The PopCulteer
February 9, 2024
To be clear here, the headline above refers to a truly remarkably awful action figure.
In fact, it’s so bad that it’s entertaining. It’s sort of the “Manos: The Hands of Fate” of action figures.
It’s not a knockoff (at least not of anything I recognize). It doesn’t appear to have any company of manufacture, although it is distributed by a company in Henderson, North Carolina, that I suspect may be a subsidiary of Rose’s Discount Stores, where I found this thing.
While I try not to write negative reviews (preferring instead to simply ignore crap), sometimes something comes along that awakens the Leonard Pinth-Garnell in me, and I have to rhapsodize about the beautiful awfulness of it.
This is such a case.
Police Set Ominipotence
On the way back from our trip to Winterfest (you should have seen the photo essays and video by now), we stopped at Rose’s Discount Store in Lexington. Rose’s is one of my guilty pleasure stores because they usually have a wild assortment of bizarre and amusing knockoff toys. I’ve visted their stores in Virginia, Maryland, Ohio and Kentucky, and may someday venture to the one in Hinton, which is just up the river. The stores themselves seem like some sort of post-apocalyptic Hill’s, arisen from the dead…and that only adds to the charm.
As soon as I saw this wonderful monstrosity, I knew I had to have it…if it was cheap enough. It was the last one in the store, and it appears to have been marked down to $7.99 from what would have been a higher price that would have made me pass on it. It just squeaked under my limit. There is no indication of when this figure was made, so it might have been sitting in this store for decades.
This is a huge, ugly action figure, with five points of clunky articulation, one under-sized accessory, no more than three paint ops on any individual piece (with four pieces having no paint at all), and a delightfully skewed series of slogans on the package, which are obviously the work of someone for whom English is not their first (or possibly second or third) language.
This is a fifteen-inch tall action figure, supposedly of a police officer, and at this point, I need to let the pictures tell the story…
As you can see, this is an “IMPI COMBAT SET,” which does seem a bit extreme for a Police figure.
You get the impression that whomever wrote the box copy, just maybe, didn’t know what all the words meant. However, that disclaimer is very important.
Like I said, that box copy just ain’t right. On the back of the box, this is a “Power Deluxe” figure.
And yes, they claim that this action figure that bends at the hips, shoulders and neck, is “fully articulated.” Also, this little illustration might explain the need for the disclaimer you saw above.
There’s that disclaimer again.
The side panel of the box identifies this as a “Power Combat Force” figure that has “Power Of The Fighter.” It also says that, no matter how tempted you are, you CAN NOT THROW AWAY this figure. I couldn’t get that one sticker peeled up to see what was under it.
I had to let you see this guy out of the box. He looks a bit like Jim Shooter, done up in scale to 12″ GI Joes. Like Lenny says about Screwball Squirrel, he don’t move much.
Check out the precision fit of that seam! I haven’t seen a seam like that since the last time I parked next to a Kia. Also, the hands are molded out of the same rigid styrene as the rest of the figure, so don’t expect him to have much of a grip.
The back view. Except for the arms, no paint on the back. Three screws hold this guy together.
This is pretty much the extent of his range of motion…and every joint felt like it was going to snap.
I can’t leave out his weapon. This photo does not do justice to how thin it is. If it were any more thin, it’d be a drawing.
We leave you with a look at the man with his gun, which he can’t hold, and which is way too tiny for him anyway. When he says, “Say ‘Hello’ to my little friend,” he ain’t kidding.
That brings us to the end of this week’s PopCulteer. This poor guy was just so gloriously awful that I had to salute him here in the blog. He gets the last laugh…I have him in the collection now.
Check back every day for fresh content and news and reviews about much better toys than this, along with all of the other cool stuff we cover.
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