Due to excessive boredom and lack of many other motivation, I decided to try writing about random action figures located in my Flickr account. Our Raging Nerdgasm Flickr account is a growing archive of my personal collection. Having only just scraped the surface of my collection as well as the amount of things I buy on a weekly basis, it's taken a life of its own. Lots of the figures have good memories behind them and looking through them excites me as much as it must excite the thousands of people that dig through the archive daily. Before I get carried away being a wordy nerd, let's dive into five random action figures. All as random as they can be.
Playmates Star Trek Harry Mudd
(more of our TOS Playmates figures here )
Harry Mudd was probably one of my more favorite reoccuring Star Trek OTS characters. He had a certain sly guy suaveness I could identify with. Smart and scheming but not evil, just trying to make a not-so honest buck in a galaxy patrolled by a bunch of galactic boyscouts on a ship in the shape of a pizza cutter. Playmates made real fan wait a near eternity for this figure. by the time Harry Mudd made it to store shelves you could tell much of the wind was fading from Playmates sails. More than a dozen of each of TNG crew was made before we got a Keeper or even a Borg Queen. How many dress uniform Datas do I need?
At least the figure didn't disappoint. They got the likeness nearly spot on, I'm saying at least 7/10 if I had to give it a rating and I hate using numbers/stars/grades to describe a figure's attributes. Best part about the figure is they nailed the comb over hairstyle. A small detail like that can make or break a figure for me, I've got strange attention to detail issues. Harry does come with the usual assortment of boring accessories cast in the same color. A goblet, a communicator (I don't remember him having one but I won't dispute it too hard), the Venus drug and lithium crystals. Granted he comes with more accessories than most toys today but I'd gladly take less if they'd been painted at least. I take my Harry Mudd figure with me to collectibles shows, either him or Quark come along to preside over the dealings of the day.
Kenner Police Academy Snack Attack House
(more Police Academy figures here )
I like the Snack Attack House figure, it's a big blue plastic rock of awesomeness. Pretty rare by himself but near impossible to find with his weapons or even on the card. I liked the Police Academy series for many reasons, one of them was the diversity in the main characters especially having 2 African American main characters. House would have made it 3 but he never really saw a mass release. Racial diversity in a toy line is still something that's hard to do right. GI Joe and He-Man does it right but very few other lines accomplish what they have.
If I had the weapon, it would be a gun shaped like a big sandwich with a string of sausages/salami being fed through it like belt-fed ammo. I'm not sure of the physical workings of a weapon of that magnitude but I'm sure its awesome. They didn't skimp on the details and for a play toy of the early 90s, he offers a lot visually. And I like the color blue, and he represents an overweight cop mixed with Fat Albert and that's OK in my book.
Fisher Price Deep Sea Diver (Jacques Cousteau)
(more of his sexy face here )
Whether he is or is not supposed to be Jacques Cousteau doesn't matter to me, when you take off his helmet and see that iconic red stocking cap you know who it is. I've had this toy as long as I can remember and I know it was given to me by my grandparents. He went anywhere there was water. Bath tub, shower, beach, pool and now he resides at the bottom of my fish tank. Proves that toys back then were built to last. I take him out every 6 months or so and clean him up but he goes right back in the tank afterwards. Some may think this shows I don't care about it but I feel it is a great honor to be on display in a very predominant place in my house.
Hasbro Skeleton Warriors Aracula
( more Skeleton Warriors here )
Skeleton Warriors was a great line, not the humans but the skeletons themselves. The shame was the series didn't make it past series 2. In the end we had 4 humans (one partially skeletonized) and 4 skeleton warriors, a hover motorcycle and a skeleton war horse. Anyways, long story short, Aracula was the best damn figure from the line. Being a creepy little kid I liked skeletons a lot so I was drawn to this line. I never even bought a human figure till the reappeared at KB Toys during my employment there. Out of all the skeleton warriors, Aracula was my favorite. So much so that I'll buy him over and over again if he's cheap enough in my huntings. I probably have 3 or 4 of him loose and one carded.
I know a great deal of budgeting goes into tooling a sculpt and I feel Aracula is where this line spent about 3/4th of it's budget. Aracula himself looked almost too good to be part of line. He had a mysterious look like something out of Edgar Rice Borough's Tarzan novels or maybe even the Goonies. The only bad thing I can say about the toy is the gold armor always falls off his forearms. It's put on with the equivalent of white glue so it is inevitable that it will come right off. The few I have loose have been stripped and had the armor glued with a stronger epoxy.
Marusan Matango
(more fungus among us here )
Being the kid that would stay inside on weekends and watch cartoons and monster movies over playing with the neighborhood kids, I was well aware of the 1963 tokusatsu classic Matango. I never knew they made rad figures for it but not growing up in Japan will do that to a lad. The movie is great being pretty much right in the middle of the greatest time for Japanese costumed monsters in movies. It's a required movie to watch from here on out and I hope to do a review on it shortly/eventually. The products for the movie ranged from keychain sized action figures to models and different sized sofubi (vinyl figures).
Anyways, being the kind of laid back guy who doesn't really hunt down a toy I just waited for one to come by at the right price and right time. That time came when I saw it in a local collectibles shop and my wife was super nice enough to buy it for me, knowing how I feel about the movie. He's one of the more innocent looking versions of the Matango but I like him just as well as the bigger and more menacing ones. The fact that he's a psychedelic rainbow color lends itself to numerous illicit drug jokes and just how silly he looks makes those jokes stick. Also he has a glow in the dark mushroom accessory and I've expressed my undying love for that gimmick.
