaut and Air Force Colonel severely injured in a plane crash. But as we were informed in the opening narration each week, "we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better...stronger...faster." 

It cost $6 million to rebuild Steve Austin which comes to about $35 million now.  

I was a big fan of the Six Million Dollar Man TV show, watching every episode. Most episodes were standard spy story boilerplate with Steve's bionics being moderately helpful to solving certain problems. 

PROBLEM: The enemy agent is behind that wall.

SOLUTION: Steve jumps over the wall. 

Granted a grappling hook and a coil of rope could get Steve over the wall for a lot less than $6 million. 

Once in a while, episodes of the Six Million Dollar Man would venture into more fantastic stories. Like the one where we find out out that Sasquatch, the legendary Bigfoot of the North American northwest, is a super powered robot used by aliens secretly living among us. 

I got the Six Million Dollar Man Action Figure (not a doll, an ACTION FIGURE!) for Christmas. 

The version I got did not include the Back Pack Radio or the Bionic Transport and Repair Station. It did include the plastic engine block. And it had the bionic eye. 

The bionic eye was not very helpful. It made objects on the other side of the room seem like they were on the other side of a slightly blurrier room. 

As for the bionic arm, there was a button on the back that when pushed caused the arm to crank up. The hand was molded to grip a bar on the plastic engine block.

I was not content to use the bionic arm to lift the silly plastic engine. 

I tried to use the bionic arm to lift our couch in the living room. 

Imagine the sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach when I heard the heart wrenching crack from Steve's plastic arm succumbing to the weight of our sofa, now rendered unable to lift even the silly plastic engine.  

Despite the damage to his arm, Steve remained a cherished part of my dwindling childhood years and still resides at my mom's old house in a drawer of my old desk.
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That's all for today. Until next time, stay safe and remember to be good to one another.