The 90's: The Decade of Action Figures With Useless Features.

Image source: ronsrescuedtreasures.com

Recently my fiancé got me a Wolverine action figure from the Toybiz X-Men line circa '92 or '93.  Well, actually it's some robot guy who posed as Wolverine at some point.  Anyway, the important thing is that the toy has probably the most useless action feature of all-time: if you squeeze the toy's legs together, the arms fly off.  Wow.

First off, I'm pretty sure this was the go-to "Action Feature" for toys in the 90's.  I must have had 20 toys that sported "Super Arm Shooting Smack-tion"  or some variation thereof when I was a kid.  Toy executives probably loved this feature because it was cheap to produce and gave the illusion of action without anything actually happening.

Which leads me to my second point.

When would this "power" ever be useful?  All right, I know you're probably thinking of a situation where one villain is coming from each side of Robo-Wolverine and in order to stop them he ejects his arms into their ugly mugs, knocking them unconscious and saving the day.  While this situation is plausible I have a question - What does Robo-Wolverine do when the next villain comes at him and his arms are laying useless on the ground?  Would any self respecting henchman really stop to let Robo-Wolverine put his arms back on?  I don't think so.  Robo-Wolverine just got screwed by the poor planning of a lazy toy company exec.

Nice try Toybiz.  Give me a call when you come up with realistic action features that are actually useful in real world superhero situations.  Flying arms just don't cut it for this geek.