Every toy fan has their own personal line in the sand for various properties. Sometimes it’s articulation, sometimes it’s presentation, sometimes it’s scale or costume or even company. We can be a finicky bunch.
Sometimes I’m surprised by these lines, other times I’m not. There are Joe fans who won’t go near the six-inch figures with a 3/34 inch pole. There are Transformers fans who will go to their deathbed thinking that Transformers that don’t transform are a waste of space. There are He-man fans who think the Filmation figures are either the only way they should ever be presented or are a huge waste of plastic. There are people who seem geuinely confused anybody could like those little retro styled figures.
We’re all nuts. It’s best to recognize that.
When talking about updating M.A.S.K., the oversized pachyderm in the room seems to be the vehicles. In short, many believe that without the vehicles, M.A.S.K. Just ain’t M.A.S.K.
I can see both sides of this argument. When M.A.S.K. hit, I was as ready for it as I’ve ever been for anything. Characters with super-powered masks that drove transforming vehicles? It’s like everything awesome in toys vomited all over each other and created one ichridniopalantric demon child made of concentrated holy crap. The figures were small but still toyworthy; just large enough to be autonomous fun while allowing for the vehicles to be a decently yet space-efficient size. It was, in short, a brilliantly conceived line that fizzled out all too soon.
I remember getting the Piranha and Condor for my birthday the first year they hit stores. I can still conjure up the memory of that new toyline feeling, which hits with the carbonated mental fizz of a new can of coke directly into your central childhood system. For a while all the other toylines took a backseat in to M.A.S.K., and that perfect synthesis of man, mask and machine dominated my ultraviolent playtime.
M.A.S.K. without the vehicles goes against the central concept, I know. It is Mobile Armored Strike Kommand, after all, and if you remove the Mobile part, you just have…Ask. And nobody wants a toyline that needs permission, amirite?
Actually, you’d have to remove the armored part, leaving you with Strike Kommand. That sound cool, but then you wonder why they misspelled command, and it all falls apart.
I loved the vehicles. I still do. I love the entire concept of the vehicles that turn into rolling weapons of war. But I’m at a point in my life where I don’t need vehicles to go with the toys I buy anymore. So many Joe fans couldn’t fathom the point of a line of 6-inch Joes without the vehicles to go with them, but here we are, living in a world where there are 6-inch Joes.
In short, I am completely in favor of M.A.S.K. without the vehicles, if it’s the only way to get an updated 6 inch line. It’s still specially trained guys wearing super-powered masks, and the absence of vehicles could open up the option of really loading the figures up with some cool stuff. Maybe they can all have special backpacks that…you know, do stuff. Maybe stuff that is similar to their signature vehicles. I don’t know, I don’t need that either, but for those who might feel cheated without the vehicles it would at least be something. They could definitely have some effect pieces that simulate whatever it is their masks do. Which, again, is not something I really need, but anything to perk up the package, I suppose.
Toys are at a peak awesomeness nowadays, and with all the articulation that’s being crammed into figures, a line of updated M.A.S.K. figures—or just MASK, if you want to get rid of the confusing anagrammity of it all—would still be an excellent line if we didn’t have to be completely slavish to what came before. It can be done. It could stand side by side with our brand spanking new six-inch Joes, and probably fit in better than ever. All we have to be is open to it.
And Hasbro has to do it, of course. But that’s a whole other matter.