Dark Side of Lightyear

 

Well, after much hype from Disney and Pixar, the origin tale of Buzz Lightyear, the appropriately named “Lightyear” came and went this summer. Despite Toy Story and it’s three sequels being box office classics, Pixar’s latest outing received a slightly lacklustre reception. A shame, as standing alone as a sci fi tale, it’s excellent and a gorgeous piece of space opera. Where it fails though, is it’s intended audience. Whereas previous outings have been loved by children and adults, some of the themes in Lightyear are unmistakably adult. The chief problem I think is relativity. Whilst time travel and general relativity are difficult enough for an adult to apprehend, when you add them and the effects of temporal dilation to a kids film, along with the unfortunate emotional fallout from them, it becomes a bit of a buzz killer and seeing your hero cry on screen does not make for a fun ride. I don’t want to spoil the film for anyone who hasn’t watched it, but suffice to say there is a basic plot whereby our eponymous hero needs to breach the light barrier in order to return home. Where this fits in with my post is the means that Lightyear uses to reach hyper speed.

Mattel, as licensor for Pixar really went to town on producing a supporting toy line for the film, with at least three different sizes of action figure, two scales of vehicles and play sets and a ton of other goodies. Mattel, who historically produced Hot Wheels and Major Matt Mason, know how to make great toys and the Lightyear range is no exception. Back in 1979 they made a superb line of toys to support Battlestar Galactica, with a range of interchangeable, modular vehicles equipped with a small 1” figure. Unfortunately, the toys fired small projectiles, one of which was inadvertently ingested by a child, resulting in a fatality. This changed the toy industry almost overnight, as action features were exchanged for sound effects and lights courtesy of the burgeoning silicon revolution and Mattel’s Galactica line tanked almost immediately. Mattel rejoined the space toy line some years later with the acquisition of Coleco and rebadged the amazing StarCom line, but once more it was short lived success.

Fast forward some decades to the present and we find the Lightyear range. The backbone of the line is character driven, with a number of Buzz figures, some great Zurg androids and yellow Zyclops drones. The big draw for me though are the spaceships. In the film, the majority of them are briefly seen, apart from the first and last, but Mattel have dutifully produced 8 of the best designs, as well as a drop ship and ground vehicle and a huge alien mothership, scaled for a neat 1” figure line.

As the film wasn’t a commercial success, a lot of the toys have gone straight to discount, or not even made it across the Atlantic to England, so the last four ships are difficult to come by. The attraction for me,is the design and scale of the toys, as the average size is about six inches long and each is very detailed. Pixar spent a lot of time in designing the film world and the attention to detail shows. In the film, there would be 15 separate ships used to test the hyper speed theory and all eight that appear on screen have been made by Mattel. Testament to Pixar’s design team is the logical and visible thought process which can be seen across the eight ships, with similar features being carried along with each successive iteration. For a space toy fan like me, it was a no brainier and I made sure that I got all eight. I will go into more detail on them in a future post, but for now, here are some action shots.