I don’t play football. I don’t watch football. I couldn’t care less about some people running and falling down on a big field. Before William “The Fridge” Perry became a toy, I only had the barest knowledge that he existed. But much Like Sgt. Slaughter, another real life somebody or other who became a member of GI Joe, I HAD TO HAVE THE FRIDGE!
What was it that instantly incited this great, aching need for a fat football player? Was it his name? As a younger little guy did I have a fondness for people named after kitchen appliances? Would I have been equally psyched for “The Stove?” I guess we’ll never know, because The Stove was killed by Snake Eyes on his first mission and never got a figure.
Oh, there was a Range Viper, but I never actually got him, so that disproves that theory.
No…it was not his name. It was the same thing that told me I HAD TO HAVE SGT. SLAUGHTER! His commercial. 30 animated seconds of the Fridge wildly swinging his patented “Football on a a chain” around and bitch-smacking Techno Vipers and even Big Boa, he who dares go into battle with boxing gloves. And then the Fridge himself comes out of the leaves (?) to tell us WE CAN HAVE A FREE FRIDGE! (except for a dollar handling charge. You bastards. I trust no one because of you.) But I didn’t care that he was a real person. I didn’t care that he was coming out of leaves for some strange reason, in what I was assuming was the most unmowed football field in the world. All I cared about was the animated part. Get back to that animated part!
To get to the animated part, we were forced to also watch kids simulate a battle with their Fridge figure. That bastard already had a figure…how could I get his job? I could do what he was doing. It didn’t look like it took the complexity needed to split an atom. These dopey kids were apparently clueless that The Fridge was incapable of flying. It was the only thing that would explain why they were having him FLY INTO A SWARM OF TOY COBRA TROOPS!
Ok, flying may be stretching it. They were having him hover a bit off the ground as they rammed him into the Cobra troops, but he as still soaring through the air at far faster speeds than a man of his obvious girth would have been able to achieve.
Oh how I hated the commercial kids and their warped ideas of how to play. Slamming toys into other toys at high speeds like a isn’t the intricate ballet that is a tiny plastic fight. No art. No elegance. Inexplicable walls of blocks were everywhere. The Super Powers commercials bothered me too. Power action dork attack!
Anyway…back to the commercial. For some reason, the 30 second commercials generally had more violence than entire 30 minute cartoons. They knew that we as kids were a bunch of psychotic, barely-contained cauldrons of rage and animosity and would buy anything and everything with the promise of blood, guts, hitting, punching and violence. The fact that Lazer tag didn’t shoot actual Lasers and couldn’t burn holes through people still haunts me to this day. The cry of “Tag, you’re it!” should be accompanied by the smell of charbroiled flesh, dagnabberit.
Anyway, worked into a froth over the possibility of owning this minor celebrity, I collected my Fridge points or whatever they were called, and the order was sent. Please wait six to eight weeks to recieve.
Wait.
Wait.
Wait.
Oh for the love of…
Wait..
Is it six weeks yet?
No. It’s been about a week.
Oh, Father time, you crinkly old sadist, I’ll get you yet.
FINALLY time passed like squeezing Crest through a syringe…and there it was. The Fridge. In all his glory. 3 3/4 inches of gap-toothed, Cobra-tackling power.
I spent a long time smacking some Cobras around with his “Football on a rope”. I think I had him tip over a HISS tank. Hey, why not? He weighed about the same. Once I had played with him a while and the thrill wore off, it wasn’t long before another toy took that bright shining spot of “new toy”, and the Fridge hit the bench, waiting for his turn to be put out on the field. Eventually I think he got shot by Zartan.
Zartan was not a Bears fan.
But to this day, as you can see by the pictures, I still have that tiny plastic representation of a football player that I never cared about in real life before. And also to this day, I still have absolutely no clue at all what position he played.
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