“You know, for kids!”
My friend and resident toy freak, Talos, sent me a link today that I just had to share. Seems as though Super Rad Toys, Inc. is getting ready to produce a new set of “Kuberi-esque” collectables containing some seemingly notorious “Axis of Evil” dictators. Now you can have cute and posable plastic versions of Kim Jong-il, Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden, right there on your desktop! But wait, according to Super Rad Toys, your collection of the world’s most notorious men wouldn’t be complete without George W. Bush and Tony Blair!
Now, I’m no fan of our current president, nor of his ever-present lackey, but it does seem that these toys cross a fine line into the realm of bad taste. I can just picture how the marketing pitch for this one went…
“Kuberik versions of Hussein, Jong-il and Bin Laden, this is SO COOL!”
“Yep, but we need more eyeballs.”
“Yeah, what can we do… what can we do?”
“Dude! Bush and Blair!”
“Fucking-A! Sweeeet!”
The idea behind Plasticgod’s Axis of Evil 5 Figure Pack seems clever on the surface. Many people do have a tendency to collect counter-culture merchandise just for the hell of it. There is also no doubt they’ll sell out the entire 500 piece run before the set even hits the shelves. But there is a big chunk of my brain that just can’t stand to see George W. posed next to the man responsible for 9/11, even if it’s just in tiny plastic. I might be a liberal who loves toys, but this is one I could never bring myself to play with.
What about Mohammad Khatami or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, the third country of the Axis of Evil?!? I know, I know…Khatami is no longer president, but he was during the fateful State of the Union Address in 2002. And, Ahmadinejad calls for the destruction of Israel and says the Holocaust was a myth. To top it off, his page on Wikipedia is protected:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad
Hey, why not do the original Axis of Evil and have Kubriks of Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini? Even if they did, they’d probably have to throw in FDR and Winston Churchill for similar shock value. Feh.
For me it makes perfect sense. What is the Joker without Batman? By inventing this “Axis of Evil” thing Bush made himself part of the whole.