Kenner's "Super Powers Collection" line of action figures certainly weren't the first superhero action figures. Companies had been doing such toys for literally decades by the time the Super Powers figures started to come out. But, speaking only for myself, most of those older toys only vaguely resembled the characters they were intended to represent. The Super Powers toys looked like they popped right off of the comic book pages! Although I only had a passing recognition of the comic books themselves when the line first hit shelves in 1984 (I was more familiar with the Super Friends cartoon at the time, but did start collecting comics only a year later), this immediately drew my attention.Firestorm was part of the second line of Super Powers figures, and thus wasn't among my first figures (I definitely had the Flash and the Joker before then, and also got Green Lantern, although I no longer remember if that was before or after finding Firestorm), but it was almost certainly the figure I most looked forward to getting, having latched onto the character pretty quickly upon his introduction to Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show in the fall of 1984.*
Besides having excellent character likenesses, the main thing that set the Super Powers figures apart from earlier superhero action figures was the addition of mechanisms inside each toy that performed "power actions," some movement or effect generally triggered by squeezing parts of the toy together, such as Firestorm's "Power Action Atomic Punch," seen here as his arms move up and down when one squeezes his legs together. Although many figures have similar actions, there was indeed an effort to match "power actions" to the nature of each superhero. For example, the Flash's legs would move when you squeezed his arms together, and Hawkman had wings that would flap when squeezing his legs.
Because of how well the Super Powers Firestorm figure captures the character's likeness, I actually prefer it to some other figures of the character that are much more recent (for example, I'm not a fan of the modern trend in having the symbol on Firestorm's chest splay out randomly. Those are supposed to be three electrons in complete orbits around Firestorm's body. Modern interpretations seem to miss that...). But it's not without its flaws. The Super Powers Firestorm figure is roughly the same 5 inches tall that all of the other figures in the line are, but by the time that height accounts for Firestorm's distinctive flaming top, the figure's actual face sits rather lower than other characters, making him look rather short (apparently, the Flash is short, too... who knew?). He is supposed to be a teenager (or, at least, Ronnie Raymond is), but Ronnie was famously a basketball player in high school (even if he did claim not to be tall enough to play it in college), so I have trouble accepting that explanation (for what it's worth, Firestorm's original Who's Who entry puts Firestorm at 6'2" with Ronnie at a slightly shorter 6'1". Of course, the Irredeemable Shag and Rob Kelly of the Who's Who podcast would be quick to point out that one should take the height and weight figures in DC's Who's Who with a grain of salt...). It simply is what it is.Now, 40 years later, the Super Powers Collection is still fondly remembered, and has been homaged a number of times over the years by other toy and model companies. Perhaps most noteworthy is the current (as of the time of this post, anyway) line of figures under the "Super Powers" (no longer "Super Powers Collection," however) banner produced by McFarlane Toys. This line does an admirable job of maintaining the original line's general aesthetic with new characters, but sadly no longer includes "power actions" with the figures. While this is disappointing, I've nonetheless picked several of the new figures up (including the Blue Beetle figure in the image above). Indeed, I was even more disappointed to learn recently that Mattel has picked up the DC license, and thus I expect the current run of "Super Powers" (which, in fact, has already run for longer than the original line did!) will soon be coming to a close (sadly, before they can get around to an updated Firestorm figure that gives him his proper height!). Grab these figures while you still can!
*Full disclosure: This is not my original Super Powers Firestorm figure, which I played with so much as a kid that the paint chipped all over the figure and its head came off and had to be "restored" with Krazy Glue (which meant it could no longer turn from side to side). I picked up this figure at (perhaps ironically) a TFCon several years ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment