2020 is nearly over, and what a year it's been huh? Certainly a wierd one.
I won't niavely assume 2021 will magically be any different come midnight on the 31st though, but still, we made it through another year just about so it's time for the annual roundup.
Spending an evening playing that while my parents partied upstairs (as they often did when I was growing up) cemented my love for the point and click adventure game genre and especially for Lucasarts.
In the following years my father would often gift me a new adventure game for my birthday or christmas and I remember the year I got Day of the Tentacle and once I finished the game playing the demo for the next game the company was doing.
DOTT had a playable demo for Sam and Max Hit the Road.
Now I had no idea who Sam and Max were prior to this (it was an indie comic illustrated by a staff member named Steve Purcell who now works for Disney) but i LOVED the demo and desperately wanted the game.
unfortunately this was 1993/4 in NZ, back then game stores weren't really a thing and the only place I knew of to buy games were department stores like Kmart.
But because they were department stores their video game sections were tiny and only stocked the absolute LATEST games. So finding a game that was released pretty much alongside DOTT and had left shelves months and months prior was not going to be an easy task.
my father threw himself into the challenge. He asked around and every week we purchased the Trade and Exchange, which for those born after the 90s was like Gumtree but in physical paper form. People would post their want ads, their sale ads and so on for a nominal fee.
it took months but FINALLY we stumbled upon someone selling a copy of Sam and Max, they were on the other side of the city but my dad was willing to drive to shut me up about this damn game.
And so I finally got my precious copy of Sam and Max hit the road and I played the hell out of it till I got horribly critically stuck (remember, this was 1994, long before the era of game walkthroughs) and then I lent it to a "friend" who never game me my disks back -_- jerk.
Anyway,
Sam and Max have always held a special place in my heart, like all the Lucasarts adventure titles really.
Many many years later I got a new copy of Hit The Road and then Telltale Games was born and 3 "series" of games happened which was awesome. They even helped republish the long out of print comic series which I enjoyed reading at last.
wierdly, i'd never seen the cartoon, it wasn't broadcast when I was growing up apparently. Wierd huh? I'd have watched the hell out of that.
Anyway,
for a long time i've pined after merch for these old games that meant so much to me growing up but unfortunately adventure games just don't get merch. *huff*
Till NOW baby.
Because last year Boss Fight studio annouced they were doing Sam and Max action figures!
HELL YEAH.
I preordered them back in June but covid delayed things... a lot.
they finally shipped in November and after being hit with a customs fee *grumble* I finally got my paws on em.
The package art was done by Steve Purcell and it's glorious.
So we have Max, the "rabbity thing" and Sam "Canus Shamus" in these chunky little boxes.
I don't know much about Boss Fight studio, they seem to make action figures that you can mix and match that appear to be fantasy themed? I'm not totally sure.
They also make Bucky O Hare action figures lol. random.
anyway...
The back of the boxes has some little comics, they're all one panel things stuck together and pretty much what you'd expect from Sam and Max. Chaotic and random.
here's a better look at them.
and yes, that coffee stain is part of the packaging design.
I like that the two boxes can be put together to finish the picture of the pair highway surfing hahah.
Being "deluxe" figures they come with extra hands and heads for mixing up as well as several accessories.
Max comes with 3 extra pairs of hands including a peace sign and pointing hand, fists and open grabby hands. He also has two extra heads, one with a closed grinning mouth and one with no mouth.
his accessories are a hammer, a luger (I think it's a luger), a rat and their phone.
The phone reciever can be removed and the cord is bendy which is neat. The little rotary dial doesn't turn though, which is a shame hahah.
Sam comes with two pairs of hands extra, fists and open hands as well as two heads, angry face and neutral. He also comes with his oversized revolver, a max paper bag puppet (which is a random segment from one of the comics and replicated in the manual for the lucasarts game) and a popsicle.
They weren't held into the box with anything but slot neatly into their little segments and say in place. So they were easy to get out of the packaging.
Sam's hat is a separate piece as are Max's ears so you can swivel them if you want to.
Sam is about 6-7 inches tall while Max is about 4 inches so they're in scale with most 6 inch action figures I believe. I'd have to find some around here hahaha.
It's amusing.
Getting the accessories into their gripping hands is a bit tricky as they are made of quite hard plastic, it took a bit of shoving to get Sam to hold his huge gun.
the figures are also nicely jointed with shoulder, elbow, wrist, neck, knee and hip articulation.
The rat is just a static statue but it's still fun.
Sams hat likes to fall off.
Sam's jacket and tie are made of soft squishy vinylly stuff while everything else is hard plastic
They even sculpted teeny toe beans on Max! How cute is that!?
though i'm not sure it's wise to call a psycho holding a hammer "cute" ahem...
Max was right, he IS cute and marketable.
Getting his head off was really hard though, the little peg came off with the head and I had to yank it free and shove it back into the body!
a bit scary.
It goes back in fine but I had a moment of "oh no i've broken it!"
I didn't want to risk it with Sam so I left his extra heads alone. I might need to heat things up before I can get those off, I dunno.
Still, i'm delighted to have these two in my collection. I admit I never really thought we'd see a day where we got readily available merch of these guys.
but wait, there's more!
more you say? MORE?
well let Mr Purcell tell you:
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| https://www.facebook.com/SamandMaxFunhouse/ |
Yes, MAX PLUSHIE!
Technically the Max Plushie was released a few years ago but I never heard about it till long after it was sold out. Well people petitioned to have the company do another run and finally it happened. I had honestly forgotten i'd even signed up to be notified about restock it was that long ago so I was like "wait what?" when I got an email out of the blue telling me Max was back.
He's SOOO SOFT!!!!
And made by a company called Hashtag collectables/Uncute.
Look at the toe beans!
His tag says "uncute" because it's the name of the company/shop and isn't a comment on Max's gigantic grinning noggin.
His ears have a stiff pink inner that keeps them erect. Heh.
And his little bunny tail!
It's a really nicely sewn plushie, very cuddly and middle son keeps trying to steal him.
Sindy for size scale. Max is a pretty damn good cuddle size, not too big, not too small.
His teeth are a flap of fabric which is an... interesting choice. Personally I think it's a shame he hasn't got a partially open mouth because I think that'd be cuter but it'd also be more complicated to sew.
As it stands, the flapped teeth give the look of his artwork so it's fine.
Max wasn't cheap, unfortunately shipping was about as expensive as the plush himself and then I got hit with customs but I finally have a plush Max in my life and that is, in my mind, priceless.
I'm so happy they came back into stock.
2020 has been a rough year but it's also provided two different Sam and Max pieces of merch AND new Sindy so...
silver lining?
I'm pretty sure my new plushie won't try to gnaw my toes while I sleep right? r... right?
