Firemen are, as we all know, potent, smoke-stained icons of manliness. Anyone who's ever called them out to tackle a chip pan fire, or to get a wayward cat out of a tree, will recognise that they generally look (and pose) like this:

Combine this apparently unproblematic (and unreformed) masculinity with the very real tragedy of so many of New York's finest dying in the twin towers and you're more than half-way to explaining why hordes of (non-firefighting) meatheads wander around in FDNY t-shirts. They're not showing any considered solidarity with the dead. They're just trying to casually associate themselves with notions of heroism and sacrifice as they get slaughtered in shit pubs with their friends. In other words - a shower of cunts.

Today's entry into the Manky Toy hall of uselessness doesn't deserve such violent scorn, just sympathy. He's trying his best (on a modest budget) to be a valuable member of the Rescue Services. It's not his fault he's so poorly constructed.

I've spoken before of the squashy-headed "Action Dan" (Action Man's bastard, "pound shop" alter-ego), but hadn't actually stumbled across a "proper" Dan since I started critiquing Manky Toys over a year and a half ago…until now that is.

For what we have before us here today is emphatically an Action Dan - squashy head (check), ill fitting boots & clothes (check), small number of "points of articulation" (check). Most telling of all, though, are the hands. While the genuine, fuzzy-haired Action Man had a mighty grip that could clutch weapons, other Action Men, and his non-existent phallus…

…Dan never had anything but moulded plastic flippers (handy for slapping, but less useful when trying to squeeze triggers).

If Sindy (or Maureen) ever got trapped in a blazing plastic house then the best Dan could do would be to kick his axe hopefully (and pathetically) at the front door. His poor wretched flippers would never (even if they didn't melt off) be up to the required standard.

In those dark moments when he's haunted by such failings, however, he can (at least) still take comfort in his sculpted six-pack and equally sculpted flesh coloured Y-fronts.

The Manky God never taketh away with one (plastic) hand without giving with the other. Amen.