Escape From The Island Of Misfit Toys

Whenever I'm at Wal-Mart, I like to venture into the toy section so that I can check out their selection of action figures. I very rarely ever buy any, mostly because I don't really feel like purchasing any of the 3,000 varieties of the action figures I'd typically want. I don't want Aquamarine Iron Man with the special scuba gear built into his suit, or the Ultra-Stealth Batman with the camouflage costume. I just want the regular, standard versions of the action figures I'd want to buy, but the toy companies apparently don't make them. They must figure that instead of buying just the regular old Batman like he appeared in the movie, people would much rather purchase a Batman figure with a million useless accessories that you've never seen before (and more than likely don't want).

But I'm going off on an unnecessary tangent. Back to the point. I was visiting the action figure aisle of the local Wal-Mart earlier this afternoon, and what caught my eye were their selection of WWE figures. As a wrestling fan, it always strikes me as weird that every Wal-Mart I've ever been to carries an incredibly outdated selection of wrestling toys. By "outdated," I mean that most of the wrestlers seen on these racks in toy form were fired by WWE long ago. The Wal-Mart I was in today had figured representing Big Daddy V, Balls Mahoney, Nunzio, Stevie Richards, Marcus Cor Von, and The Gymini. I could understand seeing the figures of Mahoney, Nunzio, Big Daddy V, and Stevie, since they've only been on the unemployment line for less than six months. But Marcus Cor Von? The Gymini? Cor Von was fired a year ago yesterday, and The Gymini were fired right at - get this! - 21 months ago. Nearly two years they've been gone from WWE, and every Wal-Mart I've been in during that time period usually has one or two sets of Gymini figures. And I think they only wrestled three televised matches, to boot. It'd be like if they made figures for the Gobbledygooker or the Heartthrobs or somebody lame like that.

The Gymini figures really blow me away. It's not just the fact that they exist to begin with, but also that these poor unloved, unwanted figures have been sitting on store shelves for nearly two years and nobody even bothers to look at them. Yeah, Gymini was an incredibly lame, forgettable tag team, but come on. You'd think that somebody at Wal-Mart would notice that these figures have never moved and get the hint that they probably never will. Just shove them over into the clearance aisles, then ship them off to the Island of Misfit Toys to go hang out with Hermey the elf and Yukon Cornelius. Or at the very least, they could just invest in wrestling figures that kids would actually want to buy.

And while I'm thinking about it, I've got to hunt down a Yukon Cornelius figure. He rules.