Another from the back room of misfit toys.
Once again I’ve dug deep in the recesses of the store’s backroom to pull out for sacrifices for the eBay slaughter, and this time I’ve dragged out “Barrow-Wight, Evil Spirit of Angmar” based on some fantasy book trilogy with wizards and elves and stuff like that.
This was released in 2000 as part of a line of figures based on Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings novels…and then the year 2001 rolled along, what with its big-budget Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the RIng movie directed by Peter Jackson. And then suddenly came the flood of movie merchandise, including, of course, action figures, and this figure pictured above was suddenly made effectively redundant. Not that there’s anything wrong with having a figure line based on the books as opposed to the movies…but, well, here I still have it, a decade later, with plans to put it up for online sale at prices so low, I must be under the influence of an evil ring.
I seem to remember having other figures from the same line in stock, but none of the other figures pictured on the back really ring a bell:
Whatever we had in stock did sell, though, so perhaps having this last straggling figure isn’t so much “the movie merchandise killed its sales” as “nobody wanted to buy the barrow-wight.”
Anyway, it’s kind of neat…it has a little translucent green bit of plastic in its head, so that light shining into the exposed bit in the scalp feeds the light through to the figure’s eyes, where the green plastic gem-thing is also exposed. And he’s got his sword, and his mug for drinking his Mr. Pibb, and a little treasure chest where he keeps all his money that he makes barrow-wighting. EBay, I implore you…take this little plastic burden off my hands.
In the meantime,
LADIES
I have the Balrog from that line of figures. I thought he was pretty nifty at least. It came with some nice accessories and was sturdily built.
You’d think the Barrow-wright would be the one figure in the line that was in demand. He’s the one character in the set that isn’t in the movies.
Frodo: it’s called manscaping! Look into it! Please!!!
I’ve still got the FRODO (and a Gandalf), pretty much for the exact reasons as you:
Meant to sell them, then big-budget flick came out with all it’s superior toys…
I want to unload my MIP Frodo (and maybe Gandalf – tho his pack is kinda crunched) on the ebay as well.
Should probably get to it, but wonder if I should wait until just before the “Hobbit” movie for that extra 25cent sales bump.
~P~
I remember the company that made those had gotten as far as planning on working all the way to Gollum and Smaug saying he would need a big box for himself but then went belly up before that happen. though never ever saw any of those figures up close till your post Mr. Sterling
I have the Galadriel one, just because I thought she was pretty. And I still think it’s a pretty figure, so that worked out well enough. I do wish they’d made Smaug, though.
I had my share of problems with the LotR films, but I live in hope that the Hobbit might prove a much easier book to translate to film. At the very least it has a good chance of giving us the coolest movie dragon ever.
heh… I just took another look at this toy’s face.
It looks exactly like the mummy from the stop-motion Rankin Bass movie: “Mad Monster Party”.
Now THAT’s a line of figures I’d love to see!
My recollection…and I know I bought the Balrog, but not the others…is that there were several chase variations of the Balrog that were a damn bitch to get hold of, like a green forest-Balrog or something. That kind of killed my interest in the line.
There were several chase versions of every figure in the line, I think. I know there were a alternate versions of Bilbo, Gandalf, Gimli, and Gollum, and I’m pretty sure there was a variant for the Barrow Wight, as well. The different versions also came with different accessories, typically, making it all the more painful.
That said, I still have a lot of fondness for these guys, and in some respects, I like them better than the movie figures. The Gimli from this line looks like he could beat the crap out of two or three of the movie Gimlis, for example.
I’m glad they didn’t end up going with Gillian Anderson as Galadriel, because as we can now see, it doesn’t work very well.