WHY WERE STAR WARS TOYS SO SH!TTY?

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That's a good article.

Micronauts were one of my favorite toy/action figure lines. All that interchangeable stuff was great fun, like ulta-futuristic LEGO sets.

I still have one of these on display in my toy room-

 

This was a lot better than I thought it would be. And I agree with the point you made.

I never grew up with the original Star Wars figures and so I never particularly cared for them, but I did sort of spend my later childhood with the "second coming" by way of the "Power of the Force" line or whatever it was.

Don't get me wrong, I loved the toys, but prior to that I spent my childhood playing with the 3-3/4" GI Joes which were just fun as hell and you could mix and match the pieces to create your own if you didn't mess it up too bad. Even the 90s Star Wars 3-3/4" line had the lack of articulation which always bugged me a little bit, but I could look past it due to it being Star Wars.

For that matter, the fact they took out all the articulation from the 6" GI Joe "Extreme" line bugged me to no end, and marked my exit from the GI Joe market... I was older by that time anyways, and the 12" ones were always an absolute joke anyways.

The newer Star Wars 3-3/4" certainly have the articulation, but the quality has always been a little bit of a concern to me. They feel almost as if they're going to fall apart... like the plastic is too soft or the connections to unsecure, which is something I never felt with the 3-3/4" GI Joes, who pretty much took firecrackers to destroy.

 

I enjoyed both articles and they were pretty damned funny too

 

Well I'll have to quoke the great Ben Kenobi and say that it all depends on our point of view. First off let me tell you I read your reviews and loved them! The Vader trash bag comment was so frickin funny! Now on to my story. I was born in 1974 and I grew up with figures that were all the same as Star Wars. Apart from adventure people which you already mentioned we also had cool toy lines such as Battle Star Galactica:

Flash Gordon:

and Clash of the Titans just to name a few:

All of these figures had the tipical five points of articulation so kids would not really see toys like SW to be out of the ordinary. Me and my childhood friends never knew Microman and I never saw the toys until I was older and saw the Lords of Light figures:

Now here's were the ''Point of View'' comment kicks in. To me, even to this day, Microman sucks! Why on Earth would I prefer to play with a dude that doesn't even have a face painted on him over a guy like Hammer Head or Greedo? No matter how much articulation or accesories the Microman line could have, even when I learnd more about the collection I still found it sucky and the figures fragile and cheap looking. To a boy who grew up with Microman things may seem a little different but when you grow up with collections as those above and suddenly see a collection of faceless dudes you can hardly think they are awesome no matter how much posablity they had! Another factor was how fragile Microman figures were/are. A kid could play roughly with SW figures and nothing happened but the same couldn't be said about Microman. If I noticed they were fragile looking as a kid, imagine parents who knew their kids! When I first saw Lords of Light I liked the monsters and the whole emralight and glow in the dark gimic and I got two of them since these at least had eyes painted on them. I had never seen a glow stick before so you can see how I was atracted to these figures even though they looked awful compared to guys like Squid Head or Ree Yees. I was a kid who took care of his toys and never threw them around or tossed them against things and yet for all I cared for them their pieces STILL broke off! Imagine these figures in the hands of kids that would toss them to the air or throw rocks at them! When you grew up in a time like I did, you never saw things like character likeness and even crappy accesories like Admiral Akbar's anal probe stick or Klattu, Barada and Nikto's what the heck is this staffs didn't bother you at all. I never knew not even one single kid who would have a Hammer Head figure and would ask why his cloths were blue! To me Star Wars figures were awesome and this being said taking into consideration that I didn't see the movies before I got the figures. I loved those figures about awesome alien dudes and armored guys even before I saw a single SW movie and having grown up in a world of Flash Gordon, Battle Star Galactica, Adventure People and Clash of the Titans, a kid wouldn't really see those toys and think they were shitty cause there was a different vision at that time and more imagination. Take Iron Hide and Ratchet from the Transformers line for example. These headless abominatons are the epitome of shitty toys and I'm sure that if Transformers were alive like Toy Story, I can garantee these two dudes would be considered grade A nightmare fuel by the other robots and yet how many kids loved these mostrosities! So I guess it all comes down to a childs point of view on whay shitty really means to them.

 

Good Articles.

Those Micronauts are older than me and looked amazing, didn't know them at all.

OK, if i compare my SW 77 Kenner action figures to my GI Joe Hasbro's they look really silly and not moving at all BUT i've allways said to my friends that Star Wars greatest stories happened in my bedroom with my Kenner's.

They might be shitty but i don't trade them for nothing, Darth Vader is God, Boba Fett and Bossk the partners from hell, and i really loved Rebel Commandos, Imperial Guards, Bib Fortune, Jawas, Gamorrean Guards, Imperial Scouts, above everything Han Solo and Lando were the good guys because Chewbacca toy was awfull and the Lobot one was actually really good, but i really wanted to have much more, way more, Stormtroops because i never had enough Stormtroopers in my battles, and don't event get me started on the Spaceships, you had X-Wings, Y-Wings, B-Wings and Tie Fighters but the really prized achievment was to own an AT-AT (it was huge and looked so cool), later we still had the SpeederBikes and the AT-ST to join the fun, and don't forget the Wampa and the Rancor, everyone's favorites.

Today i play with my young son with the SW Minis and it feel so good to have enormous battles with hundreads of stormtroops against the Rebel Soldiers, why Kenner never did that blue jacket and white helmet rebel soldier i can't figure it out but the latest Action Figures have so much more aliens and cooler things than the minis, still the Minis have the only great looking Emperor Palpatine figure in the SW range.

 

It was a product of The "70d and Acid .