ToyCyte: Toy Culture Collected

I spent most of my formative creative years inspecting every corner of Brian Froud’s ‘The World of the Dark Crystal’ and subsequently twisting my brains around the film, so it has a unique place carved out in my psyche – right alongside Galaxy High and Pee Wee’s Playhouse. This month, NECA will launch their line of Dark Crystal figures, beginning with the most evil of all of the Skeksis, skekSil the Chamberlain.

At six inches tall and ridiculously ornamented in true Froud style, I’m excited to see how these animal-like forms translate into action figures, being relatively ambiguous in the film itself to allow for puppeteering. Still, no one but Henson is capable of creating such a solid, immersive world of dark fantasy – and this will make a great companion to NECA’s ongoing series of Labyrinth and David Bowie’s Crotch action figures, also culled from a similar Henson-and-Froud-created universe. Just don’t keep them with your Muppets. Leave them their crotchless innocence.

Here’s hoping for an army of Landstriders, those crazy gem-bats, a gathering of urRu, a pile of half-dead Gelflings, and a giant superdeluxe light-up urSkek to bring it all back around.