With the release of so many box-office smashes these days, the likes of Harry Potter and Monsters Inc, it would make sense to see lots of solid toys with good poseability and a good fun factor, right? Unfortunately, this is not the case. What we're seeing is a ton of crap toys that have extremely limited playability.
I remember the good ol' days when I was a kid, when toys looked just enough like the characters in movies and on TV to ensure that you remembered what you were playing (and to remind you to whom your hard-earned allowance was going), but were general enough to ensure that you could use said toys in any number of situations.
Why, back in the day of the old Kenner Star Wars toys, even the playsets were generic enough so that you could have a team of crack Jawa assassins storming the death star!
So where's my gripe? Let's look at two very specific sets of toys: Harry Potter and Monsters Inc.
First, let's go with the lesser of two evils: Monsters Inc.
Alright, gimmicks are the name of the game with these ones. Or maybe just one gimmick: VOICES. I shudder just at the sound of it. Voices nearly totally ruin the playability of any toy. You try and do your best imitation of Sulley or Mike (at least I think his name's Mike...) and you're interrupted with some tinny, canned, trite line from the movie.
The Sulley toy suffers the worst from the evils of voice. Not only is he a pretty shoddy toy, but when you activate his voice, his arms fly up in the air. Needless to say, you can't move his arms independantly. Even worse, Sulley has this great, ugly speaker right on the middle of his ample stomach. Yech. They could have at the very least put the speakers underneath the toy or something. Or better yet, made Sulley fuzzy and thus hidden the speaker that way. Or better still, done both!
The rest of the toys have cheesy gimmicks that don't really have any place in any child's imagination. Toys are meant to be played with according to a child's imagination - Children shouldn't have to change their games according to the crappy gimmicks put into their toys.
I can only hope that they release some classic action figures.
Next, Harry Potter.
Holy CRAP... these aren't even toys!
Remember that Dr. What's-his-name's creepy potion lab? Where you mix ingredients and make pretty unappetizing fizzing drinks and crap? That Harry Potter variant is the same thing with a new casing! I'll bet that they had lots of ingredients left over from the ol' creepy potion lab in some warehouse and decided to recycle them to free up some space. Yech. I personally wouldn't trust anything made from crap that came out of a toy box. Easy bake ovens included.
That Quilla-what-the-fuck game? With the brooms and that ball and shit? Nothing but a glorified slot-car set. Is the marketing department at whatever company makes these misbegotten pieces of crap so lacking in ideas that they basically need to say "me too" to whatever [BAD] toy ideas have come before and then plaster Harry Potter's name and likeness all over them?
That Magic Battle is... I'm having trouble understanding it. It seems to me that they took that "hovering clock" idea, and then attached it to Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots, and then sucked every fun element out of it. No movement, no punching, no triggers... and what's with that voice? Scary, man. I hope that's not Harry's voice. I never pictured the little bugger as a bored-voiced middle aged englishman...
Alright, that floaty ball thing with the obstacles is actually kinda cool. One out of five. However, it doesn't have THAT many obstacles (though being able to move them is some small saving grace), and there's that creepy bored englishman voice again. But floaty things are cool. However I could probably build one myself for cheaper. (and they said physics 30 was an academic course... mua ha ha ha)
Finally, the big electronic playset. This reminds me of Polly Pocket back before the Polly Pocket firm realized that their toys suck. I mean, you pay eighty bucks for a big toyset that is supposed to be vaguely not unlike a locale that might have been in the movie, adn then what? You go through a depressingly linear series of electronic gimmicks that are supposed to be something like the plot of the movie. How are you supposed to play with this thing? Really. Tell me. I've got nothing. I'll spare you the details as to what each of the "11 rooms straight out of Hogbottom's school" does, but be assured that each is more asstacular than the last.
So five toys, no fun. Sure, they might be good for a larff for about five minutes, but then what? How are you supposed to actually PLAY with them? You can't pose the figures (each is pretty much a solid plastic figurine), and the "games" (such as they are) have all been done before, and never that spectacularly.
Are kids these days so stupid and/or brainwashed by corporate propaganda that they'll buy obviously inferior toys JUST because it has the name of a movie they saw? That's a very sad reflection on society as a whole these days.
So that's why I miss the good ol' days of solid, cool Action figures, with plenty of articulation and a ridiculous amount of easily-loseable accessories.
Mark Edwards is off to catch hogbottom's magical train to Chicago.
