War is Hell, and no one knows it better than action figures. Broken and burned, maimed and mauled, countless toys have sacrificed their lives fighting the Never-Ending Battle. Advancing on legs that allowed them to march forward but never back, wave after wave have served, generation upon generation has fallen — lost in the mud, abandoned on the beach, living and dying on the orders of 10-year-old generals with Kool-Aid stained mouths. Each new squad came with more weapons, better articulation, but it was never enough. Their battlefields are now parking lots and backyards, their conflicts faded to less than memory. All that’s left of their glory is a stray arm or a leg, or perhaps a dog-chewed head encrusted with mud. But while the War may have ended for us, its soldiers march on.
Sounds dramatic? Playing with toys can be, pal, especially at an age when your view of the world is… less than complete. Kids work out a lot through play: they learn about friendship, cooperation, sacrifice, and, of course, violence. After all, Green Goblin wasn’t made so Spider-Man would have someone to sip lemonade with in the tree-house — he was there to get his ass whomped. Sadly, the result of this “play violence” often resulted in some very real broken toys.
There’s a pattern, of course. The violence begins as accidents. For example, the aforementioned Mego figures were prone to breakage. Held together by an elastic cord, the arms would often hyper extend and you’d have to Lethal Weapon your figure’s shoulder back into its socket. Worse injuries could happen — for example, loss of extremities was not uncommon. An otherwise perfect Spider-Man figure might be found missing the very fingers needed to fire his web-shooters. In extreme cases, talking toys to a cousin’s house might result in your figure returning home looking something like this:
Fwoosher SalemCrow begins the healing with this harrowing revelation:
My brother and I used to destroy Hot Wheels/Matchbox cars with rocks/hammers to create car accidents. Later on, towards the end of my initial collecting days, I started using a soldering iron to melt areas of Joes to make my own army of Terminator figures. We also had a 4 foot deep, 4 foot round hole in our backyard that was used for cars and figures, and I’m sure we dropped large rocks down onto things as “boulders” during collapses.
I was right there with ya, Salem. Many of my Matchbox cars were destroyed in the same way. As far as holes go, any time road crews were around the neighborhood all of the kids came running — we’d tie plastic army men to threads and lower them down into the holes. The exposed pipes and tiny figures created a massive scale that the biggest store-bought playset simply could not replicate.
Fwoosher Super Goblin relates this tale of terror:
Yes, I used to attached M80’s to my GI Joes and blow them up. I would make a trail of rubber cement to a figure, cause an explosion with a firecracker and watch the Joes catch on fire. I used to tape all of this and make a action movie. Sadly I think the videos are long gone. I would also catapult my Ninja Turtles into the air. I would do anything and everything to them to make a cool movie. I remember I would take a empty check book box from my mom put Spider-Man in it and bury in my yard. I would then try to find where I buried a few weeks later. I’m sure there are still some figures buried in my old yard.
I can relate. I vividly remember burying my Micronaut Time Traveler in the dirt, then had my other figures dig him up days later. For me, it was the first time the concept of story-play extended beyond the moment. The thought that one of your “main” heroes was out of action was compelling and changed the play dynamic, allowing other characters to step into his place and do things they might not ordinarily get the chance to. (Whaddaya mean Death Squad Commander can’t fly the Millenium Falcon?) It perpetuated my interest in storytelling, creating a love of narrative and continuity that exists to this day.
Fwoosher Discogod discloses this grim fable:
I didn’t exactly destroy my toys, but there were cases when I bought cheap stuff with the intention of destroying it. When I was in high school my best friend & I would experiment with making various explosives (we’d get arrested if we did that kind of thing now, but 20 years ago it was seen as mostly harmless fun), which we’d then use to blow up various toys (and film the results). It was mostly just toy cars, but I had a load of random GI Joe figures that we’d explode spectacularly.
One time I do remember was when I was 14 or 15. I’d bought a 12″ Snake Eyes figure for next to nothing and decided to blow him to bits one sunday when my parents were out. He was supposed to zipline down the garden, from between the 2 pine trees in the corner, then land and explode. Sadly, it all went a bit wrong and he blew up almost instantly, showering one of the trees with flaming shrapnel, with resulted in the tree erupting in a plume of fire. Having to explain to my parents what happened was probably the single worst experience of my youth…
Fwoosher Artistix has a parallel experience:
Well, I know we sorta burned a few of my HO scale train set houses. My friend was a bit of a pyro. He knew what was what in regards to blowing things up. We wrapped ping pong balls in foil, light them, & throw them under a train set house to film it ‘bow up’. It made lots of putrid smoke.
My friends and I loved to burn stuff, as well. If it was flammable, we stockpiled it. It’s disturbing to think of all the horrible crap we probably inhaled – it certainly smelled toxic. When we burned Count Chocula at the hamburger (we couldn’t afford steak) I clearly remember watching black oily clouds of smoke rise between the buildings and thinking “I hope nobody else can smell this…”
Fwoosher Errex continues our narrative:
For a time, I used to set on fire action figures that were not Kenner Star Wars ones. I would get some Star Trek, Black Hole or Buck Rogers ones, play with them for a few months and they would eventually end up doused in lighter fluid, cut to pieces or chewed by my dog. However, none of my Star Wars figures were ever subject to this atrocities, except for the occasional funeral pyre whenever one of them happened to break up naturally.
Conversely, this example from Fwoosher Joshua Raymond:
I actually have a photo, from 1987, when I was 15 years old. Me and my friends are on my back patio, burning a 4X4 toy truck. Driving the toy truck was my vintage Empire Strikes Back Yoda action figure, who ended up being fused to the plastic and destroyed beyond recognition.
Wonderful pic, man. That Yoda needed taken down a peg or two…
Truant from school one day, my friends and I found a little orange dude dangling by a parachute from a telephone wire. Being proper deviants, we threw rocks at him until he was dislodged. We’d never seen him before but he had a real Super Dave Osbourne vibe and, for the next few weeks, we put him through his paces. Calling him “Fisher Price” (the company we thought must have produced him, judging from his goofy face), we had him dive from trolley bridges, swim in the sewage drain and pilot my X-Wing fighter out the window dozens of times in a plume of burning hair spray.
Fisher took a beating: he lost an arm, part of a leg, and was burned pretty badly at one point, yet he came back again and again, his limbs replaced, defying death with a creepy smirk on his face. It wasn’t until decades later when I discovered the figure was actually Murdock from The A-TEAM, which is funny in it’s own right. I have no idea where the original Fisher is today. Still defying death, one must assume.
Star Wars figures were #1 on our rampage. There was something incredibly cathartic about the process of watching pretty-boy Luke’s face blacken and burst with plastic pustules. The objects were transformed in the heat, talismanic representations of a childhood now malleable to our will. I have fond memories of my best friend friend Dave coating his Snow Speeder in lighter fluid and filming it burn with the trusty Super-8 camera. These days some poor uninspired soul would add the fire digitally — wouldn’t want to damage your vintage toys now, would we?
VictoryLeo19 reveals:
I know I was destructive with the the Lanard CORPS figures. I used to consider them sub par, and as such they were always getting burned or tortured with nails by Cobra. I was big on leaving toys outside too. I would bury figures and vehicles all over the place and then forget all about them. I’m sure there’s likely 40-50 Gi Joe, Battle Beasts, Starcom, Willow, and He-man figures scattered around my old back yard and woods.
I can honestly say I managed to do something even Jabba the Hutt couldn’t pull off: I put Han Solo into suspended animation — and kept him there! That’s right. I never even collected the bounty. Sounds crazy? Well, lemmie tell ya: in the early ’80s, my stepfather was rebuilding a retaining wall that separated our yard from the neighbors. Dug about five feet into the ground, it had been constructed of ceder blocks, and, when no one was looking, I placed a Bespin Han Solo in one of the openings and waited. An hour and five feet of dirt later and Solo was entombed forever. He’s there to this day, in the dark, alone in his tiny cell. Creepy? Sure, but, at least he’s safe from Disney…
Firecrackers were the bane of any action figures existence. Fwoosher pakledjim shares this grim nugget:
For the most part, if a toy got destroyed it was because I played with it a lot. However there was a time when I was a teenager and had a pack of firecrackers and an old Mego Batman figure. I decided to cut a small hole in his back and stick the firecracker in there. I lit it and ad proceeded to fall on the ground laughing as I watched Batman’s head go flying a good 10 feet in the air. It was like his head was a cannonball. I still laugh about it to this day.
Understandable. That Mego Batman was unsettling.
Mr. Oz recounts this nightmarish experience:
On a road trip to Ohio my sister and I ripped the limbs off Ray and Winston from the Ghostbusters line(1st release versions)…I can not recall why this was done, I just remember throwing the limbs out the window and my sister and I laughing hysterically….poor ray and Winston….to this day I still have their proton packs and the mini ghosts they came with as a sour reminder or the road trip death they experienced…
As you can see, it’s all part of the Healing.
Fwoosher Hagop asks:
Am I too late?
In case you couldn’t tell, that’s Hagop’s childhood pic of Captain America frozen in a block of ice! Freezing figures was a less destructive way to torture toys and no one froze better than Captain America. (OK, Han Solo was pretty good, too.) So what does Captain America do with himself frozen in ice for decades at a time?
Oh, uh, sorry, Cap — we’ll come back later…
Fwoosher DMD reveals a grim truth:
My older brother destroyed some of my toys because…well, they’re mine!
Sadly, I’m guilty of being an “older brother” as well. My friends and I used to raid my kid brother’s toy box and kit-bash his figures into upsetting objects. We’d gut his figures and reassemble them with multiple arms, legs, heads for asses and that sort of thing. Soon we had an entire league of these little mutant toys – and he had an empty toybox! One of the most memorable was made out of a large round motor that still worked when connected to a battery. The motor was suspended by six legs culled from MASK figures: it sported two tiny little arms and was topped off with a vintage MOTU Man-At-Arms head. When you touched the battery to the wires the head would spin. These weird little creations are long gone now — wish I had some pics to show! Its funny to think about it, but that was my first attempt at customizing!
Fwoosher long_road tells this story:
I was really into Vietnam-era movies when I was a kid, so I’d set up my dad’s video camera on a tripod in our yard and then I’d intricately arrange my GI Joes in battle poses up on this hill/mound of dirt behind our garage and rig up little firecracker land mines and what-not and then stand back and pick some of them off with my bb gun while others got blown up by fireworks while I recorded it. Then I’d play the tape back in slo-mo and watch as all their little arms and legs went flying. Good times.
I’d love to see that footage — it’s the stuff Fwoosh Film Festivals are made of!
Before we finish, one more tale from yours truly:
When I was a little kid in the 1970s I lived in a strange little neighborhood. One day, on the street at the top of the steep hill, an old woman was giving her dead son’s model cars to children who might want them. I’m not sure what he died of, but he was a little older than the rest of the local kids and was quite the advanced modeler. Word got out and soon there was a mob scene, with kids grabbing whatever they could from the old woman and each other. But no one was taking these models home to a life on a shelf — these cars were going to be driven.
At the top of the her steep hill they were let loose, set free from the bonds of gravity. I remember the cars bouncing down the cracked asphalt street, gaining speed until striking a crack or errant pebble. Everyone cheered as they flipped, bouncing along end over end before skidding to a stop. Each model was pushed harder, faster, the resulting wrecks growing even more spectacular. Shattered plastic chassis spun through the air, seats and spoilers and fenders scattered, wheels cracking free from axles only to end up in the sewers. Cars that had been built to sit were finally racing, blazing the humid dusk. One by one they rolled out to their brutal end, windshields gone to pieces in the weak streetlights, lacquer green and cherry red Testors paint-chips shearing away into the oncoming night. All of the time and effort, all of the life that had gone into those cars now spent, smashed into so much plastic and vac-metal. Then, the last car destroyed, we went our separate ways, the brutal ritual over.
War (and Childhood) is Hell…
Thanks to all the Fwooshers who contributed stories and photos to this article!
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