One A Day 2.0: Day #295 - Daily Bugle Staff: Robbie Robertson, Betty Brant, Ned Leeds, Glory Grant, Ben Urich

[Ultra Seven]

Dear god... talk about figures destined for Ollie's. Just every wave stores sending repacked cases of the civilians to the clearance outlet

I'd argue there's an event horizon -- and I don't know where, exactly, it is -- where a civilian character becomes crucial enough that they overcome the inherently boring, non-toyetic nature of action figures of regular people in regular clothes. It's where I get nervous about a Jarvis or a Foggy Nelson. Conversely, Gwen & Jolly Jonah did move pretty briskly ...

As much as it pains me, I must say pass on all of these. I have very few civilians in my collection. As well as the fact that my displays rarely involve hanging around the water cooler talking about the game.
Crap. And I loved these guys growing up.
And I think that PantherCult is right.

You know, it's funny ... as an emphatic "yes" to all of these characters, I still feel similarly. I rearranged my shelves over the weekend, and was struck by how my civilian Spider-Man characters were at a tipping point: there were like five of them clustered around the retro wave Peter Parker, and I realized if I got too many more, they'd either need their own shelf, or need to be arbitrarily spread between my couple of "Spider-Man versus decade-grouped villains" shelves.

 

[docsilence]

I don't need ALL of them, and I know we'll likely get NONE of them, but I would preorder a boxed set of Daily Bugle staff in a New York Minute. Maybe we could get a MTO set from Pulse? My biggest wants are Robbie, Betty, and Ben, but I wouldn't even tap the breaks on Ned and Glory too. Maybe it's my old newspaper reporter nerd showing through, but give me the whole damned newsroom. I'll build a diorama by hand for them.

(Preferably comics versions since my display is mostly comics, but Vondie Curtis-Hall stole every damned scene he was in in Daredevil and Elizabeth Banks basically WAS the comic book version of Betty. I like MCU Spidey fine but I didn't love their re-use of staff names, I want grizzled newsroom folks.)

 

[docsilence]

I donno, the civilians that they’ve released in the retro line - JJJ and Gwen Stacy - aren’t exactly easy to find. JJJ even had a reissue at Walmart that still wasn’t available everywhere.

Civilian figures have this funny thing where we know the characters don't fly off the shelves for what they are, but the parts reuse drives the secondary/resale value up through the roof. I recently tried to get some civilian bucks to make custom GI Joe supporting characters and you're paying 50 bucks easy for some of these figures. I still buy any copy of Everett Ross I happen to stumble across cheaply in case I need to stick someone's head on a civilian body. Even bought an extra Mandarin to make Peter Wisdom and went to pick up an extra Matt Murdock for parts just last night. They definitely make for boring figures, but I think they have use in the collector world.

 

[Ultra Seven]

The recent announcement of a Carl Kolchak from Wandering Planet Toys makes me want these more ... I need Kolchak and Ben Urich to go solve supernatural mysteries together.

 

[NORM]

There's a guy who used to post at Fwoosh that I follow on IG, Darth Primus. He has such a comprehensive collection of civilian figures that he uses as background crowd characters in his photos. He often tosses in Easter eggs with those characters, which only complements the true subjects of his photos. They definitely come in handy especially if you have a variety (not just the Coulson suit body over and over).

 

[Thor-El]

The only civilian figures I want for sure are Jarvis and Rick Jones. I made myself a Don Blake, and civilian Steve Rogers and Tony Stark are easy kitbashes as well.