Mattel gave fans the shaft on Movie Masters in many ways, but I look at the lack of a Gordon, Alfred, Lucius Fox, or even a Bruce Wayne as one of that line’s biggest disappointments. Currently, that same phenomenon is at play in one of my new favorite lines – Iron Man 2. I’ve got quite the armory going and nary a business suit among them.<\/p>\n
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<\/center><\/p>\n‘San’s e-mail gave me some directions I could take in regards to the Iron Man 2 line being fleshed out. Sure, I could have gone for a Tony Stark figure. Or perhaps Justin Hammer or Rhodey in his dress uniform. But I’m going to quietly hope that Hasbro isn’t so clueless as to leave those out. I could have gone for Pepper of course, but that’s another ball of wax entirely. I had no choice but to go with the every man of the two films, Happy Hogan.<\/p>\n
Iron Man is one of the handful of heroes that might be achievable under the right conditions – at least the armor he built in the cave anyway. And we might dream of being that billionaire with a hi-tech suit of armor. But, let’s face it – that’s a lot of responsibility. Given the choice between being Iron Man or Happy Hogan – best friend, bodyguard, chauffer, wouldn’t we choose Happy? Let’s assume he’s got a good salary with great benefits. And we know he gets to travel to exotic locales, fly on private jets, and gets to drive cool cars without having to pay for them. He might have to wash them, but is washing an Audi R8 a bad way to spend a Saturday? Of course not. Happy’s got it made. He just isn’t likely to get an action figure.<\/p>\n
Why would I want a Happy Hogan? Well, he’s in one of my favorite scenes of Iron Man 2. This may be a slight spoiler, but it’s so closely related to scenes from the trailers that I’m going to forge ahead. When Whiplash attacks Tony at Monaco, he doesn’t have the Mark V Briefcase Armor handy. It’s handcuffed to Happy a few miles away. When Pepper sees Tony in trouble on the news, she looks to Happy who’s holding up the suitcase and looking at here like “uh, we gotta go”. I loved that moment. And it\u2019s one of many fun little scenes in both films that Happy had a part in.<\/p>\n
Plus, it’s Jon Favreau! The world is due a Jon Favreau figure! No one’s ever going to go back and give him one for D-Bob (Rudy! Rudy!), Eric the Clown, or for his sad blown-into-outer-space death in Deep Impact. I suppose he has figures in the form of G-Force’s Hurley or Clone Wars’ Pre Vizsla, but the likenesses aren’t quite there, right? No, Happy Hogan is Favreau’s best chance for figuredom. And heck, you could buy a second one to put with Daredevil and have Foggy Nelson too! Or failing that, you can always have the figure simply be Jon Favreau directing the other figures in your Iron Man display. A Jon Favreau, Director figure would get plenty of mileage here at ItsAllTrue.<\/p>\n
So what’s standing in the way of Happy Hogan (or Tony, Rhodey, Hammer, and Pepper for that matter)? Kids? Retailer? Toy companies? The guy has a minimate already, so I don’t know if it’s just an old superstition or the proper business model for brand managers to be afraid of guys in suits not selling. Indiana Jones could have proved something, but there were just so many of the wrong ones. I kinda feel that way with Iron Man 2 a little bit. Maybe there could be one less of the three or four armors that are really piling up to give us a supporting figure or two and see how they do? Its little risk for Hasbro and their giant library of bodies in that scale. The SDCC Destro is 90% ready to stand in for Justin Hammer. The unproduced Toht figure, with a new lower jacket portion could be used for Hogan’s body requiring Hasbro just to make that one universal piece and then a head capturing the likeness.<\/p>\n
This could easily be done. Happy could even be included in one of the upcoming 3pks or 4pks if Hasbro was worried about how he’d sell. I won’t hold my breath on Pepper – Hasbro’s still burned from the 1967 12″ Nurse no doubt, though they should get over it. GI Joe could pretend he wasn’t a doll. The nurse couldn’t. And she didn’t have any accessory sets. And she wasn’t cross-marketed with any girl’s line. And… I digress. Suffice to say, women and guys in suits not selling might be something that’s been test marketed every year and still holds up to this day, but, if it’s just old wounds, old superstitions that keep our supporting cast members from getting plastic treatment – it’s well past time for that to be over. Iron Man 2 is a hit, closing in on $300 million domestic. If Jon Favreau made $300 million for me, I’d make sure he got an action figure.<\/p>\n
Got a suggestion for this column? Shoot us an e-mail or post it in our Most Requested<\/a> section.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":5483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[18,10],"tags":[566,553,474],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.itsalltrue.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/mrqTN1.jpg?fit=50%2C50","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pObc6-1yP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8552,"url":"http:\/\/www.itsalltrue.net\/?p=8552","url_meta":{"origin":6003,"position":0},"title":"Round Two Most Requested Semi-Finals","date":"August 12, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"It's come time again to whittle down our mid-year requests and send them to December as semi-finalists! We've got a strange batch of candidates this round including a disqualification and the surprising return a Round One Runner-Up! Voting will be open for two weeks, but don't wait! Come in and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Requests"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9719,"url":"http:\/\/www.itsalltrue.net\/?p=9719","url_meta":{"origin":6003,"position":1},"title":"Most Requested Figures: Iron Man – Rescue","date":"October 8, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"With all these movie Iron Man figures running around, plus the few from the Marvel Universe line, I think it\u2019s about time for Tony\u2019s right-hand woman to get her own toy. No, I'm not asking for a personal assistant figure, but I would like to see a figure of Pepper\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Requests"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9030,"url":"http:\/\/www.itsalltrue.net\/?p=9030","url_meta":{"origin":6003,"position":2},"title":"Most Requested Round Two The Semi-Finalists are…","date":"August 26, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Another round of Most Requested is over. The selected reader requests were placed in a head-to-head vote and with nearly 2000 votes cast, the finalists going on to December have been decided. Which requests fell on deaf ears? Which requests will join our Round One winners? It's time to find\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Requests"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10607,"url":"http:\/\/www.itsalltrue.net\/?p=10607","url_meta":{"origin":6003,"position":3},"title":"Round Three Most Requested Semi-Finals","date":"December 20, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"We're a little late, but it's finally time to select the last group of semi-finalists for IAT's 2010 Most Requested figure! For the last few months, we've featured an eclectic batch of requests and now it's come time to separate the winners from the losers. Cast your vote in Round\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Requests"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":22846,"url":"http:\/\/www.itsalltrue.net\/?p=22846","url_meta":{"origin":6003,"position":4},"title":"Review Round-Up (February 11th-February 24th)","date":"March 1, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"After a week off, Review Round-Up is back with a ton of reviews from the last two weeks! This edition is dominated by G.I. Joe Retaliation and Iron Man 3 reviews, but there still was plenty of variety these last two weeks. We\u2019ve got everything from Aquarium d\u00e9cor to Arnold\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reviews"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4359,"url":"http:\/\/www.itsalltrue.net\/?p=4359","url_meta":{"origin":6003,"position":5},"title":"Iron Man 2 Visual Checklist Added!","date":"March 12, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"We've been receiving some requests to add an Iron Man 2 Checklist to the site. Initially, we were hesitant because we're trying very hard to not get caught up in the line. We're still trying to admire them from afar, but we hit up the stores today and compiled all\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.itsalltrue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6003"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.itsalltrue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.itsalltrue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.itsalltrue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.itsalltrue.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6003"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"http:\/\/www.itsalltrue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7122,"href":"http:\/\/www.itsalltrue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6003\/revisions\/7122"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.itsalltrue.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.itsalltrue.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.itsalltrue.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.itsalltrue.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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