After a refreshing summer vacation, which was pretty much a three week long endeavor against the impossible goal of moving an armchair into my spatially limited domain, ANR is back in action! Operation : Armchair Go Move was ultimately a success, and I unearthed an ungodly number of spiders, as well as cleansed my room by way of eBay. Who knew that someone, within five minutes of the auction's start, would pay 40 bucks for 35 pounds of old Nintendo Powers that I had stashed in my closet? If pavement-steamed raccoon meat had such a rewarding dollar-per-pound ratio, I'd be living mighty high on the back country hog, I'll tell you what. Here I am, unshaven and shirtless, for you.

And I'm here to tell you about my two-year long anticipation of Palisades Toys' [Adult Swim] action figures. We saw nothing but a vague poster at Toy Fair two years ago, and by last year's Toy Fair, we were only a Master Shake and a lot of promotional photographs closer to the dream. This summer, however, brings these little guys into our homes, and maybe it's the heat, or maybe it's the thirty months of anticipation, or maybe my keen lust for life doth ebb as I get on in years, but pardon my general apathy and displeasure. Being the proud owner of a very solitary, largely cavernous and unoccupied life, Sunday nights on Cartoon Network have tended to be the one thing that has gotten me through a few years of a soul-sucking job, endless female wackiness, and complete failure as a painter. It might seem like a ridiculous claim, but that sacred cartoon lineup has always helped me get through another week.

I met the love of my life in college while we all clustered into a friend's room to watch [AS], as I tried to watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force instead of look into her deep blue eyes and marvel at how the curve of her nose perfectly mimicked the curve of her cheek... but I digress. I'd been watching Space Ghost since high school, apparently more enamored with it than anyone I knew would ever be. This all means something to me, these wonders of repurposed animation and late nights on the basement futon with Hayley, falling asleep during X-Files or at the latest, before O! Canada came on.

So, Palisades brings us four 2-packs of figures from four of the main [Adult Swim] shows, plus two exclusive two packs; one distributed by them, and another distributed by the Suncoast chain of stores. I think that perhaps the most crucial aesthetic aspect to mote here is the fact that the source material for these figures is exceedingly simple animation, with a minimum of movement and detail, often using recycled animation and characters from the low-budget Hanna-Barbera cartoons of the 60s and 70s. We're not going to get a lot of detail, and we don't need it. We also don't need any real articulation. In fact, toys that reproduce the values and feel of the toys of the source era would be exceptional. Limited, retro-chic, and fun. What we get, however, if something uncomfortably in-between, and disappointingly distanced from the quality and cleverness of Palisades' better lines, from the hefty and large-scale Muppets, Invader Zim, and even their set of Ren and Stimpy figures, whose fate remains in limbo. Though pulled from four different shows, the inconsistencies (and the needless consistencies) have left me guessing about what exactly Palisades MEANT by all of this.

First up, Master Shake and the Jon Benjamin-voiced Mothmonsterman. This two pack comes with an innertube, the Broodwich, and Frylock's misappropriated sunglasses. It does NOT, sadly, come with a TV or an armchair. which are oversights that they'll surely realize later. It can never truly be New Jersey without a beat-up old armchair.

I'll admit that it's probably not so easy to turn a disposable cup into an interesting action figure, but Palisades did a great job of adding the right slight curves here and there, and a few drawn lines, to really capture Master Shake in a rare tranquil moment. As expected, he's pretty much just a hollow mass of thin plastic with a couple of hands and a lid stuck on, and while the hands and straw both can spin in place, there's really nothing else you'd ever need to do with Shake. Simple, right? At the very least, they eschewed the overused open-mouthed, grinning stupidly facial expression that most toys of this nature employ.

The first negative issue comes in with the magnets in Shake's hands. While these were great in the Muppet line, they serve absolutely no purpose here. Panels have been cut out of Shake's hands, magnets inserted, and the hands are resealed, except they've been resealed completely ineptly, and have large, ugly gaps in them. The magnet itself is meant to hold the Broodwich, but the magnet is not strong enough to do this. Issue two, and the biggest issue, can be called the absolute worst quality control I've ever seen on a figure. Most of it is stained with gluey lumps which have dripped from the lid, staining the back the worst. It's not as if these went unnoticed, because there's clear evidence that someone took an arrowhead, or a chainsaw, or an electric turkey carver or maybe just a bulldozer, and tried to get some of the glue off, leaving deep gouges behind.

I'm pretty much entirely turned off at this point. Palisades does not offer a replacement policy for things such as this, unfortunately, so my only suggestion is to buy this set brick-and-mortar, and NOT online, because these flaws are inexcusable. At least, however, I have the Toy Fair 2005 Master Shake, and failing that, I have a pretty solid reason to purchase the Suncoast-exclusive Master Shake with Shake Signal and glow-in-the-dark Mothmonsterman set. Even still, the inner tube and sunglasses fit on fairly well, and the Broodwich can hang over Shake's hand. The Broodwich, as I recall, never had wings. Namor's feet, yet. Captain America's head, sure. Sandwich, no.

Whereas Shake is an abysmally produced figure, Mothmonsterman is exceptional, and probably the most finely crafted figure in the set. While remaining simple and visually consistent, MMM comes in with four ball-jointed arms, as well as hip joints and waist and neck swivels. The hip-joints are the classically bad and charming t-joint. Just two legs with nothing but a cubic package 'twixt them, moving forward and back, accomplishing nothing. It's the kind of cleverly retro nod that the line really begs for. He's balanced enough to stand without using his little black base and peg-holed foot.

The gestural lines of the original illustrations are toned down, the belt buckle should be square, and the Mothmonsterman's eye patterns didn't really follow as they were sculpted here, but it works. Solid matte colors, and a bare minimum of them at that, bring the figure together and are accented by translucent wings. I'm guessing that Mothmonsterman was included because he appeared in the second episode, and the Rabbot from the first episode is just too large to launch the line with. These guys are also both in a great scale - not too large or small. The rest of the figures in this line have all kinds of poor scale issues that we'll address.

The array of possible Aqua Teen monsters is really tremendously interesting and could sustain a line unto themselves. Until then, the next wave of [AS] figures will include Frylock and Meatwad, with the third wave being rumored to contain a Carl and a possible Dr. Weird, which is when the line really comes to life. Is it the right strategy to release the characters from these shows piecemeal? Can one keep up enough interest this way, or will the line fall into the same disrepair as the Ren and Stimpy line?

Up next is the now defunct Sealab 2021, which reached its final episode this past spring. From the repurposed animation of the 1972 TV series of a similar name, which features an exceptionally dull aesthetic, we have Dr. Quinn and Debbie. I'd imagine that the designs on these would be especially difficult to make into interesting action figures, being nearly solid orange and painfully stiff. My experiences with the Carrot Women of Pluto aside, here is where Palisades could make the leap to one extreme or the other - make them stunningly show-accurate, or retro-style them into hilarious oblivion. What we get is somewhere in the awkward limbo between the two. I have to believe that Palisades was leaning towards the retro angle, given the smooth and featureless bodies of the figures, and the very low-tech articulations. Solid paint colors with no shading or tints, and generic EVERYTHING, down to generic-looking faces that I wouldn't really be able to immediately identify without knowing what I was looking at. Admittedly, the Dr. Quinn head is exactly the same as the 3D head modeled in the Tinfins episode.

The two are articulated with swivelling heads and shoulders, as well as elbow bends. Quinn's hand is sculpted to hold his shotglass, but there's no way that Debbie can hold that dolphin.

The oldschool point isn't really driven home, though. Clever would have been to package these in the same style as the mock action figures that were animated into the show, and not in an absurdly large 2-pack. I think that we're in trouble when the most interesting and solid part of the set is the dolphin accessory. I think that what we have here is a complete lack of personality. This is the kind of thing that can probably be alleviated once we get the rest of the crew together in one scene. One Stormtrooper is pretty lame, you'd have to admit, while a sea of inept, bobbing white heads is something to be proud of, (but again, the tale of my experiences at the Harem of the Marshmallow People is a story for another day). Fortunately, the next wave will include Captain Murphy and Sparks, while the theoretical third wave can only contain Marco and, my personal favorite, Stormy. One the gang is all together, THEN I think we'll have something.

As if to make up for lost character and charm, we get the legendary Palisades accessories, which again, are lacking. There are three bottles of booze, and a little shotglass, and a can of Mingus Dew, and a clock featuring the space baby, some undersea lab TV junk, and the aforementioned dolphin. The booze bottles are all identical in form, and feature different stickers. The plainly labeled 'WHISKEY' bottle has some microscopic writing on one side, which when brought into my batcave and scanned at 1200 dpi and adjusted in photoshop, says 'Kentucky Nightmare Liquor', and then a long string of random letters that could have easily been actual words, instead of a crushing disappointment. While I appreciate a Willie Nelson / Space Ghost reference as much as, and possibly hopelessly more, than the next guy, I'd like to propose that Palisades made the biggest mistake of their lives by not including the following quote in the teensy letters:

"A shark on whiskey is mighty risky. A shark on beer is a beer engineer."

For shame, guys. In addition to that, the baby clock was designed in Adobe Illustrator, or a similar program, and there's one completely inexcusable flaw in the simple graphic. Someone forgot to adjust the line weights on the baby's head and arm before they went to press. As a result, a keen accessory is made into this inconsistent mess of lines. It's the kind of thing that makes you say 'Goddammit!', and then god is all like 'What? I didn't do anything!' and then you're all like 'sorry, god, it's not really you.'

Better accessories to include : the Bebop Cola machine, a wall panel of monitors instead of the useless Jetsons crap that was included, Dolphin Boy, the Lenin-esque statue of Murphy, the Happycake oven, a giant squid, Buckethead Wendy. A swim mask and some damned flppers. If the Muppet Show line could give an in-scale popcorn machine to Scooter, I expect more than a handful of liquor bottles.

Overall, I only have these in anticipation of eventually assembling the whole collection, but they don't really provide any kind of interest on their own.

The third thing on this menu of high-ridiculousness is The Brak Show, and a figure set which includes Brak's mom and dad. The set also includes the omnipresent kitchen table and chairs, along with the handy additions of a family portrait, a fruit bowl, a newspaper and two table settings. Bizarrely, the set does not include the show's titular character, so we'll have to make due with the old Toycom Brak figure, which is a bit too large to be in scale, but a fair placeholder until we get everyone's favorite Pirrahnamite afflicted manchild.

This was the set that convinced me that I needed to give in to the pull of the [Adult Swim] toys, and the set that made me dig through the closets for the old Space Ghost figures and finally open them up. While it's true that Space Ghost has almost always been poised to defend my computer monitor since the day he was de-packaged, his felonious friends (Brak, Zorak and Moltar) moldered away in darker, dustier places, waiting for this day to join the others in placid domesticity. I expect to find my wife in a similar fashion, though not in a closet. My wife will more likely be discovered in a spinster's cottage on a cliff somewhere. And she'll be a robot, highly adept at the art of spinstering.

Brak's father is done in the same simplistic style as the Sealab figures, but he's at least a head shorter than Dr. Quinn, whom I presume is the average human height in the [Adult Swim]-iverse, and a standard against which the other figures should be measured. This smaller size is perfectly appropriate, though - he's a tiny little guy in the show. The small size also lends itself so much more successfully to the retro-simple toy look than the larger Sealab humans. I guess that my subconscious comparison when talking about 'retro' are the original Star Wars figures, and Brak's dad is pretty much in that scale. It'd be a fair fight between him and Ponda Baba in any given miniaturized boxing ring, and that's pretty much just what I need. In that much, he's a more successful figure. He's articulated to sit in his chair very well, as well as stand and hold his newspaper. He doesn't really do much else, so that's all we need.

His paint and sculpt are fairly clean, but both of his legs show a slight curve to his left, and are also different lengths, making a figure stand a necessity. Unlike the Sealab humans, though, he has knee articulation and ball-jointed shoulders. He bears a striking resemblance to a kid I knew in grade school whom we all called simply 'Bova'. I have a distinct memory of him hovering too close to my face at the end of junior high, and asking me if a paper dragon I had made in art class (and was bringing home for the summer from the art room) would sign his yearbook. Eventually, I shoved him and he stumbled backwards in shame, but that would not be the end of my retribution. I'd also out him in high school for copying Magic cards as original art projects, and secretly curse him for getting all of these incredibly cute girlfriends in spite of his smell and wiry frame. My days of misplaced rage are over, though. Now, it all focuses upon Penny Crone. God help me if I fall asleep with channel 5 on and I wake up to her voice. I just KNOW that I'm going to have to poke a baby in the eye at SOME point before sundown. I'm slowly burning a hole in her left ventricle with my finely honed disgust. But now.... now, it's like I have a little Bova of my own.

Brak's mom is also a pretty fine lookin' figure, and is dead-on show accurate, and does not resemble anyone I've hated in the past. As with everything else, it's all solid colors and broad, flat shapes which define the characters without any risk of embellishment whatsoever. There are more balance problems, also fixed with those magic figure bases. No, she doesn't do much either, but she's articulated with simple turning joints at the neck, waist, thighs and wrists, and a swivel at each shoulder.

What really brings it all together is the kitchen table. It gives them a foundation. A place to sit and quietly seethe at each other, and more importantly, a vital show set piece. Having the scene where 80% of the show takes place was a very obvious, and very smart, choice for Palisades to make, especially when there are no plans for playsets. Unfortunately, this is also a cancelled show, but it also has a vast array of supporting characters which would make great figures - Clarence, Thundercleese, Franklin and Rhonda from Yar, Butch, Mr. Bawk ba Gawk. Brak is probably one of those eternal things, like the Rosetta Stone, or the laserdisc, or even the immortal 17-year locust, so I'm sure we'll be seeing him again before too long. Absolutely worth it.

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