Okay, I know that I talk about action figures. A lot. What I hope to communicate in these little talks, more than anything, is that there is a toy for everyone. Sure, a vast majority of well-known action figures focus around superheroic characters or movie properties, but they’re so much more. They’re figural reminders and representations of things we like - and I guarantee you that there’s at least ONE for everyone.

And more and more, there’s one OF everyone. I’m not even sure if I can count the figures created in the likeness of Johnny Depp in his various personas, or the growing collection of through-the-ages Elvises (Elvi?) - but even behind the scenes, and usually fairly camera shy, we have the creators, thinkers and artists behind the things we love. While it’s uncommon that these guys ever get too much personal exposure, they do get a lot of intellectual respect, and recently, action figures of themselves. And almost always, it’s really clever.

The first action figure / creator item that came to my attention happened within the Muppet Show line of action figures by Palisades. Through a limited edition, Collector’s Club only event, Palisades created a complete action figure of Jim Henson. Of course, since this was a Muppet line, they created the figure of Henson in his Muppet form so that he’d blend in with the rest of his creations. The actual Henson Muppet appeared on the show a few times as a background character, but the posthumous homage to Henson as a Muppet, godfather to such a vast and interesting array of creations, was both appropriate and moving.

Peter Jackson, director of the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, also appeared as an action figure created by ToyBiz. While Jackson didn’t appear onscreen, (and please correct me if I’m wrong - there was a lot going on in those movies), he appeared as a rare Hobbit figure, right alongside Frodo, Sam, Pippin and the like. In properties where there are large, generic races of things and armies of faceless warriors, one can often find the face of a crew member or other important behind-the-scenes players slipped in among the masses. Peter Jackson also made an appearance as a Corsair Warrior in a line of statues created by Sideshow Toys.

Todd McFarlane, creator of Spawn, collector of baseballs, controversial personality, and toy revolutionary, possibly made the earliest appearance of a creator-as-action-figure. While not an independently released toy, McFarlane was a pack-in accessory in the Spawn Alley Playset, as ‘Todd the Bum’. The whole McFarlane toy company has always had a bizarre sense of humor. The figure was later re-released through the collectors’ club as ‘Todd the Artist’.

Of all creators, George Lucas has had the most figures made of himself - all of them limited edition and usually only available in special giveaways, conventions, or online shops. He’s appeared as a Stormtrooper, a Rebel Pilot named Jorg Sacul, and also in a Lucas family four-pack, which features likenesses of the whole Lucas family (two of whom have appeared in the Star Wars films in one way or another). Within this pack, Lucas is re-named ‘Baron Papanoida’, and is again given an alien biography to back up the figure - but he’s never really been great with creating alien names. Unofficially, Lucas has made a fourth appearance in the Star Wars McQuarrie Concept collection of figures. These are an ongoing line of figures (mixed in with regular Star Wars assortments) that are based on the original artwork of Ralph McQuarrie, the artist who painted an array of characters and scenes to pitch the Star Wars trilogy to producers. McQuarrie’s painting of the original Han Solo bears a striking resemblance to a young George Lucas. While there’s no official word that this is actually based on Lucas, I’d bet my Death Star on it. Or at least, like, twenty bucks. Ralph McQuarrie has also recently been made into an action figure, conveniently and respectfully named ‘General McQuarrie’.

Quentin Tarantino recently appeared as an action figure also, after he made an on-screen appearance in Grindhouse. In an action figure line with only four figures, he was one, and because of his twisted sense of humor, his figure was simply called ‘Rapist #1’.

We also can’t forget about the immortal Stan Lee - finally made into an action figure during this past summer’s convention season, Marvel Legends style. He features an interchangeable head that he can switch out with Peter Parker, so he also doubles as Spider-Man in some bizarre, old-man way.

And there are surely many left to come. The dreams of us lowly creators becoming action heroes, or at least figures, are becoming more realistic. Be sure to keep an eye out for the Collin David action figure - sometime in the distant future.

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I vividly remember getting ready to go to my grandma’s house on Christmas Eve! Our family consisted of mom, daddy, my older brother Mike, younger sister Vicki and me! We would all get dressed in our “Sunday best”; the girls in dresses, my dad and brother in a sport coat and dress slacks; often a tie. Mom was clever because she’d pack more casual attire for after dinner so we could be more relaxed. But she tried to impress upon us how important it was to dress for the occasion.
Mom tried to ‘hasten the pace’ and keep us on some type of schedule, but usually one of us would pose a problem. Oftentimes it was Mike. He was not a ‘social butterfly’ by any stretch and would balk at the idea of getting dressed up, or being told to put his sports collectibles away for the night. He hated it when the aunts and uncles would make comments such as ‘how you’ve grown since last time we saw you.’ Often it was only a few months since we’d been together, but Mike seemed to be a ‘constant grower’, which was an exception in our family. Dad was only 5’9” and Mike ended up at 6’3”! But somehow, we’d all be ready to go, presents neatly stacked in the trunk, mittens located and coats on, ready for the ride.
Of course, we sang carols along the way, all the favorites! The windows would be pretty steamed up by the time we got there. In attendance were my grandparents, 5 sets of aunts and uncles, 8 cousins, a few good friends of my grandparents that we’d call “aunt” and “uncle” out of respect.

The house was always warm and welcoming, a real Christmas tree with lots of ornaments (many of which I wish I had today), a fire in the fireplace, decorations everywhere. My grandparents lived in the upper of a duplex that my aunt and uncle owned and the celebrations were held in the lower part and basement. (I was much older when I learned that my grandparents had borrowed my aunt and uncle the money for the house with the proviso being that they could live there as long as they wanted. And both grandma and grandpa lived to be in the late 80’s.)
We’d start out going up to grandma’s place and turning the stairway, we’d always rush quickly past her sewing room. She had a dress form near the window and we’d always imagine she was a person standing by the window – at the time, pretty darn spooky! We’d enter the room, getting hugs from everyone. We were a very affection family. (Years later, my new sister-in-law would comment “you people hug every time you leave the room to go to the bathroom!”) I loved to sit in the big chair by grandma’s crystal lamp. It had a really pretty pattern, looked like prisms. I found out that when my parents were newlyweds, they had given it to my grandparents for Christmas. And as luck would have it, my grandma gave it to me for our home when we were newlyweds. We have it in our bedroom and it still makes me smile to look at it. It is a treasure.
When everyone was there, we’d have a toast to “Merry Christmas” and “Happy New Year” and the kids would have ginger ale in a fancy wine glass so we’d all feel special. It bubbled like champagne and tickled your nose. Then came the moment we’d all waited for – opening of the presents! One year was really special.

My grandparents gave each of their 6 children an envelope (this was way before the times of giving gift cards, so no one had a clue what was inside.) I clearly recall all of the adults hugging, kissing and even crying when they opened them up.

The kids were confused and nothing was said for quite a while. I found out several months later that my grandparents had decided to give a little of the ‘estate’ early so they could actually watch the faces of their children, rather than being gone and unable to do that. They gifted each couple $1,000, which was huge in those days and still is a lot today. We got a new TV, one that did not need to be pounded to keep the picture still, and each of us got a new winter coat, even mom, who often was the last to get new things.

I think of that often, the concept of being able to see the reaction ‘in person’, it was a wonderful gesture and for my grandparents who came here from Austria in the early 1900s with virtually the clothes on their backs and a duffel bag, this was quite an accomplishment.
After the gift-giving we’d head down to Uncle Al’s basement/rec room for dinner.

Nicely decorated with a tree, lots of lights and the Christmas cards all hung on a ‘line. There’d be more toasting (a few of my uncles probably really got ‘toasted’) and they’d play the stereo and we’d dance for hours. About midnight it was time to go home, exhausted, happy and filled with more memories.
Today I sit here smiling, waiting for my family to arrive. Two beautiful daughters and their wonderful husbands, five gorgeous, beloved grandchildren, all ready to be hugged and welcomed. We try to keep some traditions but I am looked at in disbelief when I suggest Christmas carols, especially by our youngest granddaughter who suggests that we ‘sing tomorrow grandma.’

But the gift-exchange, story telling and reminiscing go on for hours. I look at each one and thank God for them and for having these sweet memories, from the past, and the present.
Wishing all who read our blogs a wonderful holiday season and marvelous memories.

Last night, as if in a hazy dream, a spirit visited me in my chambers — it did not appear malevolent, despite its parachute pants, mullet, and wide lapels. This curious shade hovered around the end of my bed, waiting for my terror to subside, before identifying itself.

“Derek!” it exclaimed with a deep, wavering voice only belonging to the most tortured of the undead, “I come to you to show you the errors of your ways! I Am The Ghost Of The Future Of Christmas Presents Past!”

“Wait,” I said, “aren’t you going a little fast? There’s supposed to be a fat guy, and then a grim-reaper-thing –”

“NO!” the ghost bellowed, glowing flames rising from its aura and the faint tones of Roxette playing in the distance. “I am not here to show you the errors of your whole life — I’m to show you how the presents you had been given in your youth would have been worth more, if not for your reckless ways!”

“Oh,” I replied.

“…and there’s not enough ghosts to go around for everyone, so we do triple-shifts. Christmas is a busy time of year, what with everyone taking vacation…”

I nodded understandingly. Suddenly, the room fell away, leaving me floating in space, as my life flew by, in reverse, until we stopped at Christmas, 1978. We hovered close to the ceiling, as young me unwrapped a large box. Beneath the wrapping paper and cardboard was a giant robot named Raydeen, a toy I had made a big fuss about in Dayton’s a few weeks before. Here he was, in all his 2′ tall glory — one of my favorite toys of the day.

“Your beloved toy — whatever happened to it?” the spirit asked.

“I still have it — it’s really beat up. The fist broke pretty quickly, and I chewed on the rubber point on the shield, and I don’t think it has any more stickers…”

“Do you realize what it would be worth today, if you had not wrecked it?”

“Well, it was the 3rd generation Mattel, without the epaulets, so it’s not as uncommon, but with the box…”

“TELL ME!” the shade demanded.

“Probably around a hundred, hundred-fifty?”

The trailer house we lived in began to swirl and glow, slowly replacing with my grandparent’s basement — Christmas 1980. I’m sitting on the couch, watching little red dots bounce around on a small screen. Little beeps and electronic squeals emitted from the black plastic housing.
“Oh, man, I forgot about that — it’s hockey! Two people could play it, but my brother was a little young still. ”

The ghost gave me a serious look, and asked, “And what happened to that game? Tell me.”

An embarrassed look overtook my face. “Well, a few years later I got a soldering gun, and…”

“AND WHAT?” His preternatural voice boomed.

“Well, I took it all apart — all the LEDs, the switches, I pulled everything off its motherboard, and put them in a box. I think I threw them all away when I moved out.”

“And what of the other handheld video games — all quite collectible — that you owned at the time?”

“Um….well, I took most of those apart, too. Well, Microvision never worked right…the one we got was broken in the packaging, and we couldn’t return it for some reason. I think Mom still has it. ”

“If you still had them,” the ghost said with a chastizing tone, “just THINK of the collection you’d have today!”

The world fell away beneath us again, moving to our house on third street, Christmas 1983. Semi-transparent bue and green action figures were strewn about the floor, as I fiddled with a flimsy blue transparent thing.

“Crystar! Damn, that was a trippy toy!” I exclaimed.

“Just look at all of this — it’s the entire line.” The ghost said.

“I know, I think it was all marked down to nothing at K-Mart before Christmas, to get rid of it — nobody wanted it — and mom bought one of everything. Oh, that castle! It was made out of the same stuff blister-packaging is, so it broke pretty quickly.”

“But you had the entire line?” the ghost demanded.

“I think so — everything that they show on collector’s websites, I had…a couple versions of, I think.”

“And what happened to them?”

“I think I still have some of them in a box, somewhere, but like the castle they got beat up pretty quickly — is that all you’re here for, foul demon, to chastise me for playing with my toys?”

“I’m here to show you the error of your ways!” he shrieked, rattling his chains menacingly. “Those toys would cost you thousands to replace today, when you had them in your grasp once upon a time!”

“Did you ever have kids, cursed spirit?”

“Um….well, I was pretty busy at the antique mall, and…”

“– wait, you’re a dealer? I get it — this is your curse! You get to spend eternity watching kids wreck and ruin these collectibles, so you try and convince parents like me to teach my kids to leave things in the box?”

“Well, would that be so bad?”

I looked at the ghost incredulously.

“At least have them save the packaging — it doubles the value! And keep the Hot Wheels out of the sandbox, nothing good comes of that.”

“Accursed spirit of estate sales and auctions, if you understand one thing, remember this: If it weren’t for the thousands of kids that beat the living snot out of their toys, the few remaining ones wouldn’t be worth so much money. Kids can be taught about collecting, but forcing them to keep their toys in collectible condition is far more cruel than the curse you bear.”

“FAIR ENOUGH,” the spirit bellowed. “I understand that you do not recognize the errors of your ways — and for this, I place a curse on you. ”

“What? Why?! What kind of curse?!?”

“Er…well….OK, I can’t really curse you, but I promise, every time you see a Raydeen go for hundreds on eBay, you’ll feel a little twinge of remorse.”

“Probably so, but I can’t regret the fun I had.”

The world began to swirl and twist, and suddenly I was back in my bed-chambers. I lept from bed and tossed open the sash, to see a small child outside on the walk, marvelling at a mint, unopened McFarlane’s Twisted Christmas action figure.
“You there, child — what day is it?”

“Why, sir, it’s Christmas day!”

“Then open that toy, and play with it — that’s what Christmas is all about!”

“But….but the seconday market value!”

“Child, worry about that when you’re a grownup — today, that evil Santa needs to be free from his blister packaging!”

Found in a 1965 Fawcett Publication, the ad struck me as too-familiar — who hasn’t seen those ads that ask: “Is there a fortune hiding in your attic?” They are so familiar that I almost didn’t scan it. But I’m glad I did.

The ad hawks a book, A Fortune in the Junkpile by Dorothy Jenkins –

However, as shown below, the jacket states A Fortune in the Junk Pile by Dorothy H. Jenkins.

I turned to Google and found little about the book or author other than a few places selling a copy or two — and the fact that The Mountain State Collector’s writers quote from it often.

I don’t know if you’d call two articles quoting Dorothy’s book (one on glass hats and another on “friggers”) often, but when we’re quoting an author or book from 1963 as an expert, it sort of seems like a rather high frequency to me.

Or maybe old Dot Jenkins was a fountain of knowledge. I don’t know; I haven’t read the book.

But I do know there’s no fortune in my attic. I’m a smart collector who knows such temperature extremes are horrible for, well, anything. Plus, in this old house it’s heck to get in & out of the attic. So it remains empty.

But the rest of the house… Well, Dorothy was probably right.

Not that I’m going to quote her or anything. Oops… I think I just may have. Sort of. Well, perhaps just this once. If I do it again, then that would be quoting her often. Too often.

You know, if I ever run into this book I won’t know what to do. On one hand, I’d like to know what all the fuss is about; on the other, if I never read it, I can’t quote from it.

But then I have this ad, you see. And it would be pretty nifty to go full circle with it.

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We fast approach That Time Of Year again, wherein the whole world gets into The Spirit, you step in goodwill everywhere you walk, and Santa threatens to outdo us all. It’s so easy to become dispirited when everyone’s telling you to BE SPIRITED DAMMIT, but then again, I’ve always had a problem with obeying the masses. If everyone jumped off of a building, I’d be the one trying to jump onto it.

One thing I have continued to enjoy this year has been the weeks of Christmas-related TV viewing leading up to the holiday, even if it fails to move me, since I’m more apt to enjoy being semi-attentive towards TV specials than putting on a DVD that I feel obligated to watch. Still, if you’re having any kind of holiday festivities, and you’ve run out of eclectic holiday tunes and gone through your liberating libations, one always has the mighty Plan B of the television’s unique brand of spirit.

Aside from the offbeat classic, The Nightmare Before Christmas (which should be an annual essential anyhow), I like my Christmas to be mixed with a fair amount of science, and sometimes, Satan. Just how I like my women. The following films are public domain - so you can find reasonably clear copies on DVD for about 3 bucks each. I went through a binge on exceptionally bad, cheap movie from DVDPacific a few years ago that neither myself, nor the world, has recovered from. It’s one of my bigger weaknesses.

The first of these gloriously disastrous films is simply titled ‘Santa Claus’, though I like to call it ‘Santa Claus, His Pal Merlin and Maybe Some Kids Vs. Satan’. Produced in Mexico in 1959 (and seeing a very limited US release, for reasons that become obvious when you watch it), the film has been dubbed into convenient English for our enjoyment. When a film begins with Santa overexcitedly playing on an organ as he ogles a ten-minute sequence of disinterested kids from around the world singing their native songs, you know you’re in for a treat. For the record, our native US song is ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’, and we all wear cowboy hats and play guitars. The best strategy to deploy this movie on the unsuspecting is to just put it on and allow them to be bored to tears for ten minutes, so when minute twelve rolls around, and an explosion of devils swarms across the screen, they question their own existence and / or sobriety.

This interpretation of Santa’s lab (on a satellite, in a crystal castle) has some of the creepiest, anthropomorphic technology that anyone could imagine, including eyes on stalks and giant, soft mouths stuck in the walls. The sight of these alone are worth the three bucks you paid to own this film, for all eternity, whether you like it or not. The definition of ‘family film’ has changed a whole heck of a lot, and the ‘1.9 out of 10’ rating on IMDB speaks for itself. My Westlake Entertainment version of the DVD has almost no restoration done to it, so all of the specks and rips and hairs are still all over the print - but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m not really watching this to see Satan’s hi-def horns relocate themselves on his head between shots.

More well-known in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, which has a giant robot named Torg.

You need more than ‘it has a giant robot named Torg’ to be convinced? Have we learned nothing from my time here?

How about lines like ‘It is the middle of Septober!’ Is that the best made-up Martian month you can come up with, guys? I suppose that it’s not much of a surprise when your boy Martian is named Bomar, your girl Martian is named Girmar, your mother Martian is named Momar and your King Martian? You guessed it - Kimar. Santa’s joyful obliviousness as himself and some kids are going to get launched into the icy vacuum of space is almost Kafkaesque in scope, and Kimar the Martian is a serious, dangerous cross between John Wayne and Phil Hartman. As bad sci-fi flicks go, it’s pretty well written and acted with such overenthusiastic abandon that you have no choice but to enjoy it.

And, you can watch it IN FULL right here. You’re welcome.

They’re only a small part of the holiday shelf, which includes a good amount of Christmas-themed TV show episodes, from Futurama to Millennium and X-Files, Aqua Teen Hunger Force and beyond. You haven’t lived until you’ve watched an undead Santa with soccer-ball skin deliver toys.

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