I'm Playing With

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I like toys. I'm secure in my maturity (or lack thereof). And toys were meant to played with. So, yes, I open rare and exclusive items, and mess with them, "Toy Story" style. Hard-core toy collectors should probably not read this blog.

Monday, November 3, 2008

Captain America, McCain, and Obama

This may not be the smartest way to make a return to this blog, but dammit, it's topical.

I'm just tired of this round's political ugliness and transparent side-stepping of issues, and felt it might be time for a purist arbiter to weigh in.

I've had this idea for a gag in mind since the Republican and Democratic candidates for the presidency were announced, but didn't think I'd be able to get toys of the candidates. When I saw Jailbreak Toys was going to produce figures for Senators John McCain and Barack Obama, I jumped at the chance for what may be the world's first toy-propped presidential race editorial.

The gag's been long-delayed, thanks (I think) to Jailbreak's massive swing to the Obama camp, so much so that their company site is now all about him. That made it easy to order the Obama figure, but the McCain figure -- while their own product -- was nowhere to be found. I Finally got it from the excellent EntertainmentEarth.com folks, and while I'm glad to finally get the gag out the door, it's only got a few days worth of legs.

More irritating is the quality of the McCain and Obama figures. Besides being gunked with sticky crap out of the box, they've each got one wicked loose arm, which made posing them a beast. Worse, they don't bend at the waste -- so no sitting option, they gotta stand or lie down, which complicated the gag quite a bit (I use poseability in hips and knees quite a bit to cheat scale between actors).

So, they're good for the gag, but probably won't have much life in my collection.

The Captain America is the standard version for which I previously used a variant. The sculpt was made by the excellent (and affable) Dave Cortez. The Red Skull is also from this same "Marvel Face-Off" double set, and was sculpted very nicely by Phil Ramirez.

The flag is from the Marvel Select World War II Ultimate Captain America (a cool-looking, but minimally poseable sculpt).

The fonts (Badaboom and Letter-O-Matic) are from Blambot Comic Fonts and Lettering.

Product picts for the political figs are below. The Red Skull is going to be in an upcoming gag, so I'll save personal product picts until then. If you can't wait, check out picts at MarvelLegends.net.

(As an ironic aside, a boatload of the Obama figures were sold by Jailbreak Toys in a fundraiser for him; but all of the figures are manufactured in China.)