I was eight years old when I saw a magazine ad for the Puppet Master action figure series. From that moment, that franchise and its parent studio, Full Moon, plus those figures and Full Moon Toys became my biggest childhood obsessions. I was twelve when Full Moon Toys went under. As the independent studio floundered in 2000, its accompanying toy division was at the height of its success, with products being distributed to more retailers than ever, having just announced an incredible slate of projects that would seemingly never see the light of day.
While Full Moon recovered as a studio, that toy division never did. Even though I was in middle school and trying to phase out of that kind of collecting, it hit me hard when all of those things were cancelled. When Full Moon Toys, headed by Rick Phares, disappeared, there were many things that were ready to be released and suddenly never could be, not to mention a whole slew of others that had been announced. Among them had been a long-awaited three pack Demonic Toys figure set. As that never saw release, Demonic Toys wound up being one of the few major Full Moon franchises that its toy division never got the chance to play with.
Since that time, Full Moon has certainly not stopped churning out collectibles by any means. They have made resin statues, bobble heads and most notably replicas all sold directly on their site. The replicas in particular have been of notoriously varied quality, which is simply the nature of being handmade, often likely rushed, and produced for very limited means. Other than the things licensed out, like Trick or Treat’s Full Moon Halloween masks or NECA’s phenomenal Puppet Master figures, it’s been pretty well understood for the past twenty years that even if there have been some notable highlights, the era of higher quality, more widely available Full Moon collectibles was over.
Then, very recently, an announcement came out of nowhere that Full Moon was launching a new toy division, once again headed by Rick Phares, essentially picking up right where Full Moon Toys left off with a whole slew of announcements that consist of mostly the same things Full Moon Toys had on the docket when it went belly up. Granted, the newly minted Full Moon Horror Line can’t call itself Full Moon Toys, but that was never going to be the case, in the same way that Full Moon Features isn’t Full Moon Pictures or Full Moon Entertainment. Now I am thirty-three, and I have been lucky enough to receive the first product from this new line, the talking Baby Oopsie replica, and as someone whose childhood was a little too defined by these pint-sized monstrosities, I think I can say pretty authoritatively that the Full Moon Toys era is truly back as though it had never left.
Seeing Baby Oopsie, it’s actually almost spooky, and not just because it’s a talking killer baby doll. This thing is like a relic of a demented childhood that somehow just launched through time to land on my doorstep now. It’s like that whole era never ended, it just hit the pause button for 23 years. The exception to that, of course, is that it’s based on the most recent Demonic Toys entry, the Baby Oopsie spinoff, which only makes sense. Even still, it’s very cool that Demonic Toys was the next thing in line when Full Moon Toys ended, and the first thing released from Full Moon Horror.
The very first thing I think anyone is going to notice about this figure is that it’s huge. It towers over any of the Full Moon Direct replicas I’ve collected over the years. And it is a figure, that’s also important to note. There’s no foam body and wire armature here, this is a genuine plastic doll. I know there’s a value to the foam replicas in that they can truly feel like you’re holding a prop, but this is probably the first plastic Full Moon doll I’ve held since the old days (other than their recent 2″ mini-figures) so for me personally it was a very welcome return. By and large this does feel more like a doll than a replica, given that it is plastic, pose-able, and that its eyes light up and it talks. I still wouldn’t dispute calling it a replica, though, because the likeness to Baby Oopsie is spot-on. And being a functional doll only makes it feel that much more like a Demonic Toy.
The talking feature, I’ll admit, took me a second to figure out, though it was only because I foolishly didn’t look at the box where the instructions were clearly explained. It’s just like many other electronic toys: pull a plastic tab out and the doll will start saying many, er, colorful phrases at the touch of a button. Even that was weirdly nostalgic for me, because it was just like pulling the tab to get the original Puppet Master Blade or Torch figure’s eyes to light up back in the day.
Packaging is also of note here. Most of the replicas in the past haven’t really had any, but this comes in a sleek slipcover box that sells the prestige of this new line and then gives way to a more tongue-in-cheek doll box underneath, with a big notice right on the front to let you know that this is not intended for kids. And that’s wise, considering the fact that this doll has a very, very foul mouth. My favorite bit of showmanship around the toy, though, is the certificate of authenticity. This is actually a birth certificate of authenticity, which lists Baby Oopsie’s date of birth as the release date of the original Demonic Toys and is signed by both Baby Oopsie writer/director William Butler and producer/Full Moon CEO Charles Band.
All in all, this thing is great and that’s not just the bias of a longtime fan, because I’m also incredibly aware of Full Moon’s ups and downs as a studio over the years. I love a lot of the replicas of the past, but looking at those and then looking at this, they’re not even really comparable. While not necessarily putting this at, say, the same level of a Trick or Treat Chucky replica, this is much more on the level of a Trick or Treat or NECA replica doll than the replicas Full Moon has had the means to make since they started them in 2007.
This has the look that Full Moon Toys had, that Rick Phares look that I can’t even describe. It’s just a stylistic thing. As I’ve said, it looks fully of that era, only updated to modern standards and character design, if anything. I can’t even articulate how that fan in me feels to see that return, especially knowing that there’s more to come. The $299.95 price tag is admittedly steep, but it is in line with other collectibles of the type.
New Puppet Master replicas are expected to follow Baby Oopsie, not to mention a working Jack-in-the-Box replica from Demonic Toys and the Bloodstone from Subspecies. Plus the Tiny Terrors, a kind of throwback to the Little Big Head era of toys, which were unveiled first in 2000 and then again in 12 Slays of Christmas this past December. All of these things were part of the last wave of announcements Full Moon Toys made in 2000 and are now finally being dusted off.
Honestly, on a personal note, I thought that era—the era that made me a fan—was gone forever. I had adjusted to the budgetary realities of modern Full Moon and understood that that period was something that could not ever feasibly return. And now here it is, exactly at the level it once was. I’d be happy just to have Baby Oopsie, this one surprise thing to remind me how it felt to get my hands on something like the 12” Blade doll for the first time. I sure didn’t think that feeling would ever come back. But now, having something of this quality and knowing there’s so much more planned, of course I can’t wait to see what’s next.
I cannot wait for Full Moon fans to see this for themselves, and I’m thrilled at the thought that you can finally have a Demonic Toy of your very own when Baby Oopsie is released this March.
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