The Elves of Middle-earth, including the many Legolii (which I presume is the plural of Legolas). Most of them are ToyBiz; the only exceptions are a Galadriel from Toy Vault and a Tauriel from Bridge Direct. Middle-earth Elves are perilously hard to portray at the best of times. They have an otherworldly dimension that can be suggested in prose, but which is hard to capture with human actors, much less by the plastic arts. Even the Jackson films had to settle for portraying them for the most part as haughty vegetarian super-models, thus re-enforcing the growing pop-cultural stereotype of the 'Hot Elf’. But as Sam says in The Fellowship of the Ring (the book, not the movie), “[Elves] seem a bit above my likes and dislikes … They are quite different from what I expected – so young and so old, so gay and so sad, as it were.” How can you expect an action figure to portray that? But on the other hand, as Tolkien writes elsewhere, “Better a little doll, maybe, than no memory of Faery at all. For some the only glimpse. For some the awaking.” We can pass beyond the plastic icon of our playing into quite a different realm of imagination. And that’s what I’ve got to say about … er, that.
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