James May takes on Action Man, the British toy soldier long dismissed as G.I. Joe's poor cousin, and sets out to send one hurtling past the speed of sound. The episode, part of his Toy Stories series, follows the engineering slog behind the stunt: wind tunnel tests, rocket sled design, and repeated failures as the team works out how a plastic figure a few inches tall might survive forces that would tear apart most full-size aircraft. May narrates with his usual dry skepticism, interviewing the engineers and technicians building the rig and pressing them on why the numbers keep refusing to cooperate. The film treats the toy itself as more than a gimmick, using its poor reputation as the hook for a genuine physics problem about drag, mass, and structural failure at transonic speed. Archive clips of Action Man's marketing history sit alongside the modern test footage, giving the stunt a bit of cultural context before the countdown.