I am almost dependably late to the party. I just purchased and was flipping through a copy of the Mars Attacks 50th anniversary collection (four years later), which reprinted the original Mars Attacks bubblegum card line in its entirety. As I was flipping and enjoying the reproductions, I says to myself, I says, “I need a toy line for this.” Now, I knew there were toys made based on Tim Burton’s big-screen Mars Attacks adaptation a long time ago, but that was a long time ago. No, what I wanted was a card-art accurate depiction of the Martians. Human-sized.
Well, of course Mezco already did that a handful of years ago, and somehow it never registered so much as a blip on my radar, which seems even stupider since Fwoosh reviewed it. Now those seem to be hard to find, going for decent amounts on eBay.
Yep, that’s me. Late. Loser.
But that doesn’t dull my desire. If they’ve already been made, then that’s even better, but now it needs to be turned into an entire line.
In the original Mars Attacks cards, humanity didn’t do too well against the overwhelming hordes of bug-eyed aliens. We died, and we died horribly. We died burning, screaming, with our guts shot out and our skin singed off. We died, our cows died, even our dogs died.
Women, children, deaddeaddead.
What we need is a Mars Attacks toy line that celebrates our complete objection to living through an alien invasion. We need the Martians, oh yes, that much is clear. But we also need victims. I can’t fathom a Mars Attacks toy line that doesn’t have able and willing human laser fodder to stage accurate recreations of all that sensational carnage.
A good Mars Attacks toy line needs nattily dressed men and women from the 1962-era that the cards come from. My personal preference would be in two-packs. One pack would have a male and a female, with alternate heads to depict various levels of screaming. Another pack would have a younger boy, girl and pet dog, again with variant swappable heads to depict remorse or terror. All of these laser fodder figures could incorporate battle damage, which would be portions that could be removed, exposing the skeleton underneath.
Best toy line ever?
And, of course, a Mars Attacks toy line wouldn’t be complete without soldiers. We sent the army after the Martians, and the army just didn’t have enough guns. A soldier with a handful of variant heads packed in would not only be great literal army-builder material, but you could have a decent variety, plus the soldier heads could be swapped onto the civilian male for even more options. Pretty soon, with just a bare amount of figures, you could build up an entire suburban nightmare of your very own!
You’re probably thinking that getting victim figures wouldn’t be terribly exciting. But you need someone to get eaten by the giant insects. Mars didn’t just attack with martians; they sent big bugs to kill us too. So we’d have to get at least one or two giant bugs to go with the Martians.
And if we were to really get nuts with our wanting, then the large robot would make a great-looking toy as well. Toss all the Earth soldiers you want at that mechanized Martian malcontent and he’d swat them away like flies. All those variant heads you’ve got laying around from all the victim packs you bought would make excellent battlefield debris. Add in a few headless bodies and even your neighbors will want to play with you. And they’re usually the ones calling the police about all the noise coming from your house!
Frankly, I’m not sure how I missed out on that Martian figure when it came out, but a new one with even better articulation would make it all worthwhile, especially if it came with Earthlings that could get killed and killed again.
