This week, we continue to review licensed M*A*S*H products, and I chose to continue with a product offered by Tristar: personalized stainless steel dog tags. Each military character on M*A*S*H wore a set of dog tags, and famously the dog tags worn by each actor belonged to someone from the armed forced. Jamie Farr wore his own dog tags from his time in the Army, and Alan Alda’s dog tags from M*A*S*H (along with his boots) sold in 2023 $125,000. Tristar sold a series of toys including M*A*S*H action figures and a Military Base Play Set, but one of the most unique items they sold was this set of personalized dog tags. Those who purchased the dog tags could send them in and have them personalized. The back of the packaging included a form and instructions to complete the personalization process. However, this packaging has been modified. This week, we look at a set of Tristar dog tags and decode what happened to the packaging.
The front of the package features a cast photo with a clear plastic bubble holding the dog tags. When a kid or adult purchased a set of M*A*S*H dog tags in the early 1980s, there was a “Special Offer” on the back of the package to have the dog tags personalized. One of the tags included was stamped with the M*A*S*H logo, and the second tag was blank so it could be stamped with a few lines of text. For this example from my collection, the text offering the personalization on the front of the packaging has been covered by stickers, and the order form on the back of the packaging is covered with random symbols and characters. We’ll look in to why in a moment. I want to briefly discuss the personalization options. What could you put on the dog tags? You could have 3 lines of text with up to 15 characters per line. Each line was stipulated to be as follows:
- Line 1: Name
- Line 2: Address
- Line 3: Serial Number (Birthday + age) (For example, someone who was 13 and born on January 12, 1998 would enter 1 12 98 13)
After you completed the form, you sent it, a self-address envelope, and a payment of $1.25 to “cover the cost of metal stamping and handling” to the Tristar address in New York City. No time frame for the return of your dog tag was listed, but it did say that by sending your information, you became a “member with M*A*S*H Tristar’s Club, which entitles you to preview all new Tristar products.” This likely meant you were added to a mailing list for a catalog of products, but given the number of M*A*S*H products that Tristar produced in the 1980s, this would have been a great perk!
So in this example, why has the front and back of the packaging been modified? I suspect that after a certain point, Tristar stopped offering the personalization service. They likely still had printed packaging in inventory, so they came up with a way to modify the front of the packaging with stickers and block out the order form with a stamp of some sort. The characters that block out the order form do appear to have be added after the fact. In addition to changing the packaging, they replaced the second, blank dog tag with a second one that had the M*A*S*H logo. So even without the personalization, the dog tags still had the M*A*S*H logo on both tags. Tristar offered some of the most unique M*A*S*H toys in the early 1980s, and had I been a kid at the time, I would have wanted them all! You can find packaged versions of the Tristar M*A*S*H dog tags online, and they are a great collectable!
The M*A*S*H Historian 
2 thoughts on “MishM*A*S*H 35: Tristar Dog Tags”