It was a slow day for AFP yesterday, as I was on the road taking my wife and her mom to Las Vegas as a little Mother’s Day celebration. As we were sitting at the gate waiting to board the plane, I thought about action figures of mothers. And came up with one. Pamela Voorhees, from Friday the 13th, was the only one I could recall. And actually, there were at least two made of her. In 2005, NECA came out with deluxe set for the movie’s 25th anniversary, with Jason and his dear old mom (pictured above, courtesy of BigBadToyStore). Sideshow made a 1/6 scale version – see Michael Crawford’s review of Pamela Voorhees.
So, what other mothers deserve action figures? Before getting called to board the plane, I came up with three.
Ma Hunkel – the pot-headed (no, she wears a pot on her head) Golden Age Red Tornado isn’t the mother of the android Red Tornado that followed her, except maybe in the figurative sense. However, after her costumed days were done with she does become the mother figure to the Justice Society of America, and is grandmother to Maxine Hunkel, aka Cyclone, the teen windbag who joined the JSA when it returned to glory under Geoff Johns back in 2006.
All right, Ma Hunkel got herself made as a Minimate (eBay link) back when DC Minimates were still going strong with DC Direct, but she could use a figure in the Club Infinite Earths line of DC Universe Classics.
Aunt May – it seems like it would probably take Galactus choosing Aunt May as his herald (this happened!) or her getting her own Iron Man armor (this also happened, in a What If? story) to get an action figure of Peter Parker’s adoptive mother. Or, if you count the 2003 limited series Trouble as part of the Spider-Man canon, May would be Peter Parker’s actual (but secret) mother. Dun dun dun!
So it turns out that Aunt May got a Famous Covers action figure (Amazon link), that looks more like Gary Busey to me, so that doesn’t count. She also got an Aunt May Marvel Minimate (Amazon link)- but that was from the Amazing Spider-Man movie so that doesn’t count either. If Mary Jane Watson could get a Marvel Universe figure (eBay link), then you’d think Aunt May could get one too.
Granny Goodness – yes, I know that as a female villain who has almost no potential of reuse from any of her tooling, Granny is in the impossible category for Mattel. But she’s a fan favorite and shows up on the Top Tens, because she’s awesome. That’s automatic for any character created by Jack Kirby, modeled after Phyllis Diller, and voiced by Ed Asner. Another “not really a mom,” but Granny is the figurative mother to the Female Furies and runs the Apokoliptian orphanage that breeds warriors for Darkseid. She also raised Scott Free AKA Mr. Miracle, so he probably sends her Mother’s Day cards with “I hate you” scribbled on the inside.
Actually, WizKids (now part of NECA) made a Heroclix Granny Goodness (eBay link), which looks really awesome. But she would be a welcome addition to a lot of different lines, like Justice League Unlimited or DC Universe Classics. I’d give Mr. Miracle’s left nut for a Four Horsemen version of Granny.
So, as it turns out, the list I came up with weren’t wholly absent in the action figure world – but at least I didn’t discover there was some version of the characters in the lines that I’m currently collecting. Will they ever get made? I can only accuse the product managers of not loving their mothers.
Which action figure-worthy moms are on your list?