Mad Max: Fury Road, the fourth entry in George Miller’s apocalyptic tale of dirt and dirty people, made its US debut on May 15. However, on the 12th of never, a brand new toy line featuring characters from the entire Mad Max movie series did not magically appear on shelves. The reasons for this are numerous, most of which apparently having to do with George Miller’s unwillingness to relinquish licensing rights to any toy company, which means neither NECA nor Funko nor the venerable Hot Toys themselves will be putting out toys. However, if that’s not a good enough reason, feel free to rely on the tried and true “because you touch yourself” reason. I know I will.
But let’s take a look at those toys we didn’t get. Now with a movie like this, you need to have the expectations set by things like Terminator, Alien, or Predator, which means you’re not going to get entire casts. You’ll have to be happy with every version of Max and, if you’re lucky, the villains. Luckily, the Mad Max series has some of the most toyetic villains ever, because post-apocalyptic fashions were made to be rendered in plastic.
From the first movie, we’ve got Mad Max himself, Max Rockatansky, in his Main Force Patrol uniform. For villain, we’ve got the Toecutter, who miraculously won’t be coming with his bike, which is a huge shock in today’s toy collecting society, but you can find a bike elsewhere. That’s OK, to make up for this we get Mad Max’s Interceptor as a deluxe bonus vehicle. It’ll be an “expensive but you know you want it” item. Nothing will light up, because that’s showbiz. This first wave never appeared on shelves concurrently with figures from the fourth movie, which we’ll tackle later. Kind of like the classic Planet of the Apes figures, which showed up with the new movie ones. Yeah, exactly like that. Except for the whole sticky wicket involving reality — a concept I’ve never enjoyed.
Wave 2, which will not in the slightest way be coming out a little bit after the first wave, brings us a brand new Max figure, ragged, road-worn, searching the dry and barren wastelands with an accent for “gazzoline” and running across a gigantic dude in fetish gear named “Humungus.” Which looks like hummus if you skim it, but I’m not the one who misspelled it, so don’t blame me. But how many of us want Humungus? Literally every single person ever born. The road to awesome is paved with Humungus figures or something.
Now, the only question here is do we need the kid with the boomerang, whose name is “kid with boomerang” (not really, it’s Feral Kid, which is probably much better than kid with boomerang). Well, who knows. Probably not, because, let’s face it, this fictional line that doesn’t exist and never will already has a small budget, and we got the car, so we can skip the kid. Sorry, kid with boomerang, maybe Max can come with your boomerang along with his shotgun, so there’s that.
Next we move on to the Thunderdome and get freaky with Tina Turner who doesn’t need another hero, but she’s going to get one, because Max has nothing better to do. This means yet another awesome Max figure. It’s doubtful that Tina Turner’s Aunty Entity will not get a figure, but in the great tradition of Humungus and Toecutter, we just might never be getting the awesomely named Master Blaster, who is two guys in one. How awesome would never getting Master Blaster be? So awesome. Are you getting dizzy with the amount of double negatives in this article? I’m not not! There was a secondary plot around here with some kids and Max quasi-adopting them or something but Master Blaster, you know? Exactly.
Mad Max went into hibernation for approximately half the lifespan of a person in medieval times and then roared out of the gate in a brand new movie that will never have toys, the aforementioned Mad Max: Fury Road, which every man woman and child on Earth is giving three thumbs up and is getting more praise heaped on it than if Pixar cured the Bubonic Plague. Literally everybody loves this movie, and if somebody tells you they didn’t, it’s actually legal to burn them as a witch. Of course, in the proud tradition of not seeing things when everybody else sees them, I haven’t seen the movie, but I did see that movie Tom Hardy did that starred Tom Hardy and Tom Hardy’s penis and he was appropriately mad in that, so this stands a chance of being decent.
On to toys, though. We’ll never be getting this brand new version of Max, of course, and the appropriately named Imperator Furiosa because having regular names in post-apocalyptic Australia sucks balls. Then there’s Immortan Joe who is played by Toecutter (well played, Miller), so this makes the second toy he will never ever get in the Mad Max franchise, and War Boy Nux. We won’t be getting the wives. And I don’t mean won’t get as in this line will never be made, I mean won’t get even in the fictional sense, because women have cooties unless they’re named Imperator Furiosa.
Four movies, four waves of toys we’ll never get: these are the Greatest Toys Never Made!
