(Re) action figures

So, Wonder Wife and I were cruising the Value Village the other day, and I encountered two items that demanded some kind of response, so here they are.

The first was this little playset:

Okay, let's put aside the casual stereotyping and anime-style artwork for a second and look at a few details.

I long ago stopped expecting a toy like this to have much historical accuracy, but who in Sam Hill is this?

I'm not even sure what country this guy is from - he looks like a storybook prince or a Gilbert and Sullivan supernumerary.

And what's up with this?

I am pretty sure 16th century Native Americans in what is now Virginia did not wear Kaiser Bill mustaches.

And finally, the package trumpets these accoutrements:

Umm...

I'm not sure how swords, an axe, a carbine, and a serrated machete are safety weapons. For that matter, what are safety weapons anyway?

A few paces down the aisle from this confusing collection, I came across this cellophaned woman:

I'm not sure what caught my eye, since she's a fairly mundane figure and I don't recognize the character, but a closer inspection of her right hand revealed this somewhat disturbing sight:

It seems a giantess is carrying this dude around, and he's digging it. I think I ran across that website once.

As they say, Value Village - Discover Your Treasures Today.

Figure follow-up

So, a couple of years ago I posted about finding some Hebrew Heroes at Value Village. I was walking through the other day and found some guys that looked awfully familiar:

While the design and coloring seem pretty close, there are differences: for example, all these guys have gray bases, while the Israelites had no base or a partial brown base. Further, these guys don't have butt-stamps with their individual names, like Joshua and Judah did - the first two just have "Egyptian" stamped on the underside of the bases, and the crusader figure is totally unmarked.

(On a side note, it was interesting that these guys had been disarmed somewhere along the way...  a pacifist parent, perhaps?)

I am still no closer to uncovering the background of these figures, other than to note that these are from the Marx toy company (which went out of business 35 years ago and now just runs a museum). I imagine an old toy series called "Religious Wars and Warriors throughout History," or something like that, with all sorts of figures representing different sectarian conflicts. Collect 'em all!

$3 Diorama: Skirmish in the Sand

On the back rack of the thrift store I frequent are plastic bags of random toys thrown together as set for (usually) $2.99. As an art project, I plan to pick up a bag now and again and try to incorporate all the contents into one meaningful diorama. 

Blade and an FBI agent, with the support of Army Rangers, 

engage with well-armed skeletal aliens

$3 diorama: Seize the Witch!

On the back rack of the thrift store I frequent are plastic bags of random toys thrown together as set for (usually) $2.99. As an art project, I plan to pick up a bag now and again and try to incorporate all the contents into one meaningful diorama. This is the first attempt.

Magneto and a weaponless Lara Croft capture a strangely-proportioned witch. 

Two-buck luck

So, in the Value Village they have a wall of plastic-bagged toys for $1.99 each, each bag usually containing a handful of happy meal figures, Matchbox-type cars, and other odds-and-ends randomly tossed together; I've often perused the different collections with a half-thought to do some sort of art project, photo dioramas or stop-motion movies, highlighting the odd juxtapositions that come from this packaging method. I also check this wall out every time we hit the store because once in a while there is an overlooked gem in with the plastic dross; I have blogged about this phenomenon before. Today provided two Scores (that's VV talk) of this variety.

First, in a bag with a crappy banana-man giveaway from Orange Julius were these two guys:

The figures are not articulated at all, but they are way bigger than toy-soldier size. They caught my eye because the one looked to be from the Bronze Age or Classical Greece and the other from perhaps the Roman period, not eras usually associated with action figures.

When I got them home and had a chance to look at them more closely, I saw that the guy at top with the sickle (that's not a melted sword) and shield has JOSHUA written in tiny letters on his butt. You can see the horn hanging by his hip. The guy on the bottom with the spear and helmet also has a butt-stamp: it's harder to read, but I'm pretty sure it's JUDAS.

I am also pretty sure that these are (in)action figures of Joshua, Moses's apprentice and later leader of the Israelites in the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, and Judas Maccabeus (or Judah Maccabee), the Jewish revolutionary and warrior of the second-century BCE whose exploits include the source of the Hanukkah holiday.

Coolness confirmed.

I did some searching for Joshua, Judas/Judah, Jewish warriors, Hebrew action figures, and similar search terms in various combinations, but came up with bupkis. Either these things are rare and obscure, or my google-fu is weak.

In any case, they're pretty fierce dudes. Check it out:

These guys are not messing around.

So, that find alone would have made for a successful trip to the wall, but as I was taking the bag, something on a lower peg caught my eye. And there, nestled in a bag along with a Pokemon, a pig, and one of those wooden ball-and-cup deals was this:

 

That's right - an actual 2009 Wizards of the Coast Beholder Eye Tyrant mini for Dungeons and Dragons. These bad boys go on eBay for like twenty bucks.

Not that I'd ever pay that much.

Not as long as there's Value Village.