Weird Toys of the Week – Twilight Zone 3.75 Inch Action Figures from Biff Bang Pow

I can list at least a dozen TV series more deserving of action figures than “The Twilight Zone”. A fanatical collector (or someone willing to look those series up on Google) would probably tell me that those series already HAVE action figures. Toy companies are really scraping at this point.

So, here’s a line of toys I’m not sure anyone really wanted, but that I will remark upon anyway.

Without peeking at the individual pictures yet, here’s my guess at who these characters are. And remember, I really like sci-fi and used to watch the Twilight Zone on reruns. Left to right, we’ve got Burgess Meredith, Brain guy who has a book that turns out to be a cookbook (50-year old spoiler on that one), creepy little girl, fat alien, Moon Boy, and generic military investigator.

Now let’s see how I did:

See? The card says “To Serve Man” – nailed it. I also like that his whole robe is articulated instead of him having legs under a cloth robe. Saves production costs and reminds me of the 70s action figures from lower budget films. Comes with cookbook accessory, which is cool.

Henry Bemis. Yep, got this one right, too. Maybe if there was an apocalypse and I had all the time in the world, I’d finally be bored enough to recreate classic Twilight Zone with this guy. Until then… not so much. Comes with two books, which seems a little light. Biff Bang Pow should consider making a “broken glasses” variant, though.

So, the box says this is “Invader” from Episode 51: The Invaders. That doesn’t really help. And I’m still not sure what those accessories are. All I can say is that inside that suit, it’s got to smell awful.

OK. Seeing this with the card, I remember Talky Tina – which makes me want to own this even less. How are you going to sleep at night if this creeptastic doll is in your home?

Again, seeing this on the card, I get it. The Gremlin of”There’s a man on the wing of the plane!” infamy. Which means that the generic looking white guy from the group photo must be…

Yep. William Shatner, er, Bob Wilson. So now you can recreate “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” from the comfort of your own home.  Maybe it’s the fact that I haven’t seen Shatner with a waistline that slim in a long time, but there’s no way I ever recognize this figure loose from the card.

So there you are. Another batch of WTF toys, this time from the crew at Biff Bang Pow. Sometimes the toys are nightmarish hodge-podges of weirdness that seem designed solely to confuse or frighten. Sometimes – like with the Twilight Zone series – it’s simply a question of “does the world really need this property made into toys”?

If you’ve got weird toys that you think the world needs to question, feel free to add them in the comments section.

Until next time…

– CCG