It’s become a Christmas Eve tradition for the family to take an evening drive around town to check out the local holiday light extravaganzas. The locals decorate their yards with everything from elegant strings of white lights on pine trees to giant, city-destroying, illuminated inflatable snowmen. Armies of nutcrackers emit a nuclear glow as they march outwards off of lawns, threatening everyone in the immediate vicinity with The Christmas Spirit Or Else. Electric bills skyrocket, and neighbors are kept awake by the fiery glow.

While these kinds of displays are expensive (and we settle for a simple wreath spotted with white lights for the outside of our house), my personal inside display is potentially excessive. For a long time, I’ve been accumulating action figures that are specifically designed in Christmas themes. They might be out of place for 11 months out of the year, but for one month, they’re not grossly inappropriate or overeager. As with my Christmas LPs, they’ve not been intentionally collected, but these action figures are usually slipped into regular lines of things that already bear some kind of collectability - and the list is surprisingly extensive. There’s great potential for an entire metropolis of holiday figures atop the mantle come Christmastime. Here’s a starter guide to beginning your own.

Oh, and action figures also can make neat tree decorations! With a little bit of string or wire, you can have a fully decked out Ewok village running through your stately pine come Christmastime.

I’ve mentioned the Star Wars toys that have been re-decorated for Christmases past. These have included a tiny Yoda in full Santa regalia, 2004’s set of two Jawas exchanging gifts, and 2005’s solid red Darth Vader on a wreath base. These retail at about $20 each, but prices climb as they become older. Nothing says ‘Merry Christmas’ like a genocidal overlord bathed in red! And while not action figures in a traditional sense, Fabriche has constructed an 8” scale set of sculptures based on the art of Ralph McQuarrie and a Christmas card that he’d painted. These include Yoda, C-3PO and R2-D2 - and there’s also a $200 Steinbach Darth Vader nutcracker, if you want to go totally Star Wars Holiday crazy. Don’t forget to pop on your bootleg DVD of the Star Wars Holiday Special and the Star Wars ‘Christmas in the Stars’ album. And don’t be surprised when no one shows up to your holiday party.

The original Simpsons line of action figures by Playmates included a Christmas box set. This whole line of figures had the benefit of living long enough so that almost every resident of Springfield was made into a figure, all of which include voice chips that sound sound off when the figures are plugged into their numerous playsets. Every new playset would bring a whole new array of phrases for the figures to say, as the voice chips were in the playsets themselves, and the figures simply activated them - so the audio possibilities were infinitely expandable for each character. So not only do you have the whole Simpson family (plus their dog, Santa’s Little Helper) in a Christmas living room set, but they talk. This set can be found for roughly $30, similar to its release price in the 90s.

McFarlane Toys has addressed Christmas only recently, but with two highly disparate showings hitting retail shelves in the past few weeks. First, they’ve produced the first and only cartoon-artwork accurate figures of The Grinch and his eponymous Christmas cartoon (let’s not even discuss the figures from the live-action film, please, thanks). These McFarlane figures (all coming with miniature display sets) beautifully capture some choice scenes from the film - the graphical demonstration of the Grinch’s tiny heart being two sizes too small, the sled about to crash over Mt. Crumpit, the Grinch magnetizing the nails from the chimney-hung stockings, tying the antler to Max’s head, and Cindy Lou Who (the only figure set of the five to not feature The Grinch himself).

This innocence is dashed, however, with McFarlane’s Twisted Christmas line, which are a freaked-out grotesquerie of holiday characters. These include a steroided-out, murderous Rudolph, and Mrs. Claus as a stripper on a pole. Also included are a set of three weapon-clutching elves that are more likely to eat your face than make you toys, a Frosty with icicle fangs, a clawed Santa who needs a gasmask and a bath, and a weird, amorphous mountain of ice and wood that represents ‘Jack Frost’. It’s one hell of a messed up idea of Christmas. McFarlane adds a bit of disturbing irony to these (as if they needed any more) by making their packaging completely innocent - cherubic elven faces and smiling Santas seem to imply that these figures were once wholesome, but something went terribly wrong after they were packaged and sent out into the world. We might all FEEL like this around Christmas, but do we really need to advertise it? All of these McFarlane toys are at retail now (usually at your local FYE or specialty shop - but not at Toys ‘R’ Us) for about 14 bucks each. Stripper Claus is especially rare, if you happen to see one and can muster up enough who-gives-a-damn to actually bring it to the shop counter.

And we definitely can’t forget about McFarlane’s flagship character Spawn, and his own personal Christmas figure from years past, released as ‘i.039’ in the 24th wave of Spawn figures, 2004’s Classic Comic Covers. The figure was very popular, and has been re-released to the McFarlane Collectors Club this year. Again, it’s a fairly dark and grotesque figure.

Keep reading on Saturday for a continuation of the nigh-endless Christmas figure list!

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Article Tags: action figures, Christmas, decorations, McFarlane, presents, Simpsons, Star Wars, Twisted Christmas

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 12th, 2007 at 1:00 am and is filed under collecting fyi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.