Reminder: The Summer Megaparty does not end tonight, as I've decided to extend it through August, give or take a few days. Let's celebrate the Summer Megaparty not ending with a topic that most certainly would not have been good enough to serve as its finale: Chuck Norris Karate Kommandos action figures.

I don't know if Internet meme-a-maniac Chuck Norris was ever realized in toy form again after this, but if he was, it's definitely been a downward slope since Kenner's awesome 1986 Karate Kommandos line, based on the cartoon of the same name. The show only had five episodes, but between its cult following and a recent revival on Adult Swim, it's as well known as the many other C-level action toons of the '80s. Somehow, the series spun its own toy line, which I was quite familiar with despite the fact that I didn't own any of the figures as a kid.

Remember that little entry I did about those old Consumers Showroom stores? I talked about the company's holiday catalogs in that entry -- specifically, I gushed about the last few pages, which featured crazy clearance sales on a plethora of desirable playthings. The Karate Kommandos toys were consistently advertised at 49 cents a pop on those pages, and even as a kid, it was easy for me to do the math and figure out that Mom would take no issue at all with buying me a complete set of Karate Kommandos toys at prices that low.

As fate would have it, the figures were always sold out. I can't remember where I got the three shown above, but since I can firmly say that I've never actively hunted for them during my adulthood, I'm assuming they were lumped into some form of eBay boxlot that I purchased on a whim a few years ago. They've been laying in a tub full of other random figures since then, and now that I'm taking my first close look, they're kind of great.

Twice as tall as G.I. Joe figures and five times heavier, you didn't have to be into Chuck Norris or his silly cartoon to appreciate such a strange gallery of friends and foes. The purple dude is named "Super Ninja," likely because he felt that his Predator hairstyle and outrageous purple costume negated any need for an extra clever name. If you twist the figure at the waist, his legs move in what I assume was intended to be karate attacks, even though they look way more like calisthenics.

The real trump figure of the collection (and the one that always piqued my interest in those old Consumers catalogs) was "Tabe," Chuck's close ally and noted sumo wrestler, who brought a level of supreme awkwardness to every social gathering by refusing to wear anything more than a blue thong with someone else's initials printed over his dick.

Strangely, Chuck was the least interesting figure in his own line, looking more like some random dude who cobbled together a superhero outfit from a couple of pool tubes and exercise wear.

The toys had a quaint, generic quality about them, which worked in this case, because the world wasn't exactly set ablaze by the opportunity to fill its collective toybox with action figures based on five episodes of a Chuck Norris cartoon. The figures were just plain enough to be easily adopted into more popular lines. Tabe, for example, could lock horns with a Skeletor figure without anyone ever thinking that it was some harebrained crossover.

If you're in the market to start collecting some new random old things, give this collection a look. They're relatively cheap on the collectors' market, with packaged figures in the $10-$15 range and loose figures being readily traded for couch cushion change.

Seems like a good segue into a survey: What are some of the "lesser" toy collections that stirred your flames as a kid? If you were into Transformers, so was half the world. Name some of the toys that you seemed to be alone in appreciating.

Posted by Matt on 07/31/2007. E-mail me!