The ToyBiz Lord of the Rings line came with many large figures. I have most of mine on perpetual display on the top of my ‘Tolkien Shrine’. This makes them wonderful collectors of dust and cobwebs and necessitates a cyclic but irregular cleaning schedule throughout the year. Shown here are four Trolls (of three variants), three Treebeards (two of them 17 inches tall and talking, and one six inches and not), two Shelobs (one in box and one not), a Warg, and four Toy Vault Balrog variants (Fire, Earth, Forest, and Shadow). Also shown (but I wouldn’t call them action figures) are two non-movable figures of Gandalf and Saruman, a Nazgul bank that shrieks whenever you put a coin in, a doll of Gandalf and a doll of Bilbo, and a simply enormous 20-inch tall Gandalf from NECA. 
The tale of my Balrog is a long and storied epic. It was produced by NECA in 2004 and is 24 inches tall with a 42-inch wingspan. Tom Villareal of Z’s Toys ordered it for me, and when it arrived with a defective wing, got them to send me a replacement part. For years it was on proud display on top of my enormously boxy TV set, until such a time as Susan’s cat Socks (who had to come in to live with me) knocked it down – twice. The first time it just loosened its joints; the second time it knocked its head and tail off. Socks is dead now – an unrelated fact – but the Balrog still sits, a broken but magnificent reminder of what once was.
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