It’s Figure Friday, and while I’ve got some recent pickups from the last couple of weeks, it’s all stuff I’ve previously written about when way back when I preordered them. I don’t have much more to say beyond, “It’s a Spider-Man” or “It’s a Superman”. I also wonder why one gets a hyphen and the other does not. Stretch that into 500-plus words and you’ve just gained a valuable insight into my process for writing one of these columns, such as it were.
This Figure Friday will be going off the beaten path and providing some insight into the dumb stuff that makes me laugh, and make no mistake, it IS dumb. So, you’ve been warned.
Kung Pow Enter the Fist That’s a Lotta Nuts Custom Bootleg Accessory by FauxShowToys
Kung Pow: Enter The Fist is one of my favourite movies of all time. Some of you may not have seen it, and others still may have seen it, and this is likely the smoking gun you needed to prove that I am, in fact, an idiot and have been all along.
For the uninitiated, the 2002 movie is Steve Oedekerk’s magnum opus and a loving send-up of poorly dubbed, grindhouse kung fu movies of the 1970s. Oedekerk stars as The Chosen One, a literal self-insert that goes up against the Evil Betty and the… Evil Council. A lot of evil stuff is going on in this movie. In addition to starring, writing, and directing the film, he also provides most of the dubbed voices and the hilarious non-sequiturs. Now that I’ve successfully sucked all the humour out of the premise we can get to the toys.
If you hadn’t already gathered, Kung Pow is a cult classic. The movie came out in January 2002, and I later saw it on a rented VHS at a friend’s urging. We were both in college, and they worked at a video store, serving as my conduit to all sorts of movies that I may have missed at the time. This movie really was the right movie at the right time for me; in a post 9/11 United States and staring down the barrel of college graduation with no real clue as to what I was doing beyond my retail management job I needed a movie with supremely dumb humor to distract me from my first world problems.
Shockingly, there was no tie-in merchandise beyond the DVD and VHS releases. We’re coming up on the 25th anniversary of the film, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a Criterion release or some other special edition, but until then, that’s where Faux Show Toys comes in.
Last week, while I was flying high on allergy medication and listlessly spinning in my desk chair, I thought, “Boy, I’m overdue to watch Kung Pow…I wonder if there’s any kind of associated merch out there for me, a Kung Pow fan of discerning taste.” A quick Etsy search later, and I was the proud owner of this “custom bootleg accessory.” I’ve included the clip this accessory references below for some added context…not that it’ll help.
Comedy gold.
If it wasn’t already apparent, I love that this piece of art exists. I love that someone other than myself and probably one other person in my immediate circle found this funny enough to craft such a thing. It may even be funnier to me that I bought it, with American dollars, and it now sits proudly on a shelf in my living room. I’m even more tickled when one day I’ll have to explain it to guests, and their reaction will likely be, “Huh. Okay.” After that, I’ll suggest we watch the movie, and they’ll politely but firmly decline.
I’m glad indie toy makers exist, especially if it means incredibly niche creations like this. Maybe in the grand calculus of the universe, this will be the thing that finally tips the scales in the right direction and gets us the Kung Pow sequel that the world needs right now.
