[Trivial Psychic]

Having just arrived home from a local toy and comic show, and browsing through literally thousands of lines of toys both new and old, my opinion on this is that it really depends on what you collect, and how hard you stare through rose-colored glasses and choose to remember history.

I collect from several different lines and scales, and I think that figures have honestly gotten better over the years. While I love nostalgic toys, and still have several of my older figures growing up, a lot of figures from the past do not hold a candle to the offerings of today in terms of sculpt, playability and options. That's not to say they are without faults, (such as the legacy QC issues that companies like Mattel and NECA are lambasted for now a days) but to be honest, I had just as many (if not more) toys break straight out of the packaging back in the day as today, so it's not like things were that much better in terms of QC, although I do agree that with what we drop on these things now a days, they should be able to last a tumble or two off the shelf.

A large part of this feeling of being jipped by today's toys I've noticed seems to come heavily from fans of the 3.75" scale market, which to you I say that many of you have simply been spoiled by the renaissance of articulation that the scale has received over the last few years. Does the cutbacks in articulation stink? Hell yeah it does. Unfortunately, all things do peak, and eventually fade away. There was a time when Marvel Legends and G.I.Joes disappeared off of our shelves for years. But if the line was strong enough, it could eventually raise itself from the ashes and be reborn anew, and even better than before. We've seen it happen time and time again with Star Wars and TMNT, so have faith. It might take a while, but we'll get there.

And on a closing note...enjoy some of this 5POA stuff. Star Wars is hitting it out of the park with a lot of it. While the Vintage, Clone Wars, and various other lines had superior amounts of articulation, remember that it wasn't long before that that Star Wars figures only had 6 points of articulation...and we all loved and devoured them from store shelves like a stack of free pancakes from iHop. I remember people PHYSICALLY FIGHTING over 6POA Qui Gon Jinn and Darth Maul figures back when "The Phantom Menace" came out. =P