A friend and creative partner of mine recommended a podcast for me to listen to as a departure point for a project that may or may not get off the ground. After much urging I’ve finally taken the time to listen to it and I’ve found it useful for ways I DON’T want to be.
Years of personal podcasting has made me able to completely divorce myself from the process. I don’t listen back to episodes anymore once they’re published. The editing process prior to then is just skipping haphazardly though the recording to ensure the audio quality is acceptable. I wouldn’t say I’ve ever gone out of my way to court listeners, and the downloads support this, but should I be? Should I take my own oft cited advice and let the work speak for itself? Should I take the advice of my Modern American Literature professor’s note on my B minus term paper, “You can do better than this.”?
Of course, this is supposed to be a toy column but I’ve been off all week and it’s also my first column of 2025 so I’ve got some stuff to work out. This is also a reminder that if you haven’t done so yet you can check out the 2024 wrap-up podcast I did with fellow Figure Friday writer Josh Wallen.
Since the holidays I’ve been on a real toy buying bender. Desperately chasing the dopamine that comes with the tracking down of a toy that has eluded you for weeks or months. I also could not have picked a better time to do it since the toy aisles have been depressingly bare after Christmas. Yet still, I persevere.
Here’s a few notable examples of what I picked up!
McFarlane DC Multiverse
If you listened to our year end 2024 wrap-up you’ll know that McFarlane’s DC Multiverse toys won my very official “most improved” toy line for 2024. No one was more surprised than I was.
First up was The Flash from the Justice League Task Force line and I’ll start with my beefs with this figure. Listen, I get what they’re trying to do but all of McFarlane’s attempts to add shading to figures that mimics animation cels or, in this case, video game pixelation do not work. The shading on every other figure in this line is absolutely wild but mercifully, The Flash is somewhat untouched.
The sculpt on this figure very closely resembles the art of Greg LaRocque who was the primary artist on The Flash when I started reading in the late ’80s/early ’90s when I stared reading the book. So I had to have it, wacky paint job be damned. From there I texted Josh to inquire how I to remove the shading because I couldn’t and wouldn’t count on the figure getting a “regular” release down the road. I’ll report back with my findings.
The next figure I didn’t plan on buying but I found one at a Books-A-Million store (possible one of the only in Michigan) and couldn’t pass it up after laying eyes on it, the Christoper Reeve 1978 Superman figure.
Superman does not loom large for me in the pantheon of superheroes from both DC and Marvel. I always intend to start reading the current comics on a regular basis but inevitably fall off after a few months. Of course I’m looking forward to James Gunn’s forthcoming Superman and I think we’re all still collectively holding our breath and hoping it’ll be good after a promising first trailer.
Superman 1978 has been a tough act to follow for the last 46 years and it’s been almost steadily downhill since that movie released. I’ve been waiting for another exceptional Superman movie pretty much all my life, that’s how right they got it with the first movie.
The Christopher Reeve headtcuplt on this figure is probably one of the best the Multiverse line has produced to date and it comes with a trading card, stand, flight stand, second head sculpt, and a plethora of hands.
RoboForce – Maxx 89
I never expected that RoboForce would make a comeback of any sort since it’s a toy line that even I consider to be obscure which is really saying something. Similarly, I never expected to be writing about the new RoboForce figures.
I absolutely love what The Nacelle Company is doing by giving similarly obscure toy brands a second life. I mean, Sectaurs, come on! Nacelle is really fighting the good fight by blowing the dust off these old brand and I was excited when I saw them start popping up in Walmart stores. It’s always nice to see “boutique” (for lack of a better term) toy companies cross over, it seems like a win for the industry.
With all that said, I wasn’t about to plunk down $35 for Maxx 89 figure no matter how cool and giant it was. I was still glad they existed and I’m sure there were a lot of other RoboForce enthusiasts that were similarly pleased but I hadn’t popped into their subreddit to verify that.
But as the old saying goes, “everyone has their price.”
I was at Walmart over the weekend hoping to find some stuff on clearance (the algorithm the company uses for putting items on clearance from store to store varies wildly and is a complete mystery to me…but that’s another column) and a found a whole-ass display of RoboForce and Sectaurs marked down to $7 and $5 respectively. I ended up waling away with one Maxx 89 for myself and two for Josh. Even at $5 I found it hard to justify the purchase of a Sectaur without the bug-glove vehicle thing that was the original line’s gimmick.
Is it a cool, giant robot figure? Yes. Am I glad I picked it up for practically nothing? Also yes.
Hopefully your 2025 is off to a good start toy collecting or otherwise. See you in the toy aisles!
