Through the hallowed halls of sketch comedy, there are a few select television series that stand far above the rest. Of course, above them all, shining down on the rest like some kind of huge-footed beacon of hilarity is Monty Python’s Flying Circus, without whom much other sketch comedy would not have been possible. Over here, across the pond, my all time favorites come neatly packaged in a convenient trinity : the oft forgotten The State (which ran for a brief period on MTV, who never know a good thing when they see it), Kids in the Hall, and Upright Citizens Brigade. SNL should have quit while they were ahead.

UCB has a special place in my brain because the UCB Theater in NYC is frequented by none other than Jesse Falcon, one of the head honchos of Marvel Toys. You can sometimes see Jesse on various ‘I Love the 70’s’ type retrospective shows on VH1, dispensing his unique perspectives on things past or popular, but when he’s not doing improv on stage, he’s making action figures. In fact, I was told by Jesse that the Nick Fury action figure from an early series of Marvel Legends is based on Ian Roberts, one of the founding UCB members and co-star of the UCB television show, which lasted for three seasons on Comedy Central. Now, the first two seasons can be yours.

Yes, the bus driver with the enormous butt, Officer Lunatic, Little Donny, the problem with astronauts, and the beautiful ape-woman. All yours. It all might not be for everyone, but their particular brand of absurdist humor, mixed with straight-faced crassness and intellectualism, with a fair amount of public stunts thrown in, will probably have something for everyone.

As always, any TV-on-DVD set can be judged solely on its completeness and its secret stash of bonus features. Seeing as how these are billed as ‘the complete first’ and ‘the complete second’ seasons, we can rest assured that nothing is omitted. During the commentary track on the first episode, we can even hear the UCB lamenting that the original commercial breaks were not included. So, what do these have by way of additional material?

Any great TV show will include the original, usually unaired pilot episode, which is included in the first season. Episode commentaries are offered up on a handful of episodes, many of which were recorded live before an audience for the second season. Additionally, we get an in-character episode commentary from Little Donny, whose peculiar affliction shall remain unnamed here, but is immortalized in a song that you do not want to be caught idly singing. Which I almost was. We get deleted scenes, a selection of live performances, and the feeling that we’re getting a package that’s completely full of everything that they could possibly fit in. With a third season on its way to DVD still, I think that we can expect a whole lot more.

Each season has ten 23-minute episodes, collected in the order in which they originally aired. In the UCB’s particular brand of comedy, we’ll get characters, jokes and references that run through the entire series, beyond the episode in which they first appeared. Watching them in sequence isn’t essential, but there’s always that divine pleasure of picking up on an in-joke that can be added.

The first season was re-released this week (after an initial release in 2003), accompanied by season 2, and at an average price of 20 bucks per season, it’s an excellent investment in hours of pure entertainment. Plus, Amy Poehler. Who can resist that?

======================

Gotta Collect? Then You Gotta Connect - Join our Collectors’ Community!

About a year ago, toy collectors got the tragic news. ToyBiz, the company that redefined action figures with their collection of super-articulated and masterfully-sculpted Marvel Legends action figures, was getting a divorce from Marvel Entertainment. For the remainder of 2006, they’d be dividing up their stuff. ToyBiz would get to keep the recliner, the plasma TV, and the rights to make Curious George geegaws, while Marvel would take their collection of beloved characters with them. Yes, even Paste Pot Pete and Dazzler. The Marvel Legends line, darling of the toy aisle, would be coming to an end, along with the X-Men, Spider-Man and Fantastic Four spinoff lines.

The rights to create 1/12 scale (also referred to as ‘6-inch scale’), articulated Marvel action figures would go to Hasbro, who are known primarily for their much smaller, much less articulated Star Wars figures. Character licenses are tricky things - while one company may get exclusive rights to produce 1/12 scale action figures of a character, another might retain the exclusive rights to 1/12 scale statues of that same character, and the rules that govern these items are very specific. If those statues show a hint of articulation or poseability, a problem arises and exclusivity has been breached. So, us collectors usually end up with a wide variety of varying collectibles, all of differing quality, while everyone’s trying to uniquely cash in on The Hulk craze at once. You know, before Ang Lee made him a total whiny spaz-bag and made him fight Hulk Poodles. Yeah, that happened in the movie, and Batman had rubber nipples on his suit, and no one is ever going to care about Elektra or her sizeable big-screen rack.

The license year is running out, and this week, the toy shelves are bursting with ToyBiz trying to expunge all Marvel product from their warehouses ahead of schedule, not unlike like a spurned lover burning all of the stuff that their cheatin’ significant other left in their apartment. As a result, the final two waves of Marvel Legends have hit the shelves ahead of schedule, causing a total collector blowout. Usually spaced out by at least 3 months between releases, the last hurrah has happened, and it’s happened with a total of 21 must-have collector figures (nine of them being exceptionally rare), spanning waves fourteen and fifteen of the Marvel Legends series. Collectors know these waves as ‘Mojo’ and ‘MODOK’, respectively, because if you purchase the six main figures from each wave, spare parts in each package will allow you to create a seventh character that’s otherwise too large to fit into the packaging.

The Marvel Universe has a lot of disproportionate bad guys, so the last few waves have given us a huge Sentinel, Apocalypse, Galactus, and Onslaught, as well as hero Giant Man. ToyBiz seems to have known that the end of their reign was nigh, and for the final two waves of figures, they chose the most bizarre, inconsequential, ridiculous characters they could possibly think of. An obese slug from the television dimension, and a deranged giant floating head. Neither character has ever really had an impact or a memorable role in the Marvel Universe, except for unintentionally providing a hearty ‘WTF?’ and discrediting comics as a valid literary format. Touché, ToyBiz. Incidentally, Mojo and MODOK are two of my favorite Marvel characters ever for those same reasons. Sentimentally, the original Mojo figure was probably my first Marvel action figure, as well as the only other time that Mojo was ever an action figure, snapping robot scorpion tail and all. It was only recently that I acquired a MODOK from an older Iron Man series of figures (also by ToyBiz), but these Legends figures are eons ahead in their ability to capture just how greasy and disgusting a malevolent slug-man can really be.

The sudden release of these is setting collectors atwitter. They’re being found on the shelves of retail establishments like Toys R Us and Wal-Mart before they’ve reached specialized comic shops, which is unusual as far as collectible toys go. While comic shops order through a large distributor monopoly known as Diamond Comics, retail chains order directly from the distribution centers that ToyBiz uses. Usually, this means that comic shops (who need significantly more financial help that Wal-Mart) will get product first, getting prime selling time and real estate, and the retail juggernauts can fulfill whatever needs are leftover. The role reversal on these final two waves has been both disconcerting and rewarding for someone who does most of their pre-ordering online. Distribution is a sketchy and heavily debated topic at best, among all toy companies.

So to ToyBiz, who will never again produce another Marvel figure for us, I say unto you that you’ve done a wonderful job. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Jesse Falcon, toy developer and sometime-improv actor for UCB, who excitedly walked around the ToyBiz showrooms to point out the clear goggles on Green Goblin’s mask and other details that a real collector would appreciate. Before ToyBiz brought the Marvel Legends to life, toy collectors either settled for excellent sculpting or a high degree of poseability. Sure, it doesn’t sound like a big deal, but cities have fallen, people. Crumbled. To. The. Ground. Or, at least message boards got really heated and swear filters have overloaded. ToyBiz found an exceptional mix between the two opposing factions, and from wave one, I’ve been hunting these down every few months, and more often than not, foiled by opportunistic toy scalpers or collectors who were willing to sacrifice their dignity to get to them first.

But the tale of Barry, the Greasy Hat Man, and the thrill of the chase, will have to wait until next time. Allow me to conclude on a completely unrelated note. Sideshow Toys is having their annual Spooktacular sale, so click on the banner below to be transported to a world of extremely discounted monster collectibles, and if you’re lucky, completely free swag. Click the right place at the right time and you could walk away with your very own Hunchback. Last year, I won a Darth Vader statue valued at 350 dollars, so have fun!

Recently, the world of action figure collecting has been rattled by the news that Marvel Comics has unexpectedly broken off their contract with Toy Biz, the company that has had exclusive rights to produce and distribute articulated action figures of Marvel Characters for well over a decade. Sure, Marvel will sell rights to put their characters on everything from diapers to genetically modified tomatoes, or as I’d like to think of them, Dr. Doomatoes - but Marvel Action figures have been special since ToyBiz has started taking them seriously. If you can sort through the legalese of the public contract, Marvel has paid a hefty premature severance fee and I think there’s also five goats and at least one vestal virgin in question.

ToyBiz and their director of product development, Jesse Falcon, have been incredibly collector-friendly over the past few years. They’ve interacted with fans, and have created figures with an even focus on marketing and obscure fan-favorite characters, so it’s a shame that we won’t be hearing much more from them after 2006 when Hasbro takes the helm. ToyBiz will still produce wresting lines and movie properties like Curious George (having ended their Lord of the Rings contract at the end of 2005), but their core Marvel line, which they’ve become synonymous with, will be moving on. This news comes very soon after the news that Palisades Toys has abruptly closed up shop. People will lament these passings in song one day. The vikings of the future (since time is cyclical) will lift giant steins of mead and toast them in dead languages, and then go back to playing Warcraft in their mothers’ basements.

I visited ToyBiz at Toy Fair this year. Every year, they have a group media event, which is lovingly called the ‘nerd herd’, at which all of the internet news outlets are ushered politely through the showrooms, cameras aflutter, to gather as much visual evidence as they can to disperse to nerds who are not as fortunate. The feeling in the showrooms was noticeably somber. Instead of animated demonstrations of the toy lines, we got a ‘you know what these are’ speech and were set free to snap photos. While this is what everyone there wanted anyhow, it rang like funeral bells. Everything in the showroom, we were assured, is in production and WILL find itself onto shelves, despite the changing of the guard. That information should settle about 50% of all of the collector rumblings out there.

I’ve uploaded all of the photos taken in the ToyBiz showroom to this gallery - click through and enjoy!

The first action figure display that we came to held the Fantastic Four line of figures, both waves one and two. While wave one is on shelves now, wave two (which I spoke about in the earlier Super Skrull article) will be hitting in April of this year, with no figures planned after that. Included in wave two are Human Torch (with transforming action), Invisible Woman (with a clear variant figure), Thing (with unarticulated arms, to perform some action feature), and villains Dragon Man and Kang.

Continuing with the Fantastic Four theme, an animated series is due to come out this year and will be accompanied by a line of action figures. There are noticeably smaller than the 6” figures that Marvel usually makes, and the first wave will include Dr. Doom, a non-flamey Human Torch, Thing and a Skrull. Wave two will include Hulk, Mole Man, a flamed-on Human Torch, a very Evangelion-looking Doombot, Mr. Fantastic & Invisible Woman. Somewhere in there, an enormous, rocky Mole Man creature will also come out.

Next came Marvel Figure Factory, which are tiny dioramas that one assembles from 20 to 30 tiny parts, all packed in a tiny crate. Any fans of Japanese gashapon know exactly what these are about, as the gashapon craze is nothing new. ToyBiz put out the first wave of these many months ago, and they consisted of a handful of known characters, backed up by an even larger array of ‘mystery figures’. These figures were blind-packaged, meaning that you had no idea who you were buying - only that they box had a big ol’ question mark on it. Inside could be a variation on a known character, or it could be a completely new character that wasn’t even listed on the box. They’ve followed up that concept with another wave of these figures. These have just hit retail a few weeks ago, but are still difficult to find. I’ll tell you this, though - each mystery box is stamped with a code number. If you figure out this code (and there are online sources that have broken it), you’ll know what’s in every box. Wave two of these includes Ghost Rider, Namor, Dark Phoenix, Dr. Doom, Nightcrawler and a host of other exciting surprise figures. They retail for about 6 dollars per figure.

A new line that ToyBiz will be distributing this year is Marvel Icons, which are 12” figures made of rotocast plastic. Previous to rotocasting production, 12” (or 1/6 scale) figures were prohibitively expensive and difficult to make. As new technology came along, ToyBiz was able to make these large-scale figures and retail them for only ten bucks each, which is an incredible bargain, considering that most 6” action figures are in the price range. They maintain all of the detail and most of the articulation of the smaller figures, and they’re BIG. Why settle for a 6” Captain America when you can have one that you can bludgeon someone with? You may have seen these types of figure before, as ToyBiz has made them for the Spider-Man and X-Men movies, as well as for a few other choice characters, and every one of those figures was excellent. Now, they bring this scale to characters like Iron Man, a new Wolverine and Captain America, all of whom comprise the first wave, which will hit in late 2006.

Now we hit the big deal of Toy Fair for many collectors - Marvel Legends. Maybe you heard about the Marvel Legends Kansas debacle last week, but that’s an article unto itself. In short, prototypes for a series not due out until May were accidentally left on a Wal-Mart shelf after a promotional photosession and were quickly bought by a dedicated and unwitting collector, who quickly became the talk of the town. Man, did that get the geek juices flowin’.

Marvel Legends have become popular due to a combination of highly detailed sculpting, super articulation and character appreciation. They’re items of high value due to the fact that they show up very inconsistently in stores due to a strange distribution scheme, and are also bought up (when not hoarded by eager stockboys and resold on eBay) very quickly.

2006 will see a good handful of Marvel Legends waves, all of these figures will include various parts of a larger figure. Collect all of the figures in the wave and you can assemble a beautiful extra-huge figure out of these extra parts. In the past, we’ve seen the Sentinel, Galactus and Apocalypse waves, and since all of these guys are very large characters, often dwarfing human-sized heroes, it makes sense to create them in a larger size. Future Marvel Legends big-figures (or BAFs) will include Giant Man (exclusive ONLY to Wal-Mart), Mojo, Onslaught and MODOK.

Here’s where we walk the line between popular and obscure, as Mojo and MODOK are often regarded as thoroughly ridiculous and pointless characters. I mean, Mojo is a fat slug with a robot-spider body who rules over a TV dimension, and MODOK is a giant head whose acronym stands for ‘Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing’. Oh, once he was once ‘Designed Only for Calculating’, but after his puppy died, he was never the same. You can see why these would be regarded as ridiculous, and yet, here they are. Maybe it’s the big ol’ ‘up yours!’ that ToyBiz is giving to their corporate masters, and maybe they’re just making figures that THEY would love to see, but I love ‘em for it.

Of course, these waves of figures include your standard array of heroes and villains, including three figures of Iron Man (who is a personal favorite) in various armors, Spider Woman, Beta Ray Bill (who is a space horse with the powers of Thor), Ant Man, Havok and Wasp, among a ton of others, too numerous to count. After these waves are over, there’s a slim chance that anyone will be left out. Add to this a series of Marvel legends two packs, both of archenemies and figures to re-create epic battles, as well as box sets of various super teams and events in Marvel Comics history, and it’s really too fun for words. Marvel Legends WILL continue once Hasbro takes over, but they may not be anything like this at all.

In short, it’s a banner year for Marvel figures, and it may be the last, so celebrate it.