Why are action figures so bad?

[robinturner]

While searching Google Images for pretty pictures to put on my course website (see previous post), I came up with a lot of pictures of action figures, mainly related to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Without an exception, they sucked. I had a similar experience when I went shopping for Lord of the Rings figures.  The lack of resemblance between action figures and the characters they are supposed to represent is amazing. The Buffy figure doesn't look anything like Buffy, faith doesn't look like Faith, or even a human being, and so forth. The screenshots from the Buffy video game  that also turned up in my search looked more realistic.

This cannot simply be a technical problem. This is the twenty-first century. We have nanotechnology, ferchrissakes! Can it really be so hard to model a six-inch piece of plastic so that it looks something like a character on a TV series?

Comments

[circumambulate.livejournal.com]

hard, no, but then they'd have to retool a whole machine. This way, they have 10-odd different heads and bodies and they just change the clothes to fit the character it's supposed to be.

[cf.livejournal.com]

Do you know how He-Man came into being? It was going to be Conan, and they modeled the doll on Arnold, but then they watched the movie. Hmm. Premartial sex with witches that you then kill, fucking whores and doing 'prime hash' that the buy in the market. Don't forget when conan ko's the camel after getting high. For some strange reason, Conan didn't make to the shelves.

[cf.livejournal.com]

i found it...'do you want prime Black Lotus?'

can you imagine a superhero doing prime black lotus in a movie today?

[solri.livejournal.com]

Conan was Arnie's finest moment, largely, I suspect, because he was playing himself (which for someone with his acting ability is the only viable option). And I loved the Genghis Khan quote!

what is the world coming to?

[sohwhat.livejournal.com]

i cannot believe you get paid to teach that.

my engrish professor in college made us read texts that were both useful and relevant to the modern world, like aeschylus and euripedes. i find myself applying the lessons in learned in medea to my everyday life. especially the part about not gouging your own eyes out. or was that oedipus?

Re: what is the world coming to?

[cf.livejournal.com]

see what i have to deal with? see?

first off, in learned in medea? huh?

secodly, i thought medea was the babe with the golden erm woolies that got ditched at sariyer cause she talked too much.


thoidly, she knows neither his-story nor man-ography. She thought that Iowa was next to Ohio for chrissakes, and that London was next to Manchester. She didn't even know what agincourt was! On the other hand she's always asking me about smegma-sene-kinase or something that sounds like some sort of obscene labrat chemical...oh, the perfidy of the 'liberal arts' college...

Re: what is the world coming to?

[solri.livejournal.com]

No - the lesson you learnt from Medea was "Don't kill your children to spite your husband" (or alternatively, "Don't marry good-looking strangers who claim to be looking for a sheep").

Actually, in my last course ("From Homer to Xena") I had students read some extracts from different translations of the Iliad. I'm not sure what lesson they learnt from that. Maybe "Chicks aren't worth fighting over."

Re: what is the world coming to?

[sohwhat.livejournal.com]

wasn't medea the one who had snakes for hair?

media and the iliad could be the foundation of a class on how to keep down women. other suggested texts could include lysistrata (consequences of women getting uppity), the odessey (feel free to wander the world while your wifey waits at home), and maybe the aneaid (dumb women will let you use them and then burn themselves on funeral pyers).

Re: what is the world coming to?

[cf.livejournal.com]

hmm...odyssey sounds great!

Re: what is the world coming to?

[solri.livejournal.com]

Medusa was the snaky one.

huh?

[sohwhat.livejournal.com]

i thought slyterin was the snaky one?!

now i'm confused! i'm going back to the kitchen where i belong.