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Sun-Man

from This is Love

43m 25s

Sun-Man

Wile Eason created Sunman, a black superhero action figure in 1985, after her son expressed that he couldn’t be a superhero because of his skin color. At a time when the toy industry lacked racial diversity and dismissed ethnic representation, she designed Sunman to reflect authentic Black features, including a brown complexion, a cultural aesthetic, and powers rooted in melanin. Despite facing industry resistance and limited marketing, she distributed the toy through community-based efforts and a full-page ad in Ebony magazine, which reached children like Rashad, who found empowerment in the toy. Sunman became a symbol of representation, and years later, Mattel officially included Sunman in the 40th-anniversary He-Man collection, bridging the gap between past and present in toy diversity. This story highlights how the lack of representation in children’s media has long impacted Black children’s self-perception, and how creative, maternal initiative can challenge systemic barriers. The journey from a personal need to a cultural milestone reflects the power of representation in shaping self-esteem and imagination. Sunman’s legacy lives on not just as a toy, but as a foundational moment in the evolution of inclusive play.

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6023 Words, 32560 Characters

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This Monday.com ad was created by a team of people and AI agents. Reese, our content agent, wrote the copy based on our best practices, like mentioning Monday.com three times. That was the second. Johnny, our coordination agent, built the timeline, and kept everyone aligned. Olivia, our human creative director, stayed in the loop. Because agents are great, but they don't always know when a joke lands. She had one note, tell listeners it only takes minutes to build an agent. So minutes, create your own AI agent today on Monday.com. Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most accurate heart rate sensing and awareable. So your vital zap now with heart rate variability can tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Here's the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. The features described are for wellness purposes only and not for medical use. iPhone 11 or later required based on Apple conducted study of heart rate accuracy. August 2026 is at Apple dot com slash Apple Watch Series 12. Hi, it's Phoebe. Today we wanted to share an episode we really love. It first came out in 2023. And when I first heard the story, I remember thinking I want one of those. Can you describe what he man looks like? Okay. He man extremely muscular, huge biceps and thighs and legs and in a tiny speedo type undergarment, if you will, outfit a costume and a breastplate and armor breastplate that look like something from Viking era and shoulder length blonde hair, a muscled white guy. Yep, yep, yep. Muscle, Viking-ish white guy. This is Wiley Eason. Her son, Menelick, was born in New York City in 1981. I don't know where he developed this superhero toy fascination. It might have been nursery school. It may have been with some of his other friends, but he was totally into them. I can also remember he one of the his first multisoolobic word was collection. As in, get the whole collection. And I really couldn't figure that out because we didn't have a television. We didn't have a television for the first three years of his life. And the only reason we got one was the neighbors told us that we would never get a babysitter. We never get a teenage babysitter if we didn't get a television. In the early 1980s, there were plenty of superhero toys and cartoons on TV. Shows like Spider-Man and his amazing friends. And Superfriends, which featured a mix of characters like Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman. And there was Menelick's favorite, He-Man and Masters of the Universe. And I think he was into He-Man because one of his favorite movies back then, when VHS movies was Conan the Barbarian when Arnold Schwarzenegger was still in loincloths running around with long hair. He loved that. I mean, we had to watch that over and over and over. I was never into those kinds of movies, but I think the whole bigger than life, hero conquering the world. I think he's that kind of fit into his imagination. In 1984, when Menelick was three, their family went on a vacation. It was right before Christmas, we were in Jamaica on the beach. And he was playing in the sand. I think there was another kid there, some, you know, you meet kids who are also there on vacation with their parents. And he was playing with the toy. And I think I said something like, "Oh, you could, you could be a superhero too," like He-Man. And he looked at me with just the most serious expression on his face and he said, "No, I can't be a superhero because I'm not white." I was taken aback by that and I was like, "Oh, well, yes, you can. In fact, we'll get you a black superhero. We get back to Brooklyn." And he just kind of looked in what I perceived as kind of a skeptical glance that he gave me as if like, "Yeah, okay." And he went back to playing. Here's a three-year-old kid saying that his imagination is limited because of his skin color. Now, remember, toys are just pure fantasy. Whatever you want to think about a toy, however you want to be in a toy, whatever world you want to create, you're totally allowed to do that because it is a toy. Therefore, you're completely at play. So I was shocked when he said that and quite frankly, frightened because I felt as if some form of limitation had suddenly swept into his head at such a young age because of his skin color. And that was frightening. When Wyla got back to Brooklyn, she started looking for a black superhero toy for Manelick. This is before the internet. So I couldn't go search for it. I went to stores. I talked to a lot of mothers. I asked a lot of questions. I asked people in the stores. I looked through the entire Mattel superhero line looking for a character just assuming I think at the time maybe not in '85, but they had more than 50 or 40 characters. Some were bad guys, but they had lots of characters. In fact, two of the characters of color who were Asian at the time, they actually were bad guys. So there weren't any good guys to point to who skin was not white. So what did you do next? Well, what's that all saying? Invention is the motherhood or motherhood is the invention of something. Anyway, what's a mother to do? You're going to try to solve the problem. So I said, okay, can't find one, have completely exhausted finding one. We'll make one. I'm Phoebe Judge, and this is love. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't know anything about the toy industry so therefore I did not know it was a difficult closed kind of industry to walk into where everybody knew everybody. And so I found out how difficult it would be when I found out how very expensive it is to make a mold. You've got to make a mold. You've got to find a manufacturer. You've got to do the packaging. So basically the beginning was going to be about $60,000 to get everything done. And mind you, that's that kind of money back in '85. But again, I wasn't daunted by the thought because it just seemed like, okay, let's go raise the money that was before it go funny, etc. But let's find people who will help us do this because we can't be the only people who would like to see a black superhero toy. Wiley Eason had gone to business school in the 70s and worked as an editor at a finance magazine. But she'd never owned a business before. Did you have an idea of what you wanted the toy to look like in your mind? Oh yes, yes. The first thing I wanted was for it to look like it was a part of the He-Man line. It's a concept in the toy industry called fit into play. It's like if you design a girl's toy and you want her to be a part of Barbie, then you've got to make sure she can wear Barbie's clothes and fit in Barbie's vehicles, etc. So I had that same idea that he's got to be the exact same size as the He-Man toy so that when a kid sees it, it's like, oh, this must be a part of this line. Same kind of muscular figures, same form of articulation so that was the first thought. And then I also knew that because the issues that my son was having were related to skin color, that he had to be brown and that his powers were going to come from his skin. That was another concept that I had, that I was going to make his skin powerful and started reading more about that and found out a melanin is what makes our skin darker and That would be one of his superpowers, his-- melanin, and that his facial characteristics, everybody was wearing small afros back then. He'd have a little afro, and that his features, he would not look like some of the black dolls, which looked like white dolls that had just been dipped in chocolate, if you will, that he would have, his phenotype would be African, that his nose, his lips, that he would actually look like a black man, so when kids looked at him, they could see themselves in him. While Eason says around this time, she was introduced to Dr. Kenneth Clarke. Dr. Clarke, along with his wife, Dr. Mamie Clarke, were black psychologists who conducted a famous series of experiments in the 1940s that included something called the doll test. In the doll test, they showed young black children for baby dolls. Many of the children attended segregated schools. Two of the dolls had white skin with yellow hair, and two had brown skin with black hair. Researchers would then ask the child to identify the doll's race. To hand them the doll they wanted to play with the most, and also to hand them the doll that was, quote, "nice," or, quote, "looks bad." Most of the black children said they wanted to play with the white doll with yellow hair, and said the white dolls were the, quote, "nice ones." 59% of the children said that the black dolls looked, quote, "bad." Dr. Kenneth Clarke talked about the doll test in a 1985 interview for the Daukew series, Eyes on the Prize. The most disturbing question, and one that really made me, even as a scientist, upset, was we then asked as a final question, "Now show me the doll that's most like you." It was disturbing because many of the children were emotionally upset at having to identify with the doll that they had rejected. Some of them would walk out the room or refuse to answer that question. The 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown versus Board of Education, which struck down school segregation, was influenced in part by the findings of the Clark study. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in his decision that to separate black children, quote, "soly because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone." They were showing that separate but equal was still making black kids feel inferior and not worthy. So, Dr. Clarke explained to me when kids can't see themselves in a toy, in a product they can't then see themselves as powerful or important. And so that added more weight to me, or focus in terms of, "Wow, toys are much deeper than I ever thought they were." We'll be right back. To listen without ads, join Criminal Plus. That was the second, Johnny, our coordination agent, built the timeline, and kept everyone aligned. Olivia, our human creative director, stayed in the loop because agents are great, but they don't always know when a joke lands. She had one note, "Tell listeners it only takes minutes to build an agent, so minutes. Create your own AI agent today on Monday.com." What if managing company spend took less managing? Introducing MX Corporate, one intelligent platform connecting cards, expenses, and payments so you can keep work moving. Built to simplify, designed to scale. This is MX Corporate. Get started at go.mx/mxcorporate, terms apply. In the early 1900s, a formerly enslaved man named Richard Henry Boyd decided to start a doll company that would make black dolls. His company is believed to be the first black doll company in the U.S. Richard Henry Boyd's dolls were different from the black dolls that had been made by white owned companies. Those dolls were often modeled on racist caricatures, and as one researcher wrote, "19th century doll manufacturers invited enactments of racial violence when they made black dolls of materials, especially rubber and cloth, that could withstand rough usage." Richard Henry Boyd's black dolls were made of porcelain. They were dresses with lace and ribbons. An early ad for the dolls read, "These toys are not made of that disgraceful and humiliating type that we have been accustomed to seeing black dolls made of." A 1909 Christmas ad in the Nashville Glow Bread, the children are now clamoring for dolls that will resemble themselves. There are other black dolls introduced in the following years, like a doll named Patti Joe, who was released in the 1940s. She was based on a cartoon created by Jackie Orms, one of the first black female syndicated cartoonists in the U.S. Mattel released black dolls that were friends of Barbie in the late 1960s, including Talking Christy, who talked when you pulled a cord. And in 1980, Mattel released Black Barbie, who was created by Mattel designer Kitty Black Perkins. You know, when you were in Jamaica and thought, "We'll get you an action figure of who's black when we get back," did you expect that this would be kind of an easy thing to do? Yeah, of course, you'd find one somewhere. Sure did. Sure did. I didn't think why wouldn't there be? Why don't you think that there were those toys at that point, you know, there was the black Barbie, why not an action figure superhero? It's a really interesting question. I have thought about it some. And it's a girl's toy, and I'm being very traditional, if we'll come back to 1985, girl's toys. Focus on hairplay, nurturing, caring, giving, and fashion, dressing up, being quote unquote, a girly girl, boys' toys, same time, period, 80s, boys' toys. And if you think about them now, you'll know that what I'm telling you is true. Whoever should boys' toys have a real hair or play hair that you can comb. Boys are not to comb hair, okay? Boys' toys. All the clothing is to be plastic. If they have any clothing at all, it's to be a cape. They are never to dress and undress a toy because they aren't supposed to be nurturing. They aren't supposed to be playing power moves. They're supposed to be winning and losing. They're supposed to be in combat. Now, let's overlay in America certain forms of racism, certain forms of inequality, certain forms of what you ascribe to a black boy that you don't perhaps ascribe to a white boy. Then maybe you don't want a conqueror, black boy toy. You don't want that. Maybe that's threatening. Maybe you don't want him to beat up a white boy because what's that mean? Oh, he won the race. Of course, none of this makes sense. But I'm just telling you, those kinds of thoughts, I hate to say it, but they're probably kind of unconsciously played into the boys' toy arena. Kylie Eason decided to name her toy, Sunman. Now she needed an artist who could bring her vision of him to life. Her cousin was dating a man named Floyd Cooper. He drew the first illustrations and they required you to draw a view from the head, from the bottom, from the left right front center. But you had to freehand draw all of that back then. Floyd Cooper later went on to become a well-known children's book illustrator, who illustrated books about black historical figures like Billy Holiday and Rosa Parks. Sunman's outfit was similar in design to he-mans, green and black superhero shorts and red boots. [BLANK_AUDIO] a red chest plate with a sunburst on it, red arm bands and a sword in shield. The colors that Wala chose were nod to their trip to Jamaica. So he has some of the Rostapherian colors, if you will, the yellow, the red, and the green on his shield. He has green and black on his pants because there's also the liberation flag, the African liberation flag, his red, green, and yellow. When first got his hands on a sun man toy, what did he think? Well, he was able to see the toy in development, so he had several, he was excited. He had several perceptions or he had several images of it as it was going into development. But I can tell you what I think, what it really showed me how excited he was and what he was really thinking was, we were, I was picking him up from nursery school one day. And when I got there, all the little kids swarmed all around me and they were all giggling and yelling and noisy but all clumped around me. And I was like, what's going on here? And they said, mental like told us you can get us any toy that we want. So that told me he was very proud and that he, I guess had assumed that all you have to do is ask for and you'll get it. Wilde Eason finally had a black superhero toy for her son. But now she needed to find a way to get sun man in front of other kids. Wilde says it first, stores are not very receptive. It would be like going to a country club golf course where you had to pass a membership and pay a fee and then everyone knew everybody once you got inside the country club. People don't know this, but the toy industry was very much that way, especially in 1985, people knew each other and many of them were related to each other in the industry. So here I was and outside or not only that, I never worked in a toy company. So I didn't have the benefit of, oh yeah, she's worked for us over here. So she's cool, let her in. I did not have the benefit of that. I walked into a closed club that I was not aware of. I just, I had no way of knowing that. I also didn't know how difficult I should have. It is to get shelf space, shelf spaces, a premium. You know, you've got major companies fighting for it on a regular basis. And back then, there was no such thing on the store shelves of multicultural marketing. The only marketing that was being done, quote unquote, ethnically, was hair care products, skin care products that were just coming out as well as let's say dark pantyhose that were now catering to you because of either the texture of your hair or the color of your skin. That was specific to who you were and let's get products in the cages that toys were not seen in any way, shape or form as a part of that cultural mix, if you will. So I'm also asking a toy buyer to buy something from me who they've never seen before. They've never had an ethnic toy. They've never catered toys specifically to anybody of color. So, hey, who are you? What are you talking about? And as one toy buyer told me, if you really had anything, Mattel would have already done it. So it was like, who are you? Get out of here. We don't need you. And we don't even think you're going to be successful. So why waste our time? So she decided to take a different approach and marketed her toys directly to the people who she thought might buy them. Beauty shops, barbershops, churches, clubs, organizations, people fundraising for the NACP, people fundraising for the Urban League, people who worked at the post office who had a side hustle of selling things, street vendors. That was my market. While it took out an ad in Ebony magazine, it featured a full-page picture of Sunman next to his nemesis, a character named Pighead. The ad read, more powerful than Spider-Man, more awesome than Superman, mightier than he-man, Sunman, the greatest superhero of them all. One little boy outside of Cleveland saw that ad. I just remember my mom running, rushing to me, showing me a little article about a figure that looked like he-man, but he was black. Rashad read his 43 now. He still lives near where he grew up. He was six when his mother showed him the ad for Sunman in Ebony. And she was just excited, "Oh, you're going to have to have this. You're going to have to get this. You need this for your little play battles that you have. He can be your leader. And now I just remember staring at that page. I'm not even sure if it was a prototype. And just, yes, I can't wait to get that. I can't wait to get that." Rashad remembers his mother drove an hour to get the Sunman toys. We need a representation. We also, it's fine for you to be a sidekick, but also it's nothing wrong with you being the leader. And seeing that playing with that physically, I mean, it helps build up your confidence. It definitely do. Because ever since that day that I received Sunman Pagan, they were leaders of my battles. They showed me like, "I can't lead. I can't beat somebody important." So he kind of just took the place of he-man. Who needs he-man? Not to say, I did not just discard it, he-man or anything, but he just kind of outranked him once he came into the bubble. So Sunman became your favorite toy? Oh, definitely. Definitely. While Aeson's company grew, she was spending more and more time on her business. Eventually, she quit her day job as an editor. Her company, Olmick Toys, started producing more toys. They added more characters to the rulers of the Sunline, who were Hispanic, Asian and Native American. And they created a line of black women superheroes that were similar to Shira Action Figures. They also made the bronze bombers, a line of action figures inspired by a black infantry regiment in World War I, and included a black woman codebreaker in the toy collection. And they released the first official collectible figures of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. At some point, mid-90s, the toy industry did basically say, "Hey, we need to represent. " I think it was when multiculturalism became in. That's when I think the toy industry started thinking beyond just the kids that they were selling to that we should be representing everybody. By 1998, while Aeson's company was selling their toys in K-Mart, toys are Ross and Walmart. She says they didn't have enough money to be in continuous production. They couldn't keep their products on the shelves. And that started hurting my business that then created competition and then other competitors came in and the business started going down. One thing I wasn't prepared for was success can kill you. Wireless company shut down. But it wasn't from lack of demand, just that I couldn't satisfy it. We'll be right back. Propel Fitness Water With Gatorade Electrolites, Zero Sugar, and Vitamins, Propel hydrates better than water to help you get the most out of your workout and get back to your best self. What propels you? Propel with Gatorade Electrolites This episode is brought to you by Pomolive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners, sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once. So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use Pomolive Ultra. Pomolive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9% of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. Shop now at Pomolive. of dot com. Why don't we just start with you introducing yourself? Well, my name is Ed Duncan and I am the senior vice president of design at Mattel over the categories of action figures, plush toys, games, and I'm also over inventor relations for all of Mattel. Do you think if you told me when you tell kids your job, they must just be fast. This must seem like a dream. I think kids have a hard time wrapping their head around that as a job, but at any party or anything I'm at I kind of win the what do you do contest. Ed Duncan has been designing toys since the 90s. He got his start at Fisher Price and he's also worked at Disney and Hasbro. You get to where I am by never really stopping playing with toys. So I was always kind of fascinated by them, not just as play things, but as pieces of design. Like I look back to the way I looked at some of the toys I had and I was really into how they were put together and how they worked and things like that. As a toy designer in the 90s, you know, kind of starting out in the 90s, did you yourself find that there was a lack of black characters and in the line of work and in this kind of superhero work that you were doing? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's toy design as a career path is strikingly devoid of black people. It's absolutely disproportional, how few black people end up toy designers in America. I've been a toy designer for nearly 30 years and I'm pretty sure I haven't met 10 black toy designers in the 30 years. As I think about it, I can get to like maybe seven. It's just super uncommon. Why do you think? I think it's what appears to be a frivolous pursuit. Like I remember when I went to arts and design school, my parents supported me, but there was definitely a hint of reservation coming from my mom. And years later after I had started to have some success, she pulled me aside and apologized for just really just being skeptical that this was ever going to have a return on the investment. I think you still are in a point where it's not so given that black people are going to go to college and get degrees and so it's treated as something that you can't waste the shot on it. In 2020, Ed Duncan was working on reviving one of Mattel's brands from the 80s, He-Man and Masters of the Universe. And as you get into He-Man, especially as a black man, you start to realize there's not a lot of diversity in the line. And it's interesting because Mattel's first action figure line in the 60s was a line called Major Matt Mason that was about a group of astronauts and it was pre-landing on the moon, kind of picking up on the space race. And you have four human figures in that line and one of them is a black male in 1966. We made a black male astronaut. But for some reason, Masters of the Universe actually stands out with its lack of diversity and you get almost 65 figures into the line and towards the end of the run before you have a black figure show up in the line. And so as I'm making this line viable for relaunch, this starts to become a real obvious challenge that we would need to find a solution for. The one black character in Masters of the Universe was introduced about a year after Wile Eason created Sunman. The action figure's name was Clampchamp. He has a removable claw arm. Ed knew that earlier in the 1980s other companies had made toys similar to He-Man and he started looking around on the internet for ideas. And I came across the Sunman story and I was reading it and I'm like, oh this is really interesting. He decided to reach out to Wile Eason who by then was teaching at Rutgers Business School. And you know, I'm a business man. I've got a LinkedIn page so I reached out to her and I just dropped her note and I said, hey, yeah, not for nothing but I'm a fan of your work. He was like, I wanted you to know that I think you did a great job what you did in introducing Sunman back then. And she responded and we started chatting back and forth. By then, it was the summer of 2020. Black Lives Matter protests were happening across the country. Between the conversations with Wile Eason and everything that was going on in the world around me, I started to realize that I have some interesting defense mechanisms that I didn't really notice I was doing. And one of the things that I was doing, and I think I still do, if you look at my LinkedIn, it still does this is the picture on my LinkedIn isn't a picture of me. It's a picture of a toy from my, you know, purview. It might be a picture of he man right now. But it's always been a toy relative to me versus an actual picture of me a black man. And so when I reached out to Wile Eason, it wasn't a conscious thing I was doing. So she gets this outreach and it's from this person that is not clearly putting themselves out as being black. And so she's responding to it as, "Oh, somebody from Mattel is reaching out to me. That's very interesting." And then we have a little exchange on a couple of emails and I'm like, "Why don't we get on a video call and chat?" And when we got on the video call, she was stunned to see that I was black. And I didn't really think about that before the setup because I'm doing this weird masking of myself. And she just couldn't stop talking about the irony of the situation where Mattel at the time was being at least careless in their lack of diversity and the masters, the universe line, and just not seeing the need for such things. And then fast forward to now. And the head of design for this category and the person running he man is actually a black man. And she just found that enormously fascinating. You know, full circle, rather deliciously ironic. As we talked, I admitted, I go, you know, I don't really have any plan here, but I would be lying if I said that it hadn't crossed my mind that it wouldn't be need of sun man somehow entered the world of he man and they were able to shake hands someday. Starting in 2021, Mattel began making sun man toys. They released them alongside he man as part of the 40th anniversary masters of the universe collection. Did you have to create a story about how sun man fits into the he man world? Yeah, we actually wrote a story about connecting the dots between he man's antagonist skeletor and sun man's antagonist pig head and one of them knocking a portal open between the two worlds and them scheming on some shenanigans. They're going to take up in one of the worlds. And I think I think pig head ends up in he man's world of attorney and sun man follows to help stop what he's up to. That storyline took the shape of knocking down the wall between sun man's world and he man's world. I just, you know, like hope that a whole generation of kids gets to have as much fun playing with sun man as we did when I was a kid. While a son, Manelick Perrier, joined his mother for the end of our conversation. He's in his early 40s now and a fashion photographer based in New York. Do you still have an original sun man toy? Yes, I do. Where do you keep it? On my bookshelf. Do you ever take it down and just play with it a little bit? No. I mean, what do you think about your mother making this toy for you? Oh, I think that she's a pioneer and I am in and also like what, not just a pioneer and I mean, she's a hero. I think that, you know, one year I told her that she was a civil rights activist and she was like, I don't know what you're talking about, but I was like, you know, just, you know, I think that like there may have been some black dolls before my mother, but they were never, they were always just, you know, white dolls painted black and, you know, my mother's really responsible for the industry changing the sculpt so that the toys also have the fiscal features of, you know, of the kids and the people that they represent, you know, so a whole generation of children didn't have to feel uncomfortable about the shape of their nose and the size of their lips. And then also to have your parents so invested in your personal image and your self-esteem that they would, you know, stop everything and create something based on the notion that that was being attacked and that this was It's like the most important thing. I mean like, I think that everybody says that they have the best, well not everybody says they have the best mom in the world, but a lot of people said they have the best mom in the world and that. I don't know. I think I have a fighting shot at being able to prove it. So it was worth it while. Yes, that was wonderful to hear. Every child needs to feel really important and if you can't see your image as big as being powerful and creative and imaginative, then it's important that that image come to life for you. This is Love is created by Lauren Spore and me, Nadia Wilson is our senior producer, Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sogeco, Lily Clark, Lena Cillison and Megan Canayne. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Semanetti. This episode was mixed and engineered by Raw Buyers. You can learn more about the show on our website, this is LovePodcast.com and you can sign up for our newsletter at thisislovepodcast.com/newsletter. We hope you'll join our membership program, Criminal Plus. Now on Patreon, it's the very best way to support our work. You can listen to this as love, criminal and feveried's mystery without any ads, plus you'll get bonus episodes behind the scenes, photos and videos and you'll be able to talk directly with us and other this is Love Listeners. Learn more and sign up at patreon.com/criminal. Or on Facebook and Instagram at ThisIsLoveShow. This is Love is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge and this is Love. Fall savings are happening now at the Home Depot. Save up to $500 on select appliances, plus enjoy free delivery when you spend $998 or more. 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Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. Wile Eason created Sunman, a black superhero action figure, in 1985 to address her son’s feeling that he couldn’t be a superhero due to his skin color.
  2. The toy industry at the time lacked diversity, with few black characters in action figures, and stores were resistant to carrying new ethnic toys.
  3. Sunman was designed to reflect authentic Black features, using real-world colors and cultural references like the African liberation flag and Jamaican aesthetics.
  4. Marketing Sunman directly to communities like churches, beauty shops, and barbershops helped build awareness and demand, especially after an Ebony magazine ad highlighted its power.
  5. Sunman’s story gained national attention and inspired Mattel to include a Black superhero in the 2021 40th-anniversary Masters of the Universe line.
  6. The inclusion of Sunman in He-Man’s universe symbolizes a long-overdue shift in toy industry diversity and representation.
  7. The journey reflects how Black families and creators have historically been excluded from mainstream media and play culture.
  8. The story underscores how representation in toys is vital for children’s self-esteem, identity, and sense of belonging.

Summary:

Wile Eason created Sunman, a black superhero action figure in 1985, after her son expressed that he couldn’t be a superhero because of his skin color. At a time when the toy industry lacked racial diversity and dismissed ethnic representation, she designed Sunman to reflect authentic Black features, including a brown complexion, a cultural aesthetic, and powers rooted in melanin. Despite facing industry resistance and limited marketing, she distributed the toy through community-based efforts and a full-page ad in Ebony magazine, which reached children like Rashad, who found empowerment in the toy.

Sunman became a symbol of representation, and years later, Mattel officially included Sunman in the 40th-anniversary He-Man collection, bridging the gap between past and present in toy diversity. This story highlights how the lack of representation in children’s media has long impacted Black children’s self-perception, and how creative, maternal initiative can challenge systemic barriers. The journey from a personal need to a cultural milestone reflects the power of representation in shaping self-esteem and imagination.

Sunman’s legacy lives on not just as a toy, but as a foundational moment in the evolution of inclusive play.

FAQs

Sunman is a black superhero action figure created by Wiley Eason in 1985 for her son Menelick. Inspired by the lack of Black representation in toys, she designed a superhero with brown skin, powers from melanin, and a style similar to He-Man to reflect authentic Black features and promote self-esteem.

Sunman was significant because it challenged the racial bias in toys by introducing a Black superhero with realistic features, showing that children of color could see themselves as powerful and important in play, and inspiring a broader movement toward diversity in children's products.

The toy industry was resistant, with store buyers dismissing Sunman as unmarketable, stating that major companies like Mattel would have already created such a toy. They viewed ethnic toys as outside mainstream marketing and saw little need for them.

She marketed Sunman directly to communities of color through beauty shops, barbershops, churches, and fundraising organizations, and ran a full-page ad in Ebony magazine featuring Sunman and his nemesis, Pighead.

Mattel released Sunman toys in 2021 as part of the 40th-anniversary Masters of the Universe collection, marking a historic moment of diversity in the action figure line.

Sunman's creation highlights the long-standing racial bias in toys, where Black children were often shown as inferior or excluded. The story draws on the 1940s Doll Test, showing how children internalized racism when not seeing themselves in toys.

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