While trading cards have died off, franchise toys no sign of stopping.

By M.R. Gott on Friday, May 2nd, 2014

Beginning this summer toy/collectible companies Super 7 and Funko will be teaming to release a new line of 3.75” figures in the style of the old Kenner figures you all know and love. The figures will be based upon such diverse film and TV franchises as Firefly and Pulp Fiction. That’s correct you can now get your own Gimp figure and bloody sword wielding Butch to recreate you favorite scene from Pulp Fiction. The packaging of the figures state the toys are for ages 17 plus, which seems odd, as the toys themselves aren’t all that graphic, it’s the franchises that are. A complete line of Alien figures will also be available and a great collection of Terminator toys among others.

As debatably inappropriate as Terminator figures are when they are designed to look like toys for small children, we’ve been here before. Terminator and Robocop have seen kid’s toy lines before, as well as a censored film version and Saturday morning cartoon for Robocop. Robocop also released a line of trading cards, because every franchise used to have trading cards. Even Alien had a line of trading cards from tops released with the original theatrical release in 1979. Personally I used to have nearly all the Ghostbusters 2 and Batman (1989) movie trading cards, but what I used to truly relish were the Marvel Universe cards. Series 3, 4 and the original masterpieces lines were my favorites. Growing up in a rural area before the internet these cards were the best way to learn about the characters and major events of the Marvel Universe. As cool as it was getting a pack with one of my favorite characters, discovering a new one was also amazing. In the early 90’s Marvel bought Fleer and Skybox, and were pumping out cards at a level that diluted the market, but I’d like to see them coming back in popularity.

Right now the average comic book reader is 35, and looking around my local shop this is a fact that is easy to confirm. The Reaction figures clearly demonstrate the nostalgia we seem to possess. And I wonder why? What about the early 80’s to early 90’s captured our imaginations so fully? And is this nostalgia the reason we haven’t seen as many new franchises emerge that can seem to rival the classics. We just had a Robocop reboot, a Total Recall remake and are staring down a coming Jurassic Park reboot (I had all the original JP figure back then). Is it wrong to want to see a new franchise emerge? The last major genre franchise we had was The Matrix in 1999, and it was the exception not the rule. You may be thinking of Harry Potter, but I’m discounting it because it was adapted from a book series. As successful as series such as Fast and Furious and Transformers are, they don’t capture the endless imagination of something like Back to the Future or Indiana Jones. I doubt the kids who grew up watching them will be quoting them in 10 years, or could have just stared at nine cards in a collector’s page for hours on a long car ride entranced by the worlds they opened up. I could be wrong, but I often have a nasty habit of being right.