Matchbox MAC Air Rescue Unit

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Matchbox Mobile Action Command (MAC for short) is a largely forgotten toy line but happily remembered toy line of the 1970s. At least judging by the "What were those cool vehicle/figure sets called?" type emails i get about once a week.

It's also a toy line I actively collect but with one caveat, I have to find it in the wild. In this marvelous digital age, I have come to savour the old fashioned hunt that toy collecting once was and about once a year, I find a MAC piece for $20. Last weekend, I discovered the air rescue unit and I'd thought I'd share some pics.

More after the jump!






All my memories of MAC stuff involved them being carded (like this set I found last year) but the earliest stuff came in these boxes.

I remember the appeal of these being you got a figure and a futuristic vehicle for well under 5 bucks. I could usually con my grandmother into one of these every six months or so.



The lack of a backstory on these guys never deterred me, in fact it's one of the things I now treasure about early 70s adventure toy lines. You put whatever you want on these guys.




And just to prove how awesome these toys are, Matchbox could have stopped with pilot/helicopter but no, they gave him a freaking jet pack which only adds play value!

1977 MAC catalog on PlaidStallions.com

For more Fashion Mockery and 70's toy love visit us at Plaid Stallions.com


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[Earth 2 Chris]

There is something vaguely familiar about that toy...but either way, it's pretty awesome.

Chris

[Werewolf]

Very cool! I'm also impressed the rubber bands on his jet pack are still intact. I've opened lots of old dolls, over the years, with disintegrating rubber bands stuck in their hair.

[cjefferys]

Cool toy, but I have absolutely no memories of this line.

[phil]

I had that as well as several other vehicles and a number of figures. I loved the MAC line and thought the vehicles looked they belonged in a tv show made by Gerry & Sylvia Anderson. The figures worked pretty well with my AMT Enterprise Bridge model. A lot of good memories associated with this toy line! :D

[palitoy]

Oh absolutely, the line has this "Thunderbirdsy" quality to it, probably why i like it so much.

[sprytel]

I loved this line. The older figures were a bit more skinny like this, the later releases got a bit more buff. It led to body image issues amongst the older members of the MAC team.

[PNGwynne]

I don't recall these at all. Same time as Furies? They're great.

[Red Hulk]

I had one of those sets as a kid mine came bagged.

[patches]

I loved that line. And lucky find that is one of the first generation MAC sets which had the smaller figures. The next year they increased the figure size to the ones with the more buff muscular torso's that were about a 1/2" bigger. I always hated that. I much prefered the original smaller guys. The MAC stuff always reminds me of some of the old Takara Diaclone sets, before they got all Transformerized. When they were cool vehicles with little pilots. The MAC mountain base is probably one of the all time greatest playsets ever made.

Oh and about those rubber bands? Astonishingly if I remember correctly while many of the MAC backpack accessories used those rubber bands to attach, they were actually quite easy to change or replace. Matchbox (or whoever their original OEM was) actually thought through the problem when they designed them.

If you never encountered these sets they were in many ways in the same ballpark as the Fisher Price Adventure People line. Just about half the size of those. It was weird people say there was no backstory, but that was mainly there was no detailed or character backstories. Back then we knew they were a special all environment rescue team operating from a secret mountain base. Much like the Thunderbirds. And that was all we needed to know.