Movie Mania! Last-reboot King Kong fling

For another quick post, I'm staying with the movies theme. One of my not-quite lifelong fascinations is with stop-motion animation, and that includes King Kong. I didn't actually see the movie until I was starting college, mainly because there was a stretch when the original movie was pretty hard to find. Since then, I've seen the movie become more available, and I've also seen not one but two remakes and reboots. The present post is an artifact from the next to last one, purchased at no less than the local Walmart. It also happens to be possibly the worst action figure I own.

This particular figure came as a set, along with a dinosaur. They were released as part of a line from Playmates, the company behind the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figures. It was intended to reenact Peter Jackson's version of the famous gorilla/ dinosaur fight, specifically the move where Kong kills the dino by reaching into its mouth and breaking its jaws (which makes about as much sense as trying to disable an airplane by trying to grab the propeller). Unfortunately, the action feature required major adjustments to the articulation and sculpting of the rest of the figure. I quickly put the dino on a shelf with other moderately nice paleo junk and set Kong aside. When I did get him out, I quickly figured out he was especially awkward on his own. In his unadjusted pose, it looks like he's making armpit noises. If you move the arms much further, the only places they will go are the places a toy's arms should not go. Here's some new and old pics to show what I'm talking about.

"Go Team Gamera!"

"Sorry, I'm not counting this as a date."

"Now that's more like it..."

"Put those paws where I tell you, you damn dirty ape..."

Something I figured out in the course of certain postings that led to this blog was that Kong was one of the few figures I had that was about the  same size as the Truckstop Queen (who I just figured out came from a company called Moore Action Collectibles). Further investigation established that consensual mauling was one of the few things those arms were good for. I decided it was time for her to hit the dating scene for a while, so I set up a few different pairings. Needless to say, this was in a forum with an already very open-minded crowd, and I still ended up with poses too weird and/ or dirty to use.

"You are so in the friend zone..."

"You know what they say about men and machines..."

"He gets me, and he doesn't talk too much."

Eventually, of course, the Truckstop Queen got back together with her boyfriend Ken R. Wampa, and I started writing about toys instead of just posting goofy pics. I decided to do this post to get back to the roots a little, and will probably do something like this once in a while. In closing, here's one more tribute to the other couple.

"We both know this isn't going to work... but you really need to meet my twin sister."