I’ve been told that my comparisons of toy lines to dating girls is a little weird.
I think some of you just need to date more. Or collect more. Then you’ll get it.
There’s a lot of reasons why dating and collecting share some strong traits, but the one I tend to think about, especially when discussing things on Fwoosh? Just like dating, nothing can keep getting under your skin, frustrating the hell out of you, and somehow keep you coming back for more, even years later — like toy collecting.
You remember the girl down the street? That’s Metal Gear for me. She’s the one you knew as a kid; hung out with, maybe even as one of the guys; and just as you start to realize that she’s kinda cute — she moves. Then some years go by and you run into her somewhere and you’re knocked flat-footed, but logistics, blah blah blah… you can only be a long-distance spectator at best. And, as time goes by, you hear things, see things, and this all drives you to the conclusion that, damn, it’s too bad she moved. And you forget about, move on, do other stuff… and somehow you end up hooking up in college. And maybe it was a shame you missed out on the earlier years, but, hey, better late than never.
Too obtuse this time? Well, Metal Gear was, for me, and every other kid I knew, one of the premier titles for the NES back in the day. Again, lots of reasons, but mostly it boils down to there was nothing else like it. And even though Snake’s Revenge wasn’t as good, for reasons that make much more sense now, we still got it and played the hell out of it. But that’s where it ended for me. The real sequel to Metal Gear, MG2: Solid Snake, never landed on a console remotely near me, and I soon forgot about it.
Video game systems have always been a bit divisive, and the loyalties that go with them run deep, even if they don’t make a lot of sense. I became a Sega fanboy of sorts, starting with Genesis and keeping with them all the way to the bitter end with the Dreamcast — a very underrated, but mostly forgotten, system. So, when Metal Gear Solid came out, I was on the other side of the fence. And for some reason, I went Xbox afterward, so as the saga became a modern juggernaut, I was relegated to playing at friend’s houses, allowed a taste, but never really getting into Kojima’s strange, fascinating, quadruple-helix weaving ball of ’80s action-movie love. It was totally up my alley, but it was an alley in another town.
But in 2012 Konami righted a decades-long wrong by releasing the HD collection, which included Sons of Liberty, Snake Eater, Peace Walker, and remastered versions of the 8-bit Metal Gears — including the elusive MG2:SS.
That’s a lot of exposition to get to talking toys. But there’s something inherently “Metal Gear” about that.
In the late ’90s and early 2000s, McFarlane delivered what remains probably the most comprehensive MGS toy line, doing a host of characters from MGS 1 and 2. These figures tend to still command some respectable coin, and the sculpts and articulation still look pretty impressive by today’s standards — not surprising that at the time, these were hot properties.
As McFarlane is wont to do, after a couple series, the line went away, and, sadly, this sent the license into domestic obscurity. I think most fans assumed it would eventually end up going the route of the Alien vs. Predator and other movie lines, which means they end up in NECA’s wheelhouse. Alas, that didn’t occur.
The import crowd has always kept Metal Gear somewhat in mind, like Revoltech, but nobody has truly reminded me how badly I need more figures than Play Arts Kai. I still distinctly remember being at SDCC with Carl a few years back, messing around with his Peace Walker figure in the hotel room. That’s not dirty. But it was an awesome figure that very nearly made me a PAK collector. In the years since, there’ve been several different Big Bosses, Solids, and Liquids, and even Raiden, Solidus, and Meryl. And they are fantastic figures, no doubt about it.
But, surprise surprise, I still need 6-inch figures. Again. When Ashley Wood’s crew at 3A came back to his roots with Metal Gear Rex, I was all kinds of stoked and worried that his take on the franchise was about to become realized in cloth and plastic, Adventure Kartel style. And somehow, that didn’t happen either. Medicom even teased me worse with some 25th anniversary 6-inch …statues. And after seeing the prices they command, I wonder if I should’ve gone for them.
And so this must end as a call to arms. Do it for honor or love — get me out of this dream. There can be more than one Boss and one Snake, and we can have them in 6-inch. This franchise is a staple of the gaming world, and with its winning combination of soldiers, sci-fi, military hardware, mechs, ninjas, and badass chicks in leather suits and bikini tops, it needs to finish its transformation into a staple 1/12 toy line.
