I’ll Be Your Mirror
by Matthew Damascus
Twin 1
Matrix Series One
McFarlane Toys
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McFarlane Toys suck to be sure, they break too easily, and don’t move for shit. I hate excessive articulation with a passion, but McFarlane’s shit is just ridiculous. My Alice Cooper is missing a hand a la Darth Vader, snapped off of it’s own accord. I sold it for a dollar. But this new Matrix line, it’s like the Redemption Horn has been sounded. Well, fuck the line, the only one I’m concerned about is the Twin 1 and 2 figures.
Didn’t catch the flick. Don’t really need to, in order to appreciate the toy. Iggy Pop recast as a neuromancer? This one, this is like… fucking sublime. Hyperbole doesn’t even do this damn thing justice. It’s easily one of the finest (top 5) toys of the year so far. And like all beautiful things, it’s a bloody challenge to find. Doesn’t come easy AT ALL. I cast about online and offline fruitlessly (or dealin’ with the price gouging bastards), until I came upon it quite by accident while buying the Kingdom Come edition Wonder Woman (keep watching this space), and stumbled onto it. No, it really was underfoot. Just sorta carelessly lying there, all unloved. Well don’t worry, my darling dandy… I’ll love ye forever.
And who couldn’t love this precision level of glam-punk-cyborg-transsexual-incest (can’t stop!) freakout – – all in six-ish inch plastic wonder? It’s incredible. Fuck. Like some weirdo hybrid of the Mist from the Starman comics, that pierced guy in the suit from the Invisibles, Rozz Williams circa the Christian Death reunion, every psychically connected twin sister you ever encountered at the age of 10, and like, David Bowie if he was made out of cocaine, and, and….
It’s wonderful, I can totally project all my lil’ aesthetic reference points onto this plastic totem and still be justified, because:
- Silver nail polish.
- Silver rings.
- Steel grey dreadlocks.
- High porcelain forehead.
- White cowboy boots covered in what looks like glitter.
- Silver tiepin.
- White three-piece suit.
- Feral crouch.
If that one Watchowski brother having a sex change had anyyyyything at all to do with the frightening level of fucked-up beauty for this character and the costumes (is it a man? is it a woman? are they brothers? sisters? married?), all I can fucking well say is, you go girl! The devil is in the details here, but it’s the good devil, that gave Robert Johnson his guitar ability and all that. Stunning. Detail.
The articulation is, of course, nil. But I’m starting to think that the whole point of McFarlane product is to be like a “coffee-table toy” or somesuch. Art nouveau. Heh. Heh. Oh well, at least the Twin’s not all contorted into some ridiculous position like the Trinity figure. Fuck all that, it just doesn’t matter anymore, the Twin’s design makes every other bitch and moan irrelevant as I gaze lovingly at it.
It’s like the fucking Studio 54 of toys. Impossible to get past the velvet rope and get your hands on it. A shame. Shit, most people will never be able to experience this glammed-out toy nirvana. Yeah….
