Dead Rock-and-Roll Action Figures: Plastic Corpse Collectables! part1
For kids action figures represent an idea of who you might grow up to be in the future. However recently I’ve started to realize that there is an entire genre of action figures that are based on dead rock-and-roll stars: My theory is that these collectables represents the mourning of our lost youth. As most of these rock stars die in their youth, we’ve never known them to grow old — and by extension this allows us to do the same.
Of course the sad reality of these action figures is that they don’t tell the full story of our musical heroes. A rock star who dies from an overdose isn’t packaged with drug paraphernalia accessories and shown on the morgue table, but instead we’re given a sculpture of a publicity shot picked by an agent acting for the estate. While this benefits the royalty holders my feeling is that this cheapens the quality of the work that many of these tragic folks produced.
Dead Punk Rock Action Figures
Sex Pistols: Sid Vicious PVC Doll To be fair there was also a Johnny Rotten doll as part of this set, but Sid’s demise in 1979 made him a punk rock legend who would haunt generations to come. Of course if I designed this I would have included a matching Nancy Spungen doll as well and included a few faux issues of the New York Post from that era with their reporting of the drama that unfolded.
Joey Ramone 7″ Action Figure by NECA Shockingly the other dead Ramones didn’t seem to merit action figures from NECA. Although what I love about this figure is that Jeffrey Ross Hyman was so very much the opposite of a typical GI Joe.
Kurt Cobain 7″ Action Figure with Skyblue Guitar by NECAAs a Gen Xer there’s something very painful to me about this doll which shows Kurt from the video Nevermind from 1991 at the start of the finish of his all too brief career.
