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Stanley Weston, Creator Of The Action Figure And Toys Such As GI Joe And ThunderCats, Has Passed Away

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Stanley Weston, Creator Of The Action Figure And Toys Such As GI Joe And ThunderCats, Has Passed Away

Stanley Weston, who created the toys that would become known as G.I. Joe in an attempt to translate the popularity of Barbie to boys and sold it to Hasbro for $100,000 in the 1960s, died last week at age 84, according to a report from THR. In 1964, Hasbro used the term "action figure" to promote its G.I. Joe toys, which kind of makes Weston the creator of the entire genre of toy. Weston, whose company Leisure Concepts Inc. worked with properties like Star Wars, WWE, and The Legend of Zelda, also created the ThunderCats line of toys in the 1980s. In 2015, Weston filed a lawsuit to reclaim the rights to the G.I. Joe movie franchise which, if successful, would have seen the rights return to him in 2020, but there have been no updates on the suit since then.

Bleeding Cool sends our condolences to Weston's friends and surviving family – a brother, three children, and five grandchildren – and thanks him for his contributions to the childhoods of the past, present, and future.

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A prophecy once said that in the comic book industry's darkest days, a hero would come to lead the people through a plague of overpriced floppies, incentive variant covers, #1 issue reboots, and super-mega-crossover events. Sadly, that prophecy was wrong. Oh, Jude Terror was right. For ten years. About everything. But nobody listened. And so, Jude Terror has moved on to a more important mission: turning Bleeding Cool into a pro wrestling dirt sheet!
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