Vintage mailer box question

[Gorn Captain]

Just got my Kojak figure.
Man, it's so minty fresh, I won't have to brush my teeth in a week!

I was wondering: were there many of these "mailer box" figures?
I was mainly aware of this happening for SW, with the POP you needed to cut out.
Did other lines do this too, apart from Mego?
And in this particular case: Kojak is a "one figure deal". Just him. What's up with the whole mailer box thing then?
Is it that you just bought him through the mail instead of in stores?

Here in Belgium, it only happened for SW Boba Fett and a handful of other SW figures....

[jwyblejr]

My understanding is this was mostly how they came when you ordered from the likes of Sears or Wards and so on. Never got anything from a catalog so it's more of a guess on my part.

[Mikey]

I used to have a Mattel Flash Gordon set in a mailer box (3 figures)

I'm guessing a lot of companies did this

[cjefferys]

Just got my Kojak figure.
Man, it's so minty fresh, I won't have to brush my teeth in a week!

I was wondering: were there many of these "mailer box" figures?
I was mainly aware of this happening for SW, with the POP you needed to cut out.
Did other lines do this too, apart from Mego?
And in this particular case: Kojak is a "one figure deal". Just him. What's up with the whole mailer box thing then?
Is it that you just bought him through the mail instead of in stores?

Here in Belgium, it only happened for SW Boba Fett and a handful of other SW figures....

A lot of these "mailer box" figures are different than the mail away figures you are thinking of that came directly from a toy company (like the Star Wars figures you mention). Items like your Kojak usually came from places like department stores or catalogue stores. Someone would order a figure out of the Sears catalogue for example, and it would eventually show up in the mail in a plain cardboard box (with order numbers and such on it) instead of the normal box with artwork on it. I'm guessing that the stores would get a better price ordering figures from the manufacturer without the more elaborate packaging, and pass the savings onto the customer (or not).

[Pascal]

When I was young, I had in "mailer box" from Kenner the Star Wars Bota Fett and the Star Wars Empire Strikes Back Mailaway Display (I live in Belgium).

On the back of some of the Carded action figures during +/- 1979 to 1982 was a offer for the Empire Strikes Back Display which stated:
"The Display Arena includes four 7" long L - shaped display stands, each holds 14 Star Wars Action Figures -- plus four backdrops with different photographs from Star Wars and the Empire Strikes Back on each side. You can connect the display stands in many different ways to set up your own unique Display arena"

[AAAAA]

This is true, catalog companies and mail order department stores , would get discounts
from the manufactures, sears would order product for there mail order catalog,and had it own box making factory at its wearhouse, Many times The items were ship in manufacture shipping cartons, minus the display box , like Captain Action Outfits ideal sent them carded but no display box, this would ensure a cheaper price Plus able to pack more merchantdice in one carton,and sears would make a box and ship it out.some items came straight from manufacture in its own Plain brown box.
there was big scandel the mid 60's with catalog companies, and toys.
Hasbro offered G.I.Joe(4in 0ne service) sets that contains one figure and 4 outfits
for really low cost to the catalog retailer. what they were doing was splitting the outfits up ,selling the figure with one outfit and others seprately.

[tay666]

Yeah. Back when the shop was open and before Rubbermaid screwed up Little Tikes, we used to get orders for JCPenny's all the time.
We had one plain brown box with multiple part numbers on it.
When we filled the orders, we would just check off the part number for the set that was in the carton.
Some were the standard sets just different packaging. Others were special sets exclusive to JCPenny's.