Farscape Part 1: The Action Figures
As we briefly mentioned yesterday after Brian’s review of the Guardians of the Galaxy action figures, we’re going to be running a giveaway here for the complete Farscape series on blu-ray.
The details are simple: over the next week we’ll be covering different aspects of Farscape, from the action figures to the comic books to the show itself. On the final day, we’ll reveal a series of questions, all of which can be answered by reading the coverage. There’s a lot of frelling trivia out there, and we can’t expect you to keep all that wormhole knowledge locked up in your brain all the time, can we now?
Today’s talk? Action figures.
I don’t want to sound like an old man, but kids nowadays have no idea how lucky they are to live in such a commercial world. Oh sure, Charlie Brown might have a problem with how commercial the world has become but that’s because he has more than enough toys dedicated to him.
By the late 90′s and early 2000′s, action figure collecting as you know it today was still developing thanks in large part to McFarlane’s Spawn line which focused more on design than playability, and Toy Biz’s iconic Marvel lines which continued to evolve the modern action figure into the well sculpted, highly poseable toys you see today.
I’m not dismissing the founding fathers of action figures, Mego, Star Wars, GI Joe and Transformers but other than the recently revived Star Wars line, that time period was not favorable. Mego had become an overpriced novelty, GI Joe had been cancelled, replaced with Real American Hero repaints, revived as Valor vs. Venom, and Transformers was involved in the Beast Wars/Beast Machines controversy.
At that time, there was a market for action figures, but it was hard to service them. We’re talking about an age where online toy stores would be hardcoded in HTML and you’d e-mail for availability. X-Files, for instance, was a world-wide success, and despite a plethora of monsters and creatures, only a handful of figures were made. Seaquest DSV produced about as many action figures, while Hercules and Xena fared a little better, and shows like Sliders and Earth Final Conflict? Nothing.
Farscape managed a respectable number of action figures over its short time thanks to Toy Vault, and one of its more noticeable feats is in presenting a nearly complete version of the major cast. D’argo, Aeryn, Crichton, Zhaan, Chiana, Scorpius, Crais and even Rygel. Of course, you could argue that without the Pilot, the only character that was with the show from beginning to end without a figure, it’s not completely complete, but it’s still a more complete cast list than many shows would get.
Special mention should go out to the line because 3 of the 8 characters represented are female figures. You don’t even get that kind of balanced gender representation in many lines today.
The figures themselves came well stocked with clever accessories from various episodes, and many characters received multiple versions wearing outfits from individual episodes.
The line wasn’t without its faults. When I talk about how lucky modern collectors are, I’m taking into account the fact that many of these figures had severely limited articulation, like knees stuck in perma-bend status for poor Chiana or non-jointed hips. Figures were also re-released with new subtitles and different accessories, or fabric clothing that gives some figures an unintentional retro look. A new version of this line would be filled with soft plastic trench coats, and it would likely either fall into a 3.75 inch or 6 inch scale, instead of the psuedo-7-inch scale. Various retailers had exclusive editions so there was a bit of a hunt aspect to the line, but it wasn’t overwhelming.
Some of the limited edition figures, such as the “Crackers Don’t Matter” Scorpius, still fetch considerable amounts in online auctions, but picking through lots, you can still assemble most of Moya’s crew relatively cheaply.
For more information on this line, check out ToyVault’s Farscape archive, and Karlsweb Farscape E-zine,
