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Toy Annihilation

By: SegaFanatic

When you were a kid, you LOVED playing with action figures, this is a fact regardless of age. Whether it be Cabbage Patch Kid dolls, TMNT figures, McDonald's Happy Meal toys, doesn't matter. What does matter is that you played with them; me included. As a kid, playing with toys was my life. They were my way of living out every single one of my childhood fantasies, you think it, I played it.

"Finally, Donatello can fight Sonic the Hedgehog in a battle to the death!"

Or even...

"At long last, Richie from Happy Days and Spider-Man can work together to solve a murder mystery!"

However, if you've EVER played with toys, you know that sometimes, things get a little, how you say, "rough". I mean, Batman can only take so many tosses into the walls. And that's when the tough part happens; your beloved figures break. Limbs snap in half, joints wear out, the point is that SOMETHING breaks, and usually, it RUINS the figure. So, let's discuss this childhood tragedy by paying respect to the lost in a article I'm gonna call:

Toy Annihilation

Oh, G.I. Joe, the real American hero. More like "G.I. Joe, the REALLY poorly made figures". Yeah, I just said that. Look, I thought toy companies had learned from the Megos of the 70's; rubber bands are a TERRIBLE idea to put in action figures. Seriously, have you ever had a board game like Weapons and Warriors where the rubber bands just snapped? Yeah, you did. Now they're inside action figures! Action figures meant for ferocious play, ha, isn't that great. For real though, they always broke, I can't tell you how many of these little guys snapped into tons of pieces because a stupid rubber band ripped in half. See, if the rubber band broke,

The waist broke off,
The crotch broke off,
The legs COULD break off,

and the only way to fix it is to break open the figure EVEN MORE and put in a new rubber band. I don't remember all of the loved ones lost to this cursed rubber-band-G.I. Joe-itis-disease, but here's the hall of fame to the Best of the Best.

"A moment of silence please for the ones who've left us".

Nobody liked Bend 'Ems. You just either bought them because there were no other Homer Simpson figures or your relatives skimped out on Christmas. But the point here was that everyone had them. And they always broke. That isn't too bad, right? No, it is bad. You know how these figures are able to bend, right? GIANT METAL WIRES. WIRES THAT ARE SHARP. So, in a hypothetical scenario, you could be playing with them, and if you bent Fred Flintstone's arm too far back;

YOU'RE GONNA GET STABBED IN THE HAND.

Don't skirt around this, you know darn well that you have gotten stabbed by one of these, and it REALLY sucked if (hypothetically) it got stuck in your hand. It wasn't even as if you could bend them far until they snapped, NO. If you bent it like, an inch, the wires would snap, typically in the arm. Nevertheless, we should remember the lost, so please give a moment of silence for the ones we've lost during our childhood.

"Please bow your heads in remembrance".

Power Rangers; who doesn't love the Power Rangers? I'll tell you who; smart people. Yeah, Power Rangers was, and always will be, completely stupid. However, it's an enjoyable kind of stupid, one where you can just turn your brain off and fill your mind with memories of your youth. It's also an incredibly MARKETABLE kind of stupid, which led to a ton of Power Rangers action figures...most of which sucked. Look, let's be honest, a lot of those Power Rangers figures were pretty dumb. And heck, even the (potentially) good figures were awful for one reason; THEY. ALWAYS. BROKE.

Look, maybe I was just rough with my toys or something, but never have I had this many problems with my action figures falling apart. I mean seriously, these "highly articulated" figures were more fragile than the glass coffee table in the living room!

Green Ranger always got the worst end of this. I probably owned six Green Ranger figures, all of which fell apart within minutes of playtime. I guess my parents were sick of buying me Power Rangers toys, so they went out of their way to get probably the worst toy in history. You could like, move his head, arms, and waist, and that was it. Honestly, I don't even think it was licensed. But hey, I still own it, so I guess they did good on their mission to buy a "durable" figure. However, that doesn't necessarily mean it was a GOOD figure.

"I feel bad that my parents spent money on this, even if it was only 40 cents."

But yeah, if you couldn't tell, the Power Rangers action figures were really fragile, and I will hate them for the rest of my life. So now, let's have yet another moment of silence and go to our final figure brutality.

"The one on the right is really derp-y, just noticed that during editing".

Now, we all love our name-brand action figures, but there's quite a few misc. ones that I'll be dividing into a few sub-categories. We're gettin' a bit obscure for this one, so let's dive right in.

SONIC ADVENTURE FIGURES (Resaurus, 1999):

These guys, OH THESE GUYS. These were some of the first Sonic action figures on the market, and they were made by Resaurus from 1999-2000. And you know what? They were awesome...for a few minutes. Then they broke. Like the Power Rangers figures, these suckers were NOT built for play. In fact, they were more display figures than anything. But I played with them. Oh, I played with these things alright. I went through my fair share of Resaurus figures, probably four of just Sonic ALONE. Yeah, I was a rough child (looking back, it's weird that I played with these things when I was 12, was that too old?) Nowadays though, I wish I was just a bit more careful because, man, these things are always so EXPENSIVE!

TRANSFORMERS: OPTIMUS PRIME

Trust me, I know what you're thinking, and I don't blame you for thinking this;

"TRANSFORMERS ISN'T MISC, THIS SECTION IS A LIE AAAAH!"

However, it's "misc" for one reason; the only Transformer I ever owned was Optimus Prime. Why, you may ask? I dunno, I just didn't care for the others. Optimus Prime had a great color scheme and, well, he's the leader! Leaders are always the coolest! However, they also aren't durable. Whenever I bought Optimus Prime, he always broke. And no, it wasn't from rough play; it was from trying to transform the dang toys! I could usually get my brother to do it, but what if he wasn't home and Optimus needed to roll out? I had to do it myself, and, well, that always ended in disaster.

"OOPS!"

Yeah, the problem with these guys wasn't durability, but it was a subsidiary branch of durability; toys and their inability to do what they say that they're able to. So, if that didn't make any sense, the idea is that toys often fall apart because they just don't work how you expect them to. You know the feeling, right? You wanna stretch Spider-Man's arm back a bit more, but instead you just rip it right off? Yeah, that's what I'm talkin' about, and I hope you get where I'm coming from.

MARVEL LEGENDS (Toy Wiz, 2002)

Let's end this one with a bit of teenager memories. When I was thirteen, I was reading some Spider-Man comics, and I saw an ad for a new line of action figures from ToyWiz; the Marvel Legends line! The hype thrusters were in full speed. I GOTTA BUY THESE, I probably thought to myself. I did some research and found out where they were being sold. I ran to the store and snagged myself some nice Iron Man, Captain America, and Hulk action figures (I didn't buy Toad, I SOMEHOW had no idea who he was). But whatever, throw them in the bag, have my Mom pay for the Hulk figure, and get going. I throw the bag into the back of the car, and we ride home. When I get home, I pull 'em out, and they look grea-wait, what the heck? Iron Man, your arm broke off...IN THE PACKAGE! Darn it! Welp, later that week, I got back, got a refund, and bought a new one. I took him out of the package when I got home, and set him up on my shelf with the other two.

Then he fell.

And then he broke into like, 50 different pieces. And well, since I already took him out of the box, it was too late and beyond salvaging. So, I took his remains out back and did the deed.

"It was a glorious funeral indeed, you should've been there".

THE END
by SegaFanatic

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DirtyD79 Posted on Jun 23, 2015 at 09:53 AM

I hear ya on the one about the GI Joes. In addition to the rubber band inside breaking sometimes the thumbs would break off too. While the figures that had broken rubber bands we went the ghetto fab route and just taped them back together. The ones with the broken thumbs you could pretty much just put them in a vehicle since they couldn't hold guns or anything. A GIJoe who can't hold guns just isn't really a GI Joe anymore. It's like a Transformer that can't transform or a Ninja Turtle that couldn't hold swords. That was another one sometimes the hands would break off and well they'd be useless. Then again me and my bro were pretty rough on our toys.

Hoju Koolander Posted on Mar 02, 2015 at 11:54 PM

I think I was just way to precious about my action figures to even get close to breaking them. I do remember a few chewed MOTU figure fingers, but nothing where the whole toy came apart.

The closest I got to seeing G.I. Joes break was my friend's brother who would mix and match limbs to create new mutant characters. So I guess the fact that the figures were easily dismantled was a plus to him.

Fulton4V Posted on Feb 23, 2015 at 07:04 PM

I always had my GIJOES break when I played with them. My mom would accuse me of being to rough on them but it was just they were cheaply made with those plastic bands on them.

pikachulover Posted on Feb 22, 2015 at 12:57 AM

The strange thing is that I never had a problem with my Power Ranger figures breaking.

Vaporman87 Posted on Feb 21, 2015 at 09:11 AM

First of all, I have bad news. Sonic figures are still made to be broken within minutes. Jazzwares didn't learn any lessons from Resaurus when it comes to toy manufacturing. My kids have broken so many Sonic figures I could have 3 whole collections of them if they were all in tact.

And I agree that rubber band hips were just a terrible and lazy idea. Unfortunately G.I. Joe wasn't the only popular figure out there sporting rubber hips. He-Man did as well. Lazy articulation is what I call that (though in Mattel and Hasbro's defense, the kind of articulation you see today just wasn't around then, and likely would have been so cost prohibitive that you would have never had the opportunity to own the figures period).

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