{"id":27901,"date":"2019-02-01T00:00:19","date_gmt":"2019-02-01T05:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/?p=27901"},"modified":"2020-05-08T07:18:59","modified_gmt":"2020-05-08T11:18:59","slug":"disney-afternoon-mystery-minis-talespin-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oafe.net\/blog\/2019\/02\/disney-afternoon-mystery-minis-talespin-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Disney Afternoon Mystery Minis - TaleSpin review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ha ha ha ha ha haa! SPIN IT!<\/p>\n

\"Funko<\/p>\n

Following the success of Ducktales<\/i><\/a> and Rescue Rangers<\/i><\/a>, Disney stuck with what had now worked twice, taking an old character from their existing library and dropping them into a new situation. And following the daft conceptual escalation that had already gone from \"Don Rosa's Duck comics, but with less Donald and more nephews\" to \"those two chipmunks who used to pester Donald Duck run a detective agency,\" we reach TaleSpin<\/i>, in which Baloo the bear from The Jungle Book<\/i> is a dieselpunk seaplane cargo pilot in the days before World War II. You know, all the things kids love.<\/p>\n

In The Jungle Book<\/i>, Baloo was already fairly anthropomorphic, so his transition to the TaleSpin<\/i> Cinematic Universe mainly involved giving him some clothes and more human hands. Er, that is, \"more human hands\" as in \"hands that are more human than before,\" not \"more human hands\" as in \"he had a collection of human hands and we have helped him increase the size of that collection.\" Although honestly, a pile of loose human hands is not that<\/b> outside the realm of possibility for something a bear might have. Or a serial killer. Or a serial killer bear. Just like the kids love.<\/p>\n

Baloo is sculpted in a pretty simple, straightforward pose, just standing around with his hands (his<\/b> hands, not the loose human hands he's been collecting) on his hips. But what else could they do? He doesn't dance as much in TaleSpin<\/i> as he did in Jungle Book<\/i>, and there's no point in making him sit down if you're never going to release his plane, the Sea Duck<\/i> (which was originally designed for a scrapped DuckTales<\/i> plot<\/a> in which Launchpad McQuack<\/a> would run his own cargo service).<\/p>\n

Baloo is available in a 1:36 ratio, meaning he's in every third case, alternating his spot with Gadget Hackwrench<\/a> and the two 1:72 figures (Monterey Jack<\/a> and Morgana Macawber).<\/p>\n

Without any humans in TaleSpin<\/i>'s world, Baloo couldn't play papa bear to Mowgli, so the show had to introduce a new child sidekick for him. A non-human child sidekick. Enter Kit Cloudkicker, a former member of the sky pirates (the series' main villain group) who gets tired of hanging out with them, steals some of their treasure, and meets Baloo.<\/p>\n

Kit was originally going to be the son of Baloo's new boss, Rebecca Cunningham - it's pretty evident if you look at the character designs, where Kit looks more like Rebecca than her actual daughter does. Kit is also that rarest of creations, a kid-appeal character who isn't<\/b> a perpetual annoyance! Like, he's brave, but not to the point of being suicidally stupid in the face of danger; he's clever and skilled, but also realistically childish; basically, he does have the usual traits of a character in adventure fiction, but balances that by acting like a normal kid. When the writers want him to.<\/p>\n

TaleSpin<\/i> came out in 1990, so Rebecca Junior is wearing a backwards baseball cap as a way to show us that he's sassy and subversive. And the fact that his sweater has a patch on the elbow shows us that he's been living rough, with no adults to take care of him. So he's a loner and a rebel. [Someone better warn Dottie she doesn't want to get mixed up with a guy like him --ed.] He's got his skyboard tucked under his arm - it looks like a silver croissant, and is the reason he can jump or fall out of the show's many airborne transportation methods without dying horribly in every episode.<\/p>\n

Kit is available in a 1:12 ratio, meaning he's somewhere in every case, and making him easily the most plentiful TaleSpin<\/i> character in this entire series.<\/p>\n

Unlike the horrifying post-revolutionary animalpocalypse world depicted in the comic strip Slylock Fox<\/a>, TaleSpin<\/i> does not have any humans. There are anthropomorphic animals, and there are regular animals, but there's no evidence that humans were ever a thing. So it makes sense that Louie, the orangutan who wanted nothing more than to be human, seems to have given up that aspiration - he has a more distinctly simian posture in the TV series than he did in the movie, because he's already the best him that he can be.<\/p>\n

Louie runs a bar\/gas station where all the pilots based in Cape Suzette stop to refuel. In keeping with the party atmosphere Louie's Place maintains, he's wearing a Hawaiian shirt, a straw hat, and a lei. The only thing missing is a fruity drink with an umbrella in it! Of course, that would probably be a little risqué for a Disney toy to come with, and it would also mean he was no longer able to walk on his knuckles. In the cartoon, Louie was voiced by Jim Cummings, doing a spot-on impression of (original voice actor) Louis Prima<\/a> - something that became an issue with Prima's widow, who felt he hadn't been paid all the royalties he was owed for The Jungle Book<\/i>. So now here was a syndicated show copying his distinctive voice without permission (or, again, paying). She sued, Disney settled out of court, and TaleSpin<\/i> was the last time King Louie sounded like King Louie.<\/p>\n

Louie was available exclusively at Toys Я Us, where he could be found in a 1:6 ratio - in other words, two per case.<\/p>\n

The villain of The Jungle Book<\/i> was the tiger Shere Khan, who wanted to kill Mowgli because... tigers are dicks, basically? He thought of all humans as his prey, and was mad that the wolves had adopted (and were therefore protecting) the boy. Since TaleSpin<\/i> has no humans, he needed something else to focus on; so, like Lex Luthor<\/a> before him, he became a ruthless businessman, the head of Khan Industries.<\/p>\n

Shere wasn't the main villain of the TV show - that honor went to Don Karnage and the sky pirates - but he was definitely shady AF. Though he was sometimes helpful, it was mainly when the heroes' goals aligned with his own. Other times he was hiring the pirates to do something criminal for him.<\/p>\n

Fittingly, the Shere Khan Mystery Mini looks appropriately sinister. His eyes are half lidded, because he never betrayed surprise at anything that happened, and he's tenting his fingers like Mr. Burns. He doesn't wear shoes, allowing us to see his big tiger feet (he's too anthropomorphic for paws), and the buttons on his suit jacket are sculpted. He's also wearing a tie, if you look behind his hands, but the coolest feature is the little rose sculpted on his lapel. If you turn around and look at his back, you'll see the black stripes painted on his neck.<\/p>\n

Shere Khan was the rarest of the TЯU-exclusive Disney Afternoon Mystery Minis<\/i>, being limited to one per case (a 1:12 ratio). If you didn't find him when the case was new, you didn't find him.<\/p>\n

<i>And now, some more OAFEry:<\/i><\/H5>