I refer of course to the classic 70s/80s version. The version I collected as a kid. Back when everything was 100% objectively better in every conceivable way than things are now. The contemporary versions – like the diabolic abomination that is/was reimagined roller-bladin' Pepsi Max Action Man – are utterly soulless affairs. Dreamed up by besuited corporate dullards. Crap and cynical tie-ins for crap and cynical "franchises".

Though the slick and lifeless images are bad enough – smothered, as they are, in a processed CGI-cling-film sheen – it's the arbitrary and WTF-like nature of the individual category scores that most offend my nerd-child sensibilities. As a young fella I genuinely believed that Waddington's employed teams of cool and dispassionate boffins (boffins swayed by neither whim nor fleeting fancy) to assign a particular card its values. They were, basically, androids – who'd crunch all available data before deciding that Fu Manchu warranted a "Fear Factor" rating of 74. No less. No more.

Today's Trumps (with their chimps and typewriters approach) either reveal this belief to be the product of wide-eyed boyhood naivety, or else the makers (as I suspect) just give much less of a shit now. Sure the kids will lap up any old crap as long as Harry-fucking-Potter-cock is on the box.

Anyway, that lengthy old-mannish rant is but an excuse to showcase some of the crude beauties of yore. All of these were once in my possession. Now gone. All utterly gone forever. *sob*

The Fiend. Not (by any means) the most formidable card in the Horror pack (or packs, there were two) but a clean decapitation with a single swipe? Kudos. No skimping on the gore either. Yay!

Venus? Goddess of love and beauty. Venusians? Unfeeling hackers-off of prisoners' heads.

Yes, Death was actually a playable card. Death! And he looked weird. And he kicked ass (check out those stats). Have to question a "Killing Power" of (a mere) 95 out of 100 though, for a character who, y'know, is death itself.

The "Spacecraft" set was another favourite. One offering delightful (and incongruous) mash-ups that gleefully erased boring old divisions between science fact and science fiction. Ever wanted to know who'd win in a "fight" between the Viking 1 Mars Lander…

…and an "Imperial Space Cruiser" (a.k.a Imperial Star Destroyer)?

Top Trumps once had the answers. To this, and all other questions.

First impressions suggest a zero-tolerance approach to nonsense. A plain white background free of fireworks, fluffy clouds, chortling babies, or massed ranks of smug "Pope's Children". "Take me for what I am", Cllr. Cronin seems to be saying, "and let's all get on with the work of rebuilding this ravaged land – through gumption, rolled-up sleeves, and plain white background-y common sense". Frivolity and manipulative eye-catching design have no place on Cllr. Cronin's posters.

Neither, apparently, does a party name or slogan. From a modest distance (or even up close) it's by no means an easy task to work out who Cllr. Cronin is representing. A fair amount of persistent squinting and staring is required to find the relevant info – buried away in the bottom right corner, in tiny (almost apologetic) letters.¹

If you ever needed evidence of a party battered, humbled and self-conscious then here it assuredly is. Writ small. Very small. Ridiculously small – like print at the end of a contract. A contract you sign without realising the terrible implications your agreement and endorsement implies.

Debaffling this one looks pretty straightforward. Our omnipresent overlords, Fianna Fáil – spat on, shat on & abused – are now so concerned about their brand's lack of potency & appeal that they've all but excised the brand name from their "product". The only tactic left them, it would seem, is to hope that myopic passers-by don't study the details of their promotional material too closely. Let them note the reassuring smiles and the subtle patriotic sweep of tricolour and let them move on – with favourable impressions of FF (sssh!) candidates impressed subliminally in their minds.

As a strategy it's either a stroke of diabolic genius or a tacit admission of inevitable defeat. New party slogan?

Fianna Fáil – Ye'll go mental when ye realise ye've accidentally voted for us!

In closing, I'm reluctant to hop on board the celebratory band-wagon that anticipates a long overdue slaughter (and cough-softening) of our eternal rulers. Great evil has a way of enduring. I mean, look at Sauron. The boys were all high-fiving each other on the plain of Dagorlad after Isildur lopped off his fingers. They thought him vanquished, but back he bounced. Or remember the smug and self-congratulatory handing out of medals at the end of Star Wars. Before they'd time to pat themselves on the backs Luke had lost a hand, Han had been encased in carbonite, and a new (bigger 'n' better) Death Star was under construction.

The Empire strikes back. Evil will out. Don't get your hopes up.

1. Fianna Fáil – The Republican Party. [back]

Back when Manky Toy Monday was but a weak and mewling infant I suggested (by way of a partial mission statement) that:

Special attention will be paid to those delightfully crappy knock-offs and pastiches of established brands. For every Star Wars action figure, after all, there is a shadowy (and mega-lame) Galaxy Battles doppelgänger. For every Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle there is a distant and embarrassing cousin: let’s call him Kung-Fu Newt.

That was almost one year to the day ago (tomorrow is MTM's official birthday). How many 2 Euro Star Wars knock-offs have I seen since then? None in Limerick. Nor in Galway. Nor in Dublin. None, even, in Venice. Not a single one…anywhere.

Given that 2 Euro shops are (as I have learned) fairly accurate "fad barometers" (or bad farometers) this absence seems to suggest that the Star Wars universe is no longer deemed that floggable. The lumpy plastic Lukes and Chewbaccas (there were always Chewies) that once lined the shelves of such establishments have been shunted aside to make way for Spider-Man products by the shit-load. Spidey, it seems, is the new black, with every young fella I know loving the lord of the webslingers to the point of near obsession.

I'm not sure exactly when this mass clear-out of Galaxy Battles – I mean Star Wars – merchandise actually happened. Was it around the time kids were being encouraged to buy Jar-Jar beanie babies and Rugor Nass¹ sleeping bags? If so, a question begs itself: Did George Lucas create a series of prequels so bankrupt that even the Manky Toy-mongers deserted him?

Whatever the case may be we should be thankful for The Star Wars Collector's Archive and, in particular, its fantabulous "Bootlegs" page. The fact that Manky Toy Monday had not 'touched base' with it before is a source of shame and regret (though I'm exceedingly grateful to Niall Munnelly for pointing me in its direction). It really is a delicious cornucopia of the bad, the worse, and the "so bad it's better than the original". I've never previously allowed anything into this series that I didn't hold in my own sweaty hands but these are just too good (i.e. bad) to ignore.

First up – Logray, the Ewok medicine man (bought, the archive tells us, "somewhere in South America"). That's what he's supposed to look like on the left. The bootleg (as you may have guessed) is on the right.

The author of the entry (a Ron Salvatore) offers a summary of Bootleg Logray that's almost impossible to surpass, describing him as "a half-rotten banana with gray mashed potatoes heaped on top". He doesn't, however, mention the impression given by the clear plastic bag and the (ecstatic) open-mouthed expression on Logray's face. A definite suggestion of auto-erotic Ewok asphyxiation gone wrong methinks.²

Let us move on promptly to these magnificent early Dutch gems, sold (apparently) before official merchandise was available in the Netherlands:

That Chewbacca may well be one of the greatest objects ever hewn from rubber or plastic. If they had a crap Waxwork Museum on Kashyyyk then an 8-foot version of this would be on display in the lobby "honouring" its favourite son. The Stormtrooper looks like a down-on-his-luck Stay Puft Marshmallow Man (tapping change from passers-by) while the Vader is…surprisingly accurate, though he appears to have ditched the traditional lightsaber and gone for a more low-tech solution to killing and dismemberment.

Another Jedi opting for a less noisy blade is Vader Jr. – Mexican Luke Skywalker.

Aside from the fact that it's got the most delightful backing card I've ever seen, this classic bit of mankiness manages to knock-off not one, but two fantasy/sci-fi universes. Yes fan-boys and girls, it's "The Sword of Omens" – more usually the property of the Lord of the Thundercats. I wouldn't mind but the Luke on the card (not 3 centimetres away) is wielding a lightsaber.

Possibly my favourite page on the archive is one featuring a motley crew of Mexican Vaders (reflecting the enduring appeal of masked baddies perhaps). Here's but a taste:

Everything about the "Darth" second from left is just hilarious – his puny frame, his awkward posture, his over-tight trousers (and protruding groin), his ineffective looking black club (etc). He looks mortified – as if he'd been dressed (hurriedly) by his mum.

Truly a golden age of mankiness. Its like will (thanks, in part, to the joyless party-poopers from EU consumer affairs) never be seen again.

1. The fat fella underwater in D'Phantom Menace. [back]
2. There are worse ways to bow out I suppose… [back]

A little background to today's entry (which I've decided to draw from my personal collection).

While completing my MA in Winchester I first became aware of the rich browsing experiences afforded by England's plentiful charity shops. After accustoming myself to the intoxicating smell of cheap perfume that seems to haunt such places, I soon became a regular (possibly obsessive) charity shop shopper.

Apart from being ready sources of affordable clothing, the various shops on my route (yes, I had a route) often yielded random, delightful (unloved/unwanted) toys. My most fruitful day's hunting was when a Millennium Falcon (in fairly decent nick) turned up in the treasure trove known locally (but misleadingly) as "the dump". It was, in fact, a recycling centre.

I actually had to haggle quite ferociously with an employee, who I’ll charitably describe as an "eccentric" old woman, to keep the price down. She'd obviously heard (somewhere) that the paraphernalia associated with the works of Fatty Lucas was worth serious money, leading her to suggest an initial price that was ludicrous even by non-dump standards. Fortunately her "eccentricity" got the better of her in the end and she absent-mindedly let me have it for ½ nothing.

The other great discovery made there (or so I thought) was a full-size – mechanically accurate – wicker motorbike. As the house was already fast filling up with lots of second-hand rubbish I decided (most reluctantly) to let this one go. My reluctance was based on the belief that this was a one-off, folk-art folly – abandoned (perhaps resignedly) by its mad genius of a creator. This assumption was, alas, proven incorrect when I saw a gaggle of such bikes on display in Habitat (of all places). It was like a wicker Hell's Angels rally.

Anyway, while gems did indeed turn up from time to time, my lack of "charity shop" discipline also led to the odd purchasing error, one of which is today’s manky toy. Here he is:

I bought him sans box and sans accessories so I was never entirely sure what toy universe he belonged to. My educated guess, however, pegged him as an action figure based on the hilariously awful and ill-conceived Gerry Anderson series, Space Precinct. I had, therefore, actually planned to write a post about how a TV show/film's official toys can actually end up being on a par with "Euro Shop" knock-offs (despite having proper design teams, a greater investment of time & money etc). I'd also planned discussing the fact that while many a dreary TV show has been saved by a cool line of toys (see Masters of the Universe for details), Space Precinct actually produced merchandise even worse than the show itself.

It was not to be however, because after searching through the very few Space Precinct resources online (and you know a sci-fi show must have been astonishingly cack if there aren’t at least a dozen fansites dedicated to it) I'm now fairly sure my initial assumption was wrong. As impossible as it seems, I think my toy is actually a Space Precinct knock-off! A cheapo copy of a toy that nobody wanted, based on a show that nobody watched. Marvellous.

As far as I can make out my guy is supposed to be Officer Jackson Haldane (pictured at the top of this post), though the real Jackson Haldane figure is (sadly and clearly) a rather more professional job than my fella. Here they are side by side:

While the mad, messy mix that was Space Precinct itself – a tablespoon of cop show, a teaspoon of space-opera, a pinch of Jim Henson – may have exploded disastrously in its creators' faces, the toys can, at least, claim that there are crapper figures than they out there.

A couple of closing remarks about my "Fake Jackson"…

1) "Fake Jackson" exhibits one of the classic indicators of action figure crappiness and cheapness: He has a squashy head.

As a rule of thumb you can assume that toys with hollow, air-filled, squashy heads have had less care and attention lavished on them than their solid, non-squashy-headed, brethren.

A famous example of "squashy headedness" was "Action Dan" – the bastard, pound shop, offspring of Action Man (no squashy head) and Cindy (squashy head). This may not have been his real name, but that's the only one I (and my sneering childhood friends) used when referring to him. Many's the time (I'd imagine) that a well-meaning parent came home to an excited son announcing that they [the parent] had bought the young fella an "Action Man". Cue crest-fallen kid as he sees the distinctive squashy head and fixed (non-eagle) eyes of Action Dan emerge from the packet.

2) Another of Action Dan's chief failings concerned his "points of articulation" (or lack thereof). For those unfamiliar with the term, "points of articulation" refers (as you might guess) to how many joints a toy has (i.e. how poseable it is). Old School Action Man had a prodigious number of such points. In fact, he may have had more than you or I. If memory serves me right he had a joint between shoulder and elbow. It'd put the human body to shame.

Action Dan, in contrast, had the almost bare minimum five points of articulation (head, 2 arms, 2 legs). No bending knees or elbows. No adjustable fingers or ankles etc, etc. A combination of this "inarticulateness" and his annoyingly squashy head led him to be first choice for any suicidal missions to the front line.

"Fake Jackson" is straight out of the same mould, but at least Dan was a knock-off of a marvellous (fantastically detailed) toy, rather than a mediocre, unloved and long-forgotten one.

Final Note:

With the current waves of toy collectiblity and toy fetishism showing no sign of abating, manufacturers seem keen on producing figures with ever more "points of articulation" (as a selling point). I saw a large Spider-Man figure a while back that had so many points of articulation he could barely stand up. He looked like someone had broken every bone in his body. It was unnerving.

Following the pioneering leads of other bloggers who have themed certain days of the week (in a quest, presumably, to add some shape and discipline to the haphazard business that is blogging) I present my latest, most insignificant, project: Manky Toy Monday.¹

Every Saturday afternoon – in the spirit of a crap-culture flâneur – I shall scour the Euro shops² and charity shops of Limerick searching for cheap, poorly-made, conceptually-bonkers toys. No more than 5 Euro bucks shall be spent on each excursion and – after detailed investigation of my acquisitions – thoughts and conclusions will be posted here the following Monday.

Special attention will be paid to those delightfully crappy knock-offs and pastiches of established brands. For every Star Wars action figure, after all, there is a shadowy (and mega-lame) Galaxy Battles doppelgänger. For every Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle there is a distant and embarrassing cousin: let’s call him Kung-Fu Newt.

Extra special attention will be reserved for those toys that winningly (and madly) fuse popular culture concepts and elements to create new and delirious hybrids. Think He-Soldier…or Interstellar Wrestler (etc).

What is the purpose of this exercise? None really – other than the perverse pleasure I’ll get from allowing these tawdry and unloved artefacts a chance to shine while we all wallow in their supreme rubbishness. On to today’s offering…

Bought for 2 Euro in the…er…."2 Euro Shop" in William St., Limerick this has so many notable "manky toy" features it's hard to know where to start. Let’s have a look at it:

Oh Mama! Though it’s almost impossibly delicious, the series of toys really seems to be called "League of the Transformable". Let me just repeat that: League of the Transformable. How much more lyrical and groovy is that than the simple and unimaginative "Transformers"?

To make matters worse (better?), it is not readily apparent what the League member in question – "Super Rorot Rorot" – actually transforms into. Nowhere on the box does it indicate what Super Rorot Rorot’s particular gift is, nor why the League saw fit to admit him into their ranks. Nothing for it, then, but to crack open the packaging and test the extent of the toy’s transformability.

Since the right arm looks like a giant blender or whisk I first tired to steer "SRR" in a domestic direction: He was having none of it.

In fact, with every twist and turn of his plastic limbs the chances of him falling apart before the mystery could be solved grew ever more likely. Finally, however, I managed to figure out what SRR’s transformable claim to fame actually was: He can make fairly unconvincing stabs at impersonating a tank, or perhaps a crane (see below).

I’ve tried to transform him back into his Robot (or Rorot) form but this has proved impossible. He now seems sadly locked in tank/crane mode forever more. A disappointing end for a toy whose box promised a certain (misleading) dynamism by boldly proclaiming "GO!!!"³

Tune in same time next week for more sub-Kinder Egg goodies.

P.S: Two things I forgot to add…

1) After being recorded on fustar.info the toys shall be returned to charity shops, allowing the great cycle of consumption to begin again in a worthy environment.

2) "Manky Toy Monday" submissions from readers are most welcome. If you've found a cheap and hilarious piece of crap in your neck of the woods, send pics and a description on to me and I'll include it in the week's roundup.

GO!!!

1. Doffing a cap to Bob Byrne’s excellent "fake Lego" rants [back]
2. Formerly known as Pound Shops [back]
3. Note: 3 exclamation marks [back]

Fústar.org was lately memed by freestater who closed his eyes as tight as tight could be, clicked the heels of his dainty red slippers and wished with all his might for a post on why the fourth, first, second and third episodes¹ of the Star Wars hexology "suck so badly". Either that or he gave his magic lamp a special rub. Whatever the case, we are here to serve (1 million pop-culture hamburgers and counting).

While I don’t agree that Jedi, the first of the films he mentions, sucks along all that lamely, I guess the one-word answer to part A of his question is "Ewoks". The two word answer is "fucking Ewoks"². I suppose I could stick in a DVD to find something nice to say, but my bureaucratic overlords in the Civil Service don’t pay me to watch movies and pen pop-culture epistles to my international online brethren (as far as they know at any rate) so I’d better dash this off and get back to work. In any event it, ain’t no Empire as Dante Hicks so eloquently explains in Kevin Smith’s Clerks:

Randal: Which did you like better, Jedi or The Empire Strikes Back?

Dante: Empire.

Randal: Blasphemy.

Dante: Empire had the better ending. Luke gets his hand cut off, finds out Vader is his father, Han gets frozen, taken away by Boba Fett. It ends on such a down note. I mean, that's what life is, a series of down endings. All Jedi had was a bunch of Muppets³.

Amen brother.

There are about a million reasons (many of them pixelated) why the prequels are such a disaster and it is well I remember sitting in a hushed auditorium in Leicester Square being struck, as one slapped in the face with the wet trout of reality, by the antiseptic surfaces and Jar Jar motherfucking Binks of The Phantom Menace, my winsome little expression of delighted expectation becoming a petulant adult scowl as George failed to charm back the luxury of a child’s soul⁴. But hope dies slow, and I trotted obediently along to Attack of the Clones to make obeisance to the pop-culture gods who have fought for my soul since the 1970s and once again part company with hard-earned cash, much of it won in the teeth of a punitive 42 pence in the pound tax-rate. Does George take socio-economic realities like this into account when imposing his o’erweening and clumsy sensibility on the CGI wizards at Industrial Light and Magic and sticking his pudgy fingers in every pixel pie? It seems not.

For verily, AotC did suck with a vigour equal to Phantom and there, slap bang in the middle of this Candarel ode to the perceived vapidity of Generation Y, was the smoking gun; the ne plus ultra demonstration of how and why the series lost its way and became, simply, a franchised toy advert. The ascendancy of the toys can, of course, be traced back to the original trilogy and probably finds its locus classicus in those pukesome Ewoks, but the glaring horror of which I speak is a computer generated location shoot in a cozy corner of Coruscant called Dex's Diner. That's right, Dex's Diner, a little piece of iconic '50s Americana replete with the greasy-aproned short-order cook, chrome fittings and red vinyl upholstery anyone would expect to find a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Not!

What were they thinking? George may once have been something of a maverick, the auteur in American Graffiti of the celluloid foreshadowing of fare like Richard Linklater's post-modern X-er classic Slacker, but the conventions of popcorn space opera do not admit of deconstructionist experiments with cinema's 'fourth wall'. Lucas may have conceived Dex's as an arch reference to his pop roots and an amusing nod to the fans to let them know he was somehow in there looking out, but we'd had enough illusions shattered that day.

I prefer my disbelief to remain as suspended as Lt. Ellen Ripley's lifesigns during deep space transit for the duration of whatever sci-fi flick I'm watching. But that wouldn't do George. It couldn't have been more jarring⁵ if he'd appeared on screen himself in his boomer uniform of jeans and red check shirt, dropped his keks and gone for a giant poo all over my childhood⁶.

Thank you George. Thank you very much.

1. The third, fourth, fifth and sixth films in order of execution. [back]
2. Welcome Googlers! Alas no scenes of Ewoks in carnal riot here. [back]
3. Disclaimer: I actually love Jim Henson's Muppets, but the sentiment will be clear to fústarers. [back]
4. Beautifully turned phrase nicked from Advent by Patrick Kavanagh. [back]
5. Punning with intent here. [back]
6. Fústarers who wish to explore this issue in greater depth will find far more sophisticated expressions of the disappointment engendered by the latter SW trilogy in season 2 of superlative Britcom Spaced and in the South Park episode in which Stan and Kyle go to LA to get their money back from George Lucas. [back]