For as long as I can remember, I’ve liked superheroes and comic books. I’m not sure when it started, but my earliest memory of a comic is Amazing Spider-Man #367 that had him on the cover fighting four fake superheroes.

I found the book incredibly cool, you had Solo the teleporting vigilante who gunned down villains, and the classic Spider-Man teaming up to fight off villains who were like some of Marvel’s coolest heroes of the time. Very few details are clear since I haven’t read the book in years, but I do remember I probably haven’t stopped collecting books since then. And I have always thirsted for the toys of these same masked men. To play with when younger, to make comics with and collect now while older.

But for as many as I buy, I secretly and strongly, hate hate hate these toys.

Now why do I hate them you ask? Well it’s not because I don’t feel most aren’t well made and not deserving of my money, it’s because of people like him…

This crotch baring miscreant known as Bucky, or one of the few men in comics to stay dead until recently.

Bucky. The bane of my existence and a figure I still haven’t found months after the release of the line that spawned him.

I hate chase figures. I hate them with a passion. I understand why they exist but I still hate every bit of them with the unending burning of my soul. They suck for collectors. Suck suck suck. But I do understand why they exist, it’s because toy makers make characters they think are going to suck, so they make less of them.

But I would have to imagine we have all seen how that doesn’t work out. Toys R’ Us’ Clearance aisle’s are filled with the remainders of Superman Return figures that they are trying to unload now for the price of 2.00 bucks for figure. A good deal if you’ve waited this long, but who the hell has waited this long for Holographic Jor-El anyway?

The same happened a few summers ago with the original Hulk movie, that blew and their was a surplus of bad figures clogging the aisles for years. So I understand why certain figures they make less of.

Of course this doesn’t stop them from making too many of others. Wolverine, Cyclops’, Iron Man, and of course Spider-Man always have way more then enough figures to go around and thats also an issue, cause once everyone gets them there are still way more then needed to go around.

I’m not sure why I wrote this. I think it was a rant on the evils of figure buying, but also partly (?) the joy. The joy in the hunt and utter misery of never finding what you want. Thats right I am looking at you Bucky, and the Darkness figure from the Legendary Heroes line too. Sigh. Action figures are a terrible mistress, but they have gotten better and better since the time I was a boy, and now I suffer and buy them till a girlfriend or close friend some day cuts me off.

Luckily for now, the only ones that really make me run to the store are the Marvel Legends. But DC does have its new DC Superhero line, while not as good I think in poseability, is insidious in its sculpts and possibilities for the future.

Posted in DC, Marvel, Marvel Toys\Legendary Heroes, Rants, Toys |