A version of this article was originally published at the 13th Dimension website in December, 2020, which is also where the pictures were sourced.
In the summer of ’77 when I was 6 years old, my parents, my brother and I were visiting some extended family in my parents’ hometown (we lived several states away). As we were pulling out of the driveway of one my uncle’s houses, our 12-year-old cousin jogged out and handed my 5 year old brother a brown paper grocery bag through the window: “I don’t play with these anymore — but you guys might like them!”
As the car pulled away we opened up the bag…
…and it was FULL of Mego superhero dolls, about a dozen of them — more than we’d ever seen at once. We almost peed our pants right there in the car.
My brother and I didn’t have a whole lot of toys when we were younger. We were lower-middle class, our parents were young, my brother had health problems and my dad’s job required us to move often so extravagant toys just weren’t in the cards. I mean, we had the basics: wooden building blocks, baseball gloves, bikes, board games, some Hot Wheels cars. I also had a couple of stuffed animals — which my brother couldn’t have because it triggered his asthma. We’d recieved Batman and Robin Megos the previous Christmas; they were our favorite toys but my brother and I were very much “outdoor kids” (in spite of his health problems), preferring to dig in the dirt, ride bikes and run around the neighborhood with other kids.
So by that summer, those Batman and Robin dolls were absolutely TRASHED: missing capes, gloves and boots, outfits stained and ripped beyond rehabilitation. We knew there were more superhero dolls out there — our friends had some of them and we saw them in the stores all the time — but we never thought we’d own them ourselves.
Until now. In the grocery bag, duplicate Batman and Robin dolls were right on top and in WAY better shape than the ones we had back home. There was a Riddler too — finally a bad guy! There was also the Hulk and Aquaman (whom we knew) plus a bunch more that we were only vaguely familiar with: Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, Conan the Barbarian and some chubby weirdo in an orange suit (Mr. Mxyzptlk) that we didn’t recognize at all so we just pretended he was the Penguin. There were also two larger GI Joes – Bulletman, with his shiny arms and helmet, and Eagle Eye, who had a lever in the back of his neck that moved his eyes from side to side. All of them had barely been played with and even still had a lot of their boots, gloves and accessories.
And there was one more superhero that neither of us had EVER seen in comics or cartoons. One none of our friends owned. One we’d only ever seen on the backs of the toy packages at the store. My best friend and I had debated about whether or not he actually existed. He was a myth. A phantom. A legend.
It was…THE FALCON!
The Mego Falcon doll was so much more awesome-looking than all of the other figures. I pulled him out of the bag and I just stared at him — I couldn’t believe he was real, and that was I holding it, and that he was OURS. All the Mego dolls had a charming awkwardness to them – the stupid oven mitt gloves, Batman and Cap’s doofus smiles, Iron Man’s fabric "armor", Conan’s dorky puffed up hair — but not the Falcon. The Falcon was 100 percent cool.
His wings were part of his costume — they moved as you posed him and never fell off and got lost. His boots were rubber instead of plastic so they didn’t slip off his feet. His expression wasn’t goofy or smiling or cartoonish and his red-and-white outfit looked AWESOME - this guy was ready for some serious crime-fighting business. Most obviously, he was the only Black character in the entire line, so he really stood out. As someone who always felt outside of and different from everyone, I’ve always felt drawn to fictional characters who were a little different or off-center than the ones around them — and the Falcon fit the bill perfectly.
Now my younger brother and I were SUPPOSED to share all of the dolls but he ended up hoarding most of them for himself — except the Falcon. The Falcon was MINE and he very quickly became my favorite out of all of them. I would put him in a flying pose, hold him over my head and exhaust myself as I ran around the yard making him “fly.” During playtimes he would replace Robin as Batman’s superior bird-themed crimefighting partner. That grocery bag full of Megos that our cousin gave us became the centerpiece of our childhood playthings (even after Star Wars toys came out a year later). But after a few years I still didn’t know who the Falcon really was! I’d never seen him in a comic or on TV until one day in the drug store on the cover of a comic I’d never noticed before called The Avengers — and there he was, fighting “The Elements of Doom.” My mom bought it for me — and I really liked it! The Falcon in the comics was a bit different than the one in my head, but he was still cool. The following week we saw a Power Records comic starring Captain America and The Falcon, and somehow I convinced my mom to get that too (as long as I picked out another record for my brother). I didn't see that many Avengers comics for sale until a few years later when I was on a road trip with my dad and picked up what would instantly become my favorite all-time Avengers comic ever: Avengers Annual #10!
This whole issue — written by Chris Claremont and drawn by Michael Golden — is such a treat from start to finish. The Falcon was disappointingly absent but the rest of the roster was chock full of classic Avengers: Cap, Thor, Iron Man, the Vision, Scarlet Witch, The Beast, Wonder Man and Hawkeye. Spider-Woman was also a guest-star and she was 1,000 times more cooler than she was in her dopey cartoon show.
The story and art were amazing and it was jammed with weird characters I’d never heard of before: Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Storm, Colossus, Professor X, Jocasta, Nick Fury, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and the first appearance of a supervillain named Rogue who nearly took down the Avengers single-handedly and whose super powers -to take away the strength, powers and memories of a person just by touching them- utterly TERRIFIED me.
Once again, my mind was blown away by a comic book. I was expecting some kind of hokey trick in the story where she goes back to being a bad guy at the end, but that is NOT what I got — Rogue’s cartoonish, cackling villain facade from her debut appearance had been stripped away, revealing a scared, vulnerable teenager (not much older than I was at the time) who’d been put on a terrible path and just wants to get off. Rogue’s transformation from "bad guy" to sympathetic figure to hero was the first time I remember seeing a fictional character that didn’t have a black-and-white alignment — she had flaws, she had virtues, she changed and grew, she felt like a real person.
I had never connected to that kind of character depth in the movies or TV shows I’d seen — but I saw it in a comic book. I was hooked. I spent the rest of that day reading every X-Men comic my friend had (about 20 issues, including all of Paul Smith’s stellar run as artist). When my mom picked me up, I asked her when I could go buy some comics and for the next few years comics became my obsession, Marvel in particular. X-Men quickly became my favorite comic and Rogue was my favorite character.
My tastes would evolve as the years went on, but that was it — that was the moment I became a comic book reader for LIFE. Pretty soon I was trying to draw my own comics… then taking as many art classes as I could… then applying to colleges with illustration programs… and then I was joining a club that made its own comics where I met a writer/film student named Fred Van Lente.
All sparked by an old Falcon doll I found at the bottom of a paper bag.
After time, all those other figures eventually got lost or damaged and discarded but I managed to hold onto the Falcon for a LONG time, even after his wings frayed and the paint wore away from his mask and boots he stayed solid and seemed built to last. I know I still had him well into my teens but I can’t recall his final fate — he must have been sold at a yard sale or tossed in the trash or left behind one of the times we moved . I think my brother’s Hulk was the last Mego standing: first he lost a forearm, then a foot, then his PANTS, right before he was sent to the trash, and that was the sad end of that mythic grocery bag of Megos.
I love comic books - making them and reading them - but I've never been a collector. I don't like having hoards of comics lining my shelves or mumified in plastic or sitting in boxes in the basement. I have a few hundred favorites on my book shelf that I often revisit and I happily lend them or give them to whatever visitors take a fancy to them. When I used to buy toys I never, ever kept them in the package - I took them out, played with them, sometimes would display them and then when I was bored with them I would handed them off for someone else to enjoy (usually a youngster) just like my cousin did with his toys all those decades ago.
Share your toys, share your books. That bag of discarded dolls changed my life. It was one of the best presents I ever got.
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me at my 8th birthday, blowing out the candles on my cake and surrounded by more Megos than party guests.