What The #$%^--Hasbro And Bulletman?!?

I was reading some old comic books (big surprise)...and sometimes when you do that, you come across an old ad that you must have read 100,000 times as a kid. But the 35+ years of hindsight make you go, "What the #$%^?!?!"

This ad appeared in Marvels cover-dated August 1976...click to embiggen:

Yeah, for some reason Hasbro decided that G.I. Joe needed a bona fide superhero as part of the "Adventure Team," and they came up with...Bulletman??

Fawcett Comics' Bulletman?!?

Well, it's hard to say...he sure looks an awful lot like the Earth-S hero:


And here's a page from the 1976 Hasbro catalog..."Faster than the speed of light"??? Really?

I've done some moderate internet hunting, and I can't find anything one way or the other on whether this is just one of those coincidences, or if Hasbro "borrowed" an existing character to pal around with the Joes.

On the one hand, he's never given a civilian name anywhere that I can find. One the other hand, his costume, while similar to the Golden Age hero, is a bit different, including those metal arms. One the third hand, his powers are pretty similar, aren't they?

Hasbro had done "knock-offs" before. When they failed to acquire the rights to the Six Million Dollar Man, Hasbro quickly came up with "Mike Power, Atomic Man," a doll with mechanical "super-powered" arm, leg and eye, making him part of the Adventure Team. Just a coincidence, really.

DC had licensed the Fawcett characters in 1972, but Bulletman had already slipped into public domain by then, and DC hadn't actually used the character yet at the time of the introduction of G.I. Joe's Bulletman. So perhaps Hasbro felt justified in using the character, or at least a knock-off.

I'm not lawyer enough to know what was going on here, who was in the right, or what any implications might have been. But, in yet-another coincidence (or perhaps in a hastily-planned response), just a couple of months later Bulletman (and many of the other Fawcett heroes) are plastered on the cover of Justice League Of America #135:

By the time 1976 ended, Hasbro ended the G.I. Joe line for a few years.

So, honest coincidence? Sincere belief they had the rights to a public domain idea? Actionable knock-off? I've got no idea.

Oh, by the way, here's a British TV commercial for the Super Adventure Team...note how they never refer to "G.I. Joe"--in England the character was licenced as "Action Man," because England likes to be difficult...