I have a long, strange and complicated history with capes, going back to when I was a child. This is the kind of story that should probably begin in a Psychiatrist’s office with me laying on a sofa, but instead it’s going to be a Fwoosh article, which, frankly, is much better than therapy. And cheaper.
I am an adult-type person who purchases funny little super-articulated plastic dolls that resemble some of my favorite mostly-fictional characters. I have watched my opinions change about a number of different things over the years. I have made mental concessions to the needs of a toy, I have curled my top lip at things that have annoyed me, and I have breathed a heavy sigh at things that are out of my control.
I have lived through immobile Spider-Ham legs, friends and neighbors, and have come out the other side unscathed if not completely mentally whole.
I have seen Hulks with no fists, I have seen Punishers with no trigger fingers, I have made it through Ghost Riders with no bikes. I have seen toys with so many loose articulation points that they dangle like children’s kites hanging from uncaring trees. I’ve seen some shit, in other words.
But nothing annoys me more than hard or semi-hard, confining, sarcophagus-like capes. Over the years I have bristled at them but written them off as necessary evils. I have endured them, I have ignored them, I have lived with them. But over and over, every time a caped figure crosses my threshold I feel contempt.
When I was a kid, the vintage-era Darth Vader had a vinyl cape. It was stiff yet mobile, and entirely unconvincing as Darth Vader’s swirling majestic black cape, but this was the seventies and you take what you can get. Vader, Obi-Wan, Sandpeople, Lando—all of them had vinyl capes. And they were fine, you could play with them. But then there was the Jawa. He wore a cloth robe. Oh, it started out vinyl which has become somewhat of a crazy rarity, but it was switched to cloth, and that made the Jawa the gold standard for realism and mobility.
Yes, realism and mobility are two things that don’t really jive with vintage Star Wars figures, but it made all the difference.
Other figures came out that eschewed the vinyl and aimed for fabric. Squid Head. Zuckuss. Emperor’s guard. And coolest of all: Jedi Luke, with fully fabric removable robe.
Darth Vader’s vinyl cape was terrible in comparison. Jedi Luke was the future. You could put his hood up or down. You could play with him and the robe would conform to the way you wanted to play, and not fight against you.
This was the future of toys.
Time moved on. Super Powers came along, and featured fabric capes c-clamped onto the necks of our heroes. There was no obstruction, no inhibiting of play value. Sure, the fabric had a terrible tendency to roll up at the edges (“Mom, can you iron my toy?” little benty says) but Superman was not restricted by plastic or vinyl.
Time again marches along. Serpentor’s cape is a pliable fabric that makes Darth vader envious. You can play with him just as easily as you could a non-caped figure. It wasn’t the most advanced cape design, but who care about that?
Then the 90s come along, and Toybiz unleashes their five inch figures. The caped figures show up, coccooned in the stiffest, most unyielding plastic that you could ever imagine. Untoyetic, unplayable, the epitome of anti-hand-candy.
“Mom, can you make me a fabric cape?”
Mom. Quitmaker. Seamstress. Sew it all know it all. I hand her an unflinching chunk of plastic and she makes a fabric simulacrum for me. Suddenly Gladiator isn’t a chunk of unfun plastic, but a dynamic action figure. With every caped figure, the cape goes in a bag and out from under mom’s sewing machine comes a fabric clone.
The five inch lines die out, to be replaced by Marvel Legends. The capes are softer. They’re still plastic, yes, but the days of rigid board-capes seem to be gone. Some are softer than others.
But still…
DC Universe Classics start up. DC has a lot of capes. Superman, Batman, Martian Manhunter…lots of capes. And I’m fully invested in the line. But stilll…if I’m being honest, how much fun am I really having with the caped ones? When I bend them over, their capes jut out, as if the figure is unleashing a fart of gargantuan proportions. No matter what you do, that cape is there. Solid. Unyielding. Farting.
Jutting Cape Syndrome is a real thing in the toy world. JCS is why no plastic-caped figure ever truly looks good if he’s bending over, or squatting.
Time skips along again. Toys come along. More lines build up. New interests in companies like Mezco and MAFEX with their fabric capes appear.
This is what I want. This is what I’ve been waiting for! Fabric capes. No hard or semi-hard plastic. No JCS to ruin a good pose. A Revoltech figure’s cape is like a Lamentation cape that can summon Pinhead, but a Mezco’s cape is a soft, flowing thing of beauty, draping down over a figure while still allowing you to play with it in whatever manner you wish.
No Sarcapeagus there.
I’m finding that I’m growing less and less satisfied with plastic capes “as-is” and am looking to other alternatives. I’ve wanted a good Cloak figure forever, but couldn’t stand that he was enshelled inside a plastic cloak that reduced his playability to nothing. So I got a fabric version for him that cost more than the figure himself. I now look at a figure I’ve wanted for quite a long time—a figure like Nighthawk—and all I see is a nightmare of a cape and I start wondering what I’m going to do to replace it.
I recently got the DC Multiverse Bizarro—the Walgreens one with the fabric cape—and I find I have more fun fiddling with him than I did any be-caped figure from the DCUC line, even if the cape itself has a somewhat archaic C-clamp throwback. I didn’t mind. I don’t mind. Because the cape is fabric and the “action” is put back into “action figure” because of it.
Of course, sometimes fabric can go pretty wrong, of course. Hasbro’s ANH Lukewasn’t the best use of fabric. But then Lando’s cape was a frustrating shell that immediately reduces his awesomeness by a huge factor whenever it’s on his shoulders. So it is a toss up. Fabric isn’t the answer all the time.
I know the detractors have their issues, and they are valid ones. A lot of people don’t like the look of fabric at the smaller scale. Or they don’t like the feel, or they don’t like the mixture of plastic and cloth. Everyone has their reasons. But I’ve never cared what other people’s toys look like in my hands, and I am aware that other people might think I’m nuts for preferring fabric.
Mass-market fabric capes aren’t going to have the quality of premium figures, so I don’t think fabric will supplant plastic anytime soon. But for me, more and more, I’m going to be finding ways to improve my figures, either through my own efforts or buying what I need from others who are creating replacements. I just can’t take jutting capes anymore.