Todd McFarlane’s Movie
Maniacs ‘The Wicked Witch of the West’ (Authenticated Limited Edition of 10,000).
I used to be THE Action Figure guy; you can search this blog to prove this. My
collecting has slowed down dramatically; partly I think this is because I am
getting old and tired, but largely it may be because no-one is making good
action figures at affordable prices. Anything worth buying is not made to be
played with, really; they are made to displayed on one’s shelf as a trophy, a
proof of your pop cultural bona fides. The Wicked Witch cost as much as
three ordinary action figures on department store shelves; if there was
anything worth getting on those shelves, I might have got them instead, but
there doesn’t seem to be good stuff out there anymore.
But I definitely had to get
this figure, because it has a superior sculpt, an absolutely amazing likeness
of Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch from the 1939 classic The Wizard of
Oz, that beloved classic that has been deep in my heart since almost before
I could think. Todd Mcfarlane’s Movie Maniacs usually features some sort of
misshapen monster, but the Witch is in a class by herself: it is her
over-the-top threat of violence, her ‘wickedness’ that makes her a monstrosity,
not her green skin or pointed nails. This was something I knew I would have to
have eventually, and now I do.
This is a figure that I do
not think I will ever take out of the box; it does not seem to have any
‘playability’ that would make it worth doing so. Because of this I regret one
flaw in the package as delivered. The side of the plastic box seems to have been
pinched, hard enough to dent it permanently. I can only imagine it done by some
kind of mechanical claw during packaging, plucked off one of Amazon’s shelves
by a robot arm. There seems to be no remedy for it. I fear this care for the
state of packaging is a slip in my ideals about action figures, a concern for
peripheral, even inconsequential, factors related to a toy. But that’s where I
am.
And here's a witchy wideo for this Wednesday:
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