Waking up on Christmas morning in 1975 to find Kenner's Six Million Dollar Man figure and the Bionic Transport and Repair Station under the tree was the highlight of that Christmas. No question. Those two toys got a lot of love for a long time, and I still have them.
The figure itself is a pretty standard large-format action figure by the numbers: about thirteen inches tall, decent articulation, the usual stuff. But Kenner did one thing that made it really cool to a young kid like me. Steve Austin has a patch of fake skin on his right arm that rolls back to reveal the bionic machinery underneath. That's it. That's the feature. And somehow it was enough to make the toy feel like it actually was the character. You could peel it back, look at the parts, roll it forward again. I did this approximately ten thousand times. There's also a bionic eye gimmick: you look through the back of his head and get a simulated zoomed-in view. It works well enough, but the arm is the thing.
The Bionic Transport and Repair Station is a big white carrying case that looks like a rocket. It holds the figure, has a repair bay inside, and the whole thing is built to take some abuse. I also, at some point, decided my hamster would enjoy being transported in it. He did not seem to enjoy this. I realize that now.
Kenner made a lot of good licensed toys in the seventies, but the Steve Austin figure stands out because the figure is tied directly to what makes the character work. The show is about a guy with hidden bionic parts. The toy lets you interact with that idea in a real way. It's not just a doll with a logo on the box.
If you had one of these as a kid and you see one at an antique store or a show, it's worth a look.
