Action Force and the Red Shadows in 28mm scale
Tabletop Gaming with Action Force and the Red Shadows - An Introduction
As a boy in the early eighties I had no shortage of fictional villains to rally against, be it on the playground at school or when playing on the floor with my toys. Cinema, television and comics all offered various nefarious types to rally the forces of good against, many of which are now pop culture icons. Megatron, Skeletor, Darth Vader all had their place, but there was one man who for me stood head and shoulders above these on the baddie roll of dishonour…..Baron Ironblood!
The likehood is that if you weren’t of a certain age between 1983 and 1985 and are outside of the UK you will no idea about this man or his villainy.
The Baron was the main protagonist for Action Force, a range of ‘Star Wars’ scale action figures that were spawned from the popular (and larger) Action Man range. Action Man himself was the UK version of what was know as G.I.Joe in America and in the UK was produced and marketed by Palitoy (who also happened to be the distributor for the Star Wars figure range on this side of the pond).
Recognising there was an untapped market for military toys in the scale of the stupidly popular Star Wars range Palitoy shrank Action Man down from 12 inch doll to 3.5 inch action figure and the first wave was released in 1982.
However recognising the opportunity to expand the range the line was reorganised in 1983. With the help of some vehicles and figure sculpts borrowed from the US G.I.Joe line, Action Force was rebranded as an international military team brought together to fight an evil terrorist ‘Enemy’, The Red Shadows.
Action Force itself was split into four ‘arms’:
- Z Force – the infantry backbone of Action Force
- SAS Force – special ops and behind the lines specialists (tapping into the minor pop culture obsession there was with the SAS following the Iranian Embassy siege in 1981)
- Q Force – the naval and underwater team
- Space Force – did what it said on the tin!
Each team and the ‘Enemy’ had a range of figures, accessories and vehicles available.
At the same time the new toy line was supported by a series of comic strips published in the long running weekly boys war comic Battle. This was such a popular addition that the title soon renamed itself Battle Action Force.
By the way, for a full and detailed history of the toys and comics I’d highly recommend you visit the absolutely excellent Blood for the Baron website. Here you will also find comic strip scans from Battle Action Force.
Now eventually things changed, the toy line became more closely aligned with the American GI Joe line (dropping the Red Shadows for Cobra and introducing a new merged Action Force team) and while this was reflected very cleverly in the comic strip for me it was the passing of a golden age.
So here I am three decades later with the opportunity to revisit my favourite toy line on the tabletop. This is something I have been working on off and on for a few years, but with the increased availability of multi-part plastic kits in 28mm, 3D printing and a plethora of modern and pulp rulesets available this is something I have gone back to with a vengence recently.
Watch out Baron, here I come…..
Wow… definitely making me feel my age with this one! 😀
Keep going!
Awesome idea. I was thinking of doing something similar now Space Force is a real thing and Kill Team allows small squads. I was going to use the Mad Robot Heads for the Red Shadows… https://madrobotminiatures.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=9_10&products_id=310
Thanks – I am going to cover the options I’ve gone for with the Red Shadows in an upcoming post. For heads I went with Macrocosm Miniatures: https://www.macrocosm.co.uk/product/alternate-heads-sci-fi-troopers/
Looking forward to watch this project move forward. I too remember Action Force – hang on they are in my shed, still have the Z-Force tank and others, but as you say the big hit was the SAS Force range. Battle went downhill when it lost Action Force/GI Joe.
I still remember the day when my weekly copy of Battle turned up and (without warning) no Action Force any more! I seem to remember a very poor (in my opinion) replacement strip coming in covering the adventures of ‘Storm Force’.
Indeed it was Storm Force, which simply wasn’t the same. I was glad when GI Joe turned up in it’s own comic later.
Cool project. And it solves a mystery from my childhood. I used to have a few of these toys in the Netherlands, but they soon dissappeared from the stores. Years later I got into GI joe and was amazed that some of my old action force miniatures where obviously the same molds as my new GI-joe, just a different colour.
Absolutely brilliant 😀 .I had a bunch of Action Force stuff as a kid,the Main Battle Tank for Z Force and a Motorcycle with a Minigun sidecar are my foremost memories,as well as a few Red Shadows plus Cobra Commander.
This, this is amazing. I read this as a kid. Taking me bad. No skool like the old skool.
Oh wow – this totlly takes me back. Top job pal
Love this idea. My neighbor and best friend was the first person I knew to have Action Force. We collected them together for many years right up to around the time they eventually became G.I Joe in the UK. He is still my best friend and we still play soldiers together, only now we roll dice instead of mimicking machine gun fire ?
Have you looked into the Dust 1947 range at all? We’ve been playing it on and off for a few years and it’s always reminded me of my Action Force days. I’m pretty sure some of the characters are homages to Action Force characters.