AF or the Action Force were the third generation of Action Force action figures and comic book heroes released in the United Kingdom. Originally featuring in the Battle Action Force comics and cast as action figures by Palitoy, they were an internationally re-worked version of the G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero series.
Characterisation
In contrast to their United States-centric G.I. Joe equivalents, AF were written as an international band of soldiers, who fought the Red Shadows, Cobra and the Nazis.
Introduced into the series by their leader, Duke, the AF series gradually took over from the previous second generation of Action Force and the Z Force, Q Force, Space Force and SAS teams.
As a number of the second generation Action Force figures were already repaints or recharacterisations of their G.I. Joe equivalents, there was a substantial overlap in a number of the characters (for example, Gung-Ho was simply Z Force's Gaucho, re-cast as Harry Brewster, an American from the Florida Everglades) and for that reason they never featured in storylines with their second generation counterparts. Moondancer was the only character whose profile from the Second Generation Space Force character was unchanged. Other overlaps included Breaker and Stalker both of whom had entirely different characters with identical codenames in the Second Generation Z Force and SAS teams respectively.