Around The BLOCKhead

By: Erich Arendall

Episode 6: Your PALz and Mine


A few PALz
It's October, the official month of creepy crawlies and things that go bump in the night, so what better block figure line to discuss than the Palisade Toys line of PALz. Why PALz? Because their licenses included both Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and X-Files, two TV shows with their share of night bumps. Note: "night bumps" is not a euphemism for sex. This time.

Palisades Toys was a smallish toy company, with a successful line of Muppet toys and a handful of other licenses with varying degrees of sales (including Army of Darkness, Adult Swim and Invader Zim). And with their excellent craftsmanship and spirit of community it seemed there was nowhere but up for them. This feeling was at its pinnacle in 2004, when Palisades Toys announced that they'd be entering the block figure market. The license to be handled? The popular Buffy: The Vampire Slayer TV series, which had just ended the year before. At the time, Art Asylum's MiniMates had already been scaled down from their initial 3" size to their current 2" size and their lines were primarily focused on comic characters--their Marvel line had been in production for about two years and they had just launched their DC Comics C3 line.


"I'm a vampire!"
"No, I am!"
While MiniMates were generally packaged in two-figure packs with minimal accessories, the PALz 2.5" figures were packaged as single figures with a host of accessories and enough extra pieces to allow a change of outfits. The first series of Buffy PALz figures also came with a tombstone, allowing purchasers to put together a cemetery to hunt the vampires. One of the most innovative features with the Buffy PALz was the fact that, like the Roman god Janus, just about every figure's head had two faces--this not only allowed Buffy and her compadres the ability to change facial expressions with their outfits, but gave the vampire characters the ability to have both their human and "game face." The only characters who were denied a second expression were the bald ones. Namely, The Master--but he only had one face in the series, anyway.


"Do you dig graves?"
"Yeah, they're alright."
PALz shared the same articulation points as MiniMates: ball-bearing head, shoulders and hips; joints at elbow and knee; swivel hands, torso and feet--making them perfect for a variety of poses or, more importantly, play. Like MiniMates, each appendage could be removed at the articulation point, allowing for a mix-an-match of parts to create whole new costumes and characters. And, unlike the comic-oriented MiniMates, PALz figures were based of real-worldish, contemporary licenses, so mixing and matching of parts rarely gave the feeling that Skrulls had taken over one's block figure collection.


I've got a stake in Season 1.
The Buffy PALz ran for a little over two waves. The first wave included Buffy, Willow, Xander, Giles, Darla (also a repaint version of Darla) and The Master. As previously stated, each figure not only came packaged with a number of accessories and change of clothes, but also with a tombstone to help the buyer make a cemetery. The second wave featured the Season 2 look of Buffy, Jenny Calendar, Oz (also a repaint version of Oz), Drusilla, Spike and Cordelia. Unlike the first wave, the second wave did not come with tombstones, instead each figure came with a coffin-like container which housed a piece of The Judge, so purchasers of the entire wave were basically given a figure for free. Unfortunately Series 3 never made it to production, but comic convention and holiday specials did allow Buffy fans to pick up Angel, a vampire version of Buffy, Kendra, a 3-pack of monsters (featuring The Anointed One, Der Kinderstod, and invisible girl Marcie Ross), a 4-pack of The Gentlemen (from the award-winning episode "Hush"), a 3-pack called the "Cemetery set" (including tombstones and a single-costumed Buffy, Xander and Willow) and a 4-pack of characters from the 2nd season's Halloween episode (Buffy, Xander, Willow and Cordelia were featured with their everyday wear and Halloween costumes). Members of the Palisades Club were also offered the ability to purchase a silver lunchbox which contained a "dusted vamp" figure and "Nightmares" Xander (which put Xander in either his Sunnydale High gym suit or a pair of boxers). San Diego Comic Con visitors of 2005 also had the opportunity to pick up a special "Wild At Heart" version of Oz.


Don't judge Season 2 poorly!
Originally set to be released in late 2005/early 2006, the third wave of Buffy PALz would have included Buffy from 3rd season's episode "Anne", Angel from "Amends", Anya, Faith, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce and Mayor Wilkins and would have featured another Build-A-Figure: The Snake Mayor. Unfortunately the wave and any subsequent waves were never released. On February 1st, 2006 President & CEO of Palisades Toys, Mike Horn announced that Limited by CAS, Inc., had purchased "a substantial portion" of the assets of Palisades, including the Palisades Toys and Factory X brand names. Limited by CAS, Inc. focused primarily on the busts created by Palisades and eventually the name of Palisades was washed away in the sands of time--which flow swiftly in the realm of toys. This buyout also stopped production on two other lines of PALz: The X-Files and Die Hard.

In early 2005, PALz added The X-Files to their numbers. The first wave was packaged much like the Buffy PALz: clear plastic on cardboard backing, displaying the figure and its accessories. Unlike the Buffy PALz, the X-Files PALz were not graced by Janus and had only one face on their heads. Also, while the figures came with a healthy amount of accessories, they did not come with any Build-A-Scene or Build-A-Figure components. Wave 1 included Fox Mulder (or a chase "Men In Black" version of the figure wearing dark shades), Dana Scully (or a chase "captive version" which has her mouth gagged), a Gray Alien, The Conundrum, The Flukeman, Melvin Frohike, Donnie Pfaster (or the nightmarish demon version), and Deep Throat.


Yippi-ki-ay, mamma-jamma!
Both the second wave of X-Files and the only wave of Die Hard PALz shifted packaging directions. Instead of appearing cardboard backing with a clear front, displaying the accessories and quality of the figure, the figures were blind-packaged. A buyer did not know which figure they were receiving until the package was opened. While this was well-accepted by fervent collectors / eBay sellers, it was not well-received by a number of long-time fans of Palisades Toys and the lines received mixed reviews, despite the figures retaining their excellent quality and goodly number of accessories. That said, the waves included a large number of different characters and alternate paint jobs, but created some very chase markets as some figures were packaged at a 1:64 ratio, driving their eBay prices up. While many point to this as the demise of Palisades Toys, the figures still sold well and, from my understanding, Limited by CAS, Inc. was in talks with Palisades Toys members before the blind-packaged PALz were released.


"Just a cursory mention?"
"Looks like it."
The PALz are still my favorite block figures. Partially because of the licenses used, partially because of the number of accessories, but mostly because of the mix-and-match abilities of their body parts, allowing for the creation of totally new characters, unaffiliated with any license. It was their easy customization factor (no painting skills required) that inspired me to use them for my webcomic, Attercap.Net. These days, the PALz figures go for wildly divergent prices, depending on where one finds them, but I encourage fans of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, The X-Files and/or Die Hard to find them where they may be. And celebrate your Halloween with creatures that go bump in the night. Creatures like Hans Gruber.

Incidentally, former Palisades Toys member and current president of Creatus Maximus, Ken Lilly, is trying to come up with the necessary scratch to develop a new line of PALz-compatible toys called Create-A-Men. If you're interested in picking up some PALz or have an interest in toys at all, I encourage you to shop his eBay store: Corn Dog Collectibles.

-erich

Erich Arendall makes prime use of the PALz line in his webcomic, Attercap.Net, customizing them to make new characters..

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Copyright © 2007 Eric Arendall