Get ready to step into the shoes of Dr. Frankenstein and bring your very own monsters to life! With a new line-up of UNIVERSAL MONSTERS action figures, Mini-Mates, and retro-cloth figurines hitting store shelves – courtesy of Diamond Select Toys – it’s the perfect time to don your favorite mad scientist outfit and get some monsters of your very own!
UNIVERSAL ACTION FIGURES
First up, the action figures! There are four of these amazing UNIVERSAL MONSTERS action figures to collect, each of which depicts a classic monster in their supernatural habitat and comes equipped with their very own unique accessory!
THE MUMMY
You wander across the Egyptian desert on the verge of heatstroke, lips cracking from dehydration as you drag your feet through the scalding sands. At the top of a particularly high sand dune you stop and bring a canteen to your parched lips.
Nothing comes out.
Frustrated, you shake the canteen. One single drop of moisture forms at the vessel’s mouth. You bring it to your lips slowly, desperate to slurp up this delicious H20, but despite your best efforts the droplet falls to the scorched ground before you can get in position.
Your last hopes evaporating as fast as the last of your water, you whip the canteen at the ground and fall to your knees. As you kneel there sobbing, the ground beneath you suddenly shifts.
What was that? You scramble to your feet only to slip and fall into a cyclone of sand as it pours down through a growing hole that appears underneath you.
THUD. Groaning, you climb to your feet and pull out the flashlight you brought for just such an occasion. Finding yourself in an enormous underground tomb of sorts, the only thing around you is a strange ancient pedestal with an ominous-looking scroll resting on top of it.
Never the smartest person, as proven by your being stranded in the Egyptian desert in the first place, you choose to pick up the parchment and find it covered in strange hieroglyphics - it is the Scroll of Thoth. Everything you learned in those Egyption 101 classes that you took back in high school comes flooding back to you and you read a passage aloud.
The ground shakes again, cluing you in to the immense poorness of this latest series of decisions that you’ve made. Shining the flashlight around frantically, you search for any indication as to what is going on. The ground continues to shake, debris and sand rain down from the ceiling, a creepy undead arm flails around wildly as it sticks out of a crack in the side of an ornate sarcophagus. Wait, what!?
You watch, frozen in horror, as the linen-wrapped arm pushes the lid off the sarcophagus to reveal the embalmed, yet somehow living remains of Prince Im-Ho-Tep. The Mummy gives a scratchy groan, flexing dried up vocal cords that haven’t been used in millenia, and limps toward you.
Terrified for your life, you retrieve the Scroll of Thoth and skip to a new passage, conveniently titled “HOW TO SHRINK AN ATTACKING MUMMY.” You speak the words and BAM! Time freezes around you. An eerie light appears within The Mummy’s hallow chest cavity and, in the blink of an eye, engulfs the undead being.
After a moment the light fades and, resting on the ground where The Mummy once stood, is a tiny figurine. You pick it up and inspect it, temporarily entranced by the figurine’s incredible detail. You grin and let loose a victorious laugh. Finally! Your very own authentic Mummy action figure! If only there were an easier way to get one…
Oh, wait. There is!
Cue Diamond Select Toys and their latest series of action figures, capturing The Mummy in a never-before-seen level of detail! This outstanding Imhotep action figure stands 8″ tall and comes with an exclusive, full sized sarcophagus – large enough to contain your mummified monster when he tries to sacrifice you to revive his long lost love! All for only $19.99!
DRACULA
1931 – Carpathian Mountains – Borgo Pass.
Ignoring warnings from the locals, the intrepid (or stupid) Renfield made his way through the mountains via stagecoach, headed for the ominously named Castle Dracula. The road was bumpy, and it didn’t take long for Renfield to lean out of the carriage to ask the driver if perhaps he could have a small pillow or some such cushion to protect his tookus. But the driver was gone, and instead a strange bat fluttered in front of the horses, leading the way.
“By Van Helsing’s crucifix!” Renfield shouted, “Bats don’t know how to drive!”
Clamoring to the driver’s seat, Renfield took the reins and desperately tried to control the horses. The Bat did not like this.
With the moves of an Arwing from Starfox 64, the Bat somersaulted through the air and attacked Renfield.
“Son of a banshee!” Renfield exclaimed, unprepared for such an aerial assault.
The Bat attacked again and again. And again and again. And again and again and again and again. Finally Renfield had had enough.
“I’ve had enough!” He announced.
As the Bat swooped down for another attack, Renfield reached out and plucked the wanna-be bird from the air. The Bat struggled to free itself, but Renfield held on tight. After a moment the Bat stopped struggling, and then something completely and utterly shocking happened…
The Bat began to transform into a man. A very distinguished, very pale man with a glorious red and black cloak. Unfortunately, presumably due to the constraints of Renfield’s chubby fingers, the transformation resulted in not a full sized human, but a very small, very flustered Tiny Count Dracula.
“Noo!” Tiny Dracula cried in a high falsetto, “Curse my tiny bat body and the ambiguousness of my re-transformation process! ”
“Huh,” muttered Renfield, remarkably taking this all in stride, “Sucks for you. I’m going to go live in your castle now!”
And with that he tossed Tiny Dracula out into the night and continued on to his new life of riches and luxury. Tiny Dracula was never seen or heard of again.
This is not that Tiny Dracula. But it is an incredible replica!
FRANKENSTEIN
There once was a doctor. Well, more of a mad scientist really. But for the sake of anonymity, we’ll just call him Dr. Henry Frankenstein.
Dr. Frankenstein had a rather sad childhood, always getting picked on for his crazy inventions – and later on getting picked on for earning a Ph.D. in a time when people didn’t even know that those letters existed.
Under such terrible conditions, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that little Dr. Frankenstein grew to hate the world. On his eighteenth birthday, the Doctor was struck with a brilliant idea. If the world was full of people who were mean to him, he would create one who wasn’t.
And so Dr. F went to work. He worked and he worked, and then he worked some more. On Monday, he worked. Tuesday, worked. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday? Worked. The man didn’t even take weekends off! He was obsessed.
Years went by and finally the day came that his creation was complete, all he needed was power. 1.21 gigawatts of it.
“1.21 gigawatts!” Doc exclaimed, “How am I gonna generate that kind of power? It can’t be done! I mean, the only power source capable of generating that much electricity is…”
And then it hit him. A bolt of lightning!
After wiring up a few simple contraptions and waiting twelve days for a thunderstorm, the good Doctor was ready.
He plugged in the machine. ZAP! The monster of Frankenstein was born!
From that day on, Dr. Frankenstein and his monster were living the good life. Playing catch, tea parties, getting drunk in Vegas… the inseparable duo did it all! Until that fateful day that Frankenstein’s monster got lost on his way back from the candy store and was mugged by a local biker gang that called themselves the Torch & Pitchforks. Hearing his monster’s demonic cries of fear, Dr. Frankenstein rushed to the scene. But he was too late, the ravenous gang had torn his friend to shreds.
Gathering what remains he could find, Frankenstein took them back to his lab and tried to recreate his masterpiece. While managing to capture the incredible detail of his original creation, this copy was much smaller – due to lack of materials – and didn’t have enough matter for the life-giving process to work, and so the Doc was stuck with a lifeless doll monster.
Unable to live with the constant reminder of his failure, Dr. Frankenstein sold his mini-creation on Ebay and it eventually found it’s way to Diamond Select Toys, where they put legendary monster sculptor Gabriel Marquez to work and the Frankenstein’s Monster action figure was born!
Clocking in at $21.99, this 7″ action figure comes with a fantastically sturdy little table that looks identical to the very piece of laboratory furniture upon which the original Frankenstein’s Monster was created!
CREATURE OF THE BLACK LAGOON
1954 – The Jungles of the Upper Amazon
A decade before Steve “The Crocodile Hunter” Irwin was even conceived, Doctors Reed and Williams led a fateful expedition into the rain forests of Brazil where they stumbled upon a horrifying byproduct of evolution.
Previously content with researching boring old lung fish, Dr. Reed was talked into the expedition by a Dr. Maia, who had just discovered the fossilized remains of a strange claw unlike anything ever seen before.
Fast forward to Brazil.
Reed, having left to find more workers, returned to his campsite only to discover that those he had left behind had been murdered in his absence. Determined not to let something as small as unexplainable deaths keep him from the prize, Reed continued to search for the fossil. And that’s when he happened across the Black Lagoon.
Despite their guide’s warnings that this lagoon is like the Bermuda Triangle of the Amazon, Reed and Williams (oh yeah, he was there too!) went off exploring while Reed’s Girlfriend (brought along because of how romantic mosquito-infested jungles are) decided to go for a swim.
Worst. Decision. Ever.
The Creature, lurking beneath the dirty water, was entranced by the oddly enticing curves of this strange gill-less creature that had trespassed on his territory. He did not know what it was, or why he liked it, but he wanted it. Now.
A floppy fin-hand grabbed at Reed’s Girlfriend’s ankle and, as one is prone to do in this situation, she shrieked in terror. Reed and Williams came to her rescue, only to quickly find that they had no idea how to fight an underwater fish-man-monster and soon they too were in need of assistance. Assistance that came in the form of the great Captain Lucas.
Being the one who warned them of the Lagoon’s dangers in the first place, Lucas had come prepared. Armed with a harpoon in one hand and a net-gun in the other, the heroic Captain steered his boat to the drowning doctors.
He fired the harpoon over the Creature’s head, missing by a mile. The Creature watched it whiz by, snickering, and turned back around only be engulfed by the giant net from the net-gun. Grunting, the Captain pulled the net on board and watched in mild satisfaction as the out-of-water Creature started to shrivel and shrink before his eyes (much like a Wild-Animal-Magic-Capsule in reverse) (yes, the Creature is technically an amphibian, but… creative liberties!!).
Needless to say, this shrunken beast became the inspiration for Diamond Select Toys’ spectacular seven-inch figure of the infamous Creature, which depicts the gilled legend in possibly the most screen accurate detail to date! And if scaly fish-men don’t do it for you, what about attractive women? That’s right, this Creature of the Black Lagoon action figure comes with his very own femme fatale! And you can have both for just $19.99!
