So this one probably requires some explanation. Over in Japan, where weirdness is a normal and normal is weird, there’s a series of anti-piracy commercials. In them, a suited man who just happens to have a digital camera for a head is sitting in a darkened theater, as inconspicuous as a man with a CAMERA FOR A HEAD can be, trying to film the movie he’s watching. Not content to just sit there and try not to be noticed, he makes a lot of herky-jerky movements like a drunk mime while filming. This, of course, draws the attention of his inevitable nemesis, a man whose head resembles the “gumball” light on top of a squad car. This man — who I guess we’ll have to assume is actually a cop and not just a random stranger with the weirdest birth defect ever — rushes in to arrest him, all while a slightly confused Asian woman watches. This is just one of several of these types of commercials. Oddly enough, that is probably the least bizarre Japanese television commercial I’ve seen. Stuff gets nuts over there.
But regardless, when I first saw pictures of these two, I knew I had to have them, even if, at the time, I was completely ignorant as to what they came from. Because weird heads. Weird heads as a concept tweaks my bacon like nothing else. Normal heads are fine, if you’re into that kind of thing, but you put something weird like a toaster or Steve Buscemi’s face on a normal man’s head, and all of a sudden you have my attention.
These yin and yang piracy entities have no names, so Lamp man and Camera Man is all they’re known by. Which I guess is fine because I doubt more than three people in the world will respond when you shout out, “Hey Lamp man!” at the train station.
Lamp and Camera are dead-on to their commercial counterparts. Both bodies are very slender, but that is well matched to their on-screen representation. Their oversized heads are also identical to the source material, so these figures are essentially giving you screen captures that you can play with. Due to the limited palette of the figures, there is minimal paint, but there’s no issues at all what is there.
Both figures feature matching articulation despite their different attire. They have:
- Ball-jointed heads with a full range of motion (with an additional opening monitor for Camera Man… neato!)
- Ball-jointed shoulders
- Single-jointed elbows. I expected them to have some swivel like the Hasbro-styled elbow joints dubbed “elbros,” but they don’t, relying instead on the shoulder to provide the adequate amount of movement. Because of this, there is a bit of movement missing, but the shoulder allows for a wide variety of options, even placing their hands on their hips, so you’re surprisingly not missing much.
- Single-jointed wrists with full swivel
- No torso articulation, but there is a waist swivel.
- Hips set up like the shoulders, so there is plenty of articulation
- Single knees set up like the elbows
- Ball joints at the ankles with full swivel
- Toe articulation
So there is not much you can’t do with these figures, and, as such, they are a ton of fun to play around with.
Adding to the play value, both figures come with a nice assortment of extra hands that are also straight out of their commercial series. The best thing about these hands is that they shop at the same store because they’re the same type of gloves with the same pegs and everything, allowing you to mix and match both of their assorted hands for even more expressive options.
I’m going to assume based on the fact that there are actual toys that this property has some kind of large following in Japan. If you watch a handful of the commercials (you can find them easily on youtube), you can see that each of them have iconic poses that pop up repeatedly (most of which are featured on the back of the package), and the figures’ articulation and extra hands allow you to put them into those poses if you want to mirror the commercial.
I know these are a strange thing to be interested in because when you think “anti-piracy commercial” the first thought that pops into your heads is “Ooh, I gotta have toys based on that,” but despite the somewhat odd genesis of the concept, these are just fun toys. And with such a loose connection to some pre-established continuity or canon, then they kind of float out there in the ambient void of imagination and can be whatever you want them to be, wherever you want them to be.
