New Who Toys

All Sonic-ed Up!

The New Series Toys and the Fan’s Need to be Miserable

They say that every cloud has a silver lining, but this isn’t strictly true. Right now, for fans of Doctor Who there’s a cloudless silver lining. The whole bloomin’ sky is silver. It’s more a case of for every massive, beautiful silver sky there’s a lining of pure gold. After fifteen years without a full season in production and nine years on from the last hiccup of Who, we’ve got a show again. Not only that, but we’ve got an amazingly brilliant show that’s captured the kids’ imaginations. Who fans exchange cute tales of children taking turns to be the Doctor and “regenerating” from one to the other, or of overheard schoolyard arguments about whether Bad Wolf Rose brought back to life just Jack or everyone on the GameStation.

And with those children’s enthusiasm comes something else: Toys. Oh such wonderful toys. Character Options, the company that won the New Series license from the BBC once Product Enterprise withdrew from bidding, has produced a whole range of glorious tat for us. An Electronic Sonic Screwdriver with built-in ultraviolet pen and two types of noise!; a remote control 12” Dalek in its new, highly detailed gold livery; a money box TARDIS so detailed that when you open the door, the phone’s there on the inside (“How’s it ringin’? It’s not even a real phone!” as Eccles might say) and which gives a satisfying VWORP! VWORP! as it accepts your hard earned dosh; a Battle Pack of two 5” remote control Daleks with a bonus 5” figure to match (randomly either Rose Tyler or the Ninth Doctor) and a 12” Slitheen and Ninth Doctor set that functions as a walkie talkie when you pull up Eccleston’s hand and talk into his armpit.

I still can’t quite get over that last one.

And there’s more! Key-rings in the shape of the new logo, perfectly designed to rip your knackers off; a board game, jigsaws, and mugs (both the regular type and the type that threatens to exterminate everyone in the office every two minutes until a passing colleague “accidentally” smashes it with a hammer. A lot.)

Yet, somehow, the toys allow the critical eye of the fan to find a foothold for cloudiness. A dark cloud at the edge of our lovely silver sky.

The faults some are finding with the toys are many and varied. The batteries required are fiddly and a bit hard to find (LL43, eight for a quid in Pound Land it turns out) or the early shipment of RC Daleks that had a problem that led Character Options to recall them, although some eager fans managed to get their hands on these early ‘problem’ Daleks. Some are even reasonable – for instance, although nowhere on the packaging for the Battle Pack does it say the Daleks explode to reveal the mutant inside, it was part of the advance advertising as recently as three months ago, so the fact that they don’t is a bit disappointing. There have been scattered reports of people having to rewire or re-glue bits and pieces onto some toys too, but how much of that is fannish perfectionism over faults that we’d tolerate in any other toy is unclear. The most frequent complaint is simply that the toys have simply taken too long to get out into the market place – their original release date of September 1st was pushed back to “mid October” and frustration over tracking down the range still lingers.

Certainly, a member of the CO team that worked on the toys says that they’re a remarkable achievement under the circumstances. “The release date of anything manufactured in the Far East and imported to Europe can be altered by a number of factors,” he points out. “The weather: if the container ship bringing the goods is held up by bad weather, then the supposed release date can be held up for days or even weeks. Customs: Everything will have to be checked and checked again if HM Customs and Excise aren't happy with the paper work. If the container with our goodies is one of the last off the boat, it could be ANOTHER week or so before anything arrives! Have you seen the size of those things?!

“Also, Europe’s ports are currently clogged up with Chinese underwear, so that won't help either!”

Complaints about the abilities of some products being scaled back are also put down to the remarkably swift turnaround time (which was up to eighteen months shorter than most comparable franchises). “The original idea was to have a 'tricky action' style movement for the mid section [of the 12” Dalek], but time and engineering limitations caught up with the Chinese factor.” Similar turnaround issues are behind the infamous recalled batch, although “to be honest, CO's Quality Control is rather higher than a lot of companies, as they are having them fixed BEFORE they are sold!”

Some of the concerns raised by fans determined to position themselves under that cloud do tend to cross the line into the simply absurd. The 5” Daleks can’t handle carpet, apparently. But then again: they’re Daleks. The 5 foot versions would huff and puff when faced with the slightest incline and shake themselves to bits when attempting to get over cobbled streets. It’s an inherently unstable design, and there’s not much anyone can do about that. A Dalek that could navigate a shag pile would be Davros’ greatest achievement, 5 inches tall or not.

Similarly, some quarters have used words like “rip off” and “shoddy” to condemn the sonic screwdriver toy for being… wait for it… 3cm longer than the prop used in the program. See for yourself:

As you let that sink in, remember that we are the fans who have previously been handed up five sided consoles, two handed Davroses (Davrii?) and green K-9s. In that context, the new sonic screwdriver is obviously the worst thing to happen in the history of the Western world. In fact, we should all damn Sydney Newman for kicking off a chain of events that led to this moment.

Or, perhaps, people are over-reacting a little. If the news from BBC Wales is anything to go by, they are. “The Production team down in Cardiff have got a box of them to be used in the actual show,” says the CO toymaker, “so if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for me!” He also says that the toy is as accurate as they could possibly make it, “considering the turnaround time from inception to production, coupled with the fact that the toy has to be all singing and dancing, whereas the prop only has to have a blue LED in the front, the fitting of a soundchip and relatively loud speaker into the space that they have to play with.”

It’s possible that, by this stage in Doctor Who’s spotty merchandise history, we fans have become like a dog that gets regularly kicked. We recoil from perfectly nice people and bark at someone who just wants to give us a tasty treat. Years of tiny lumps of pewter that look a bit like Patrick Troughton if you squint and figures where you could toss a coin on whether it was supposed to be Mel or the Rani pretending to be Mel have left us always expecting the worst, always looking for the flaw. Somehow, even things like Sky News predicting the 12” Dalek will be the must have toy this Christmas – a kind of hate filled, xenophobic Cabbage Patch doll – can’t break through the pessimism of the long time fan.

But all I know is that this Hallowe’en I’ll be heading out with Superbaby (AKA my 18 month old son), dressed in a leather jacket and V neck jumper and wielding a sonic screwdriver in case anyone needs any concrete resonated. And this year the kids will actually know who I’m supposed to be. And you know what? There’s a good chance they’ll have sonic screwdrivers of their own.

And with that thought, the sky turns purest gold.

The Electronic Sonic Screwdriver (RRP Ł9.99); 12” Remote Control Dalek (RRP Ł39.99); Remote Control 5” Dalek Battle Pack (RRP Ł29.99); 12” Ninth Doctor/ Slitheen Walkie Talkies (RRP 1Ł9.99); TARDIS Money Box (RRP Ł9.99) and much more will be making their way into good High Street toy shops between now and October 20th. Toys’R’Us seem to have most things now, though.