I wasn’t a fan of the video game Minecraft, but only because I’ve heard that it’s highly addictive, and there’s only so many hours that I can devote to any activity in a given day. However, I am a fan of the old-school, 8-bit video game aesthetic, as well as a proponent of odd-looking objects in general. Between those two factors, the new Minecraft line from Jazwares is my kind of toy. The plush are suitable for all ages, while the action figures are for kids ages 6 and up, due to small pieces that come with them.
For those who haven’t been indoctrinated into the world of Minecraft, it’s kind of tricky to describe; suffice it to say, a core part of the game involves manipulating block-shaped objects. As such, it was rather appropriate that my first exposure to toys based on Minecraft was a large box left on my desk. According to game rules, I could have destroyed it with certain tools, but since I only had my bare hands, I opted to open the box and look inside instead.
What I found: An action figure representing the player avatar, whom the toys’ creators named “Steve?”; the other figure was of the Creeper, one of the game’s hostiles. Much like their video game counterparts, both are blocky to say the least, with huge, squared-off heads and stiff limbs. Meanwhile, each character comes with its own accessories: For Steve?, it’s a stone-ish gray cube and a pickaxe, while the Creeper gets packaged with a red block of TNT and a small, jagged rock. The box also contained plush dolls of such Minecraft characters as Baby Mooshroom and Enderman, the names for which do little to help describe them.
The more I played with the action figures, the more compelling I found them to be. Due to their highly geometric nature, they look simple, but actually feature enough articulation to be posed in various, entertaining ways. There’s also an attention to detail that only becomes apparent over time: The cactus-like Creeper, for example, appears top-heavy at first, like a mailbox perched on four small “feet.” But in truth, it’s a surprisingly stable toy. I also came to appreciate how Steve?’s pickaxe is all jagged and zig-zaggy, the way such an object would look in an old 8-bit game.
As for the plush, much like the figures, they feature a geometric motif that one assumes is supposed to make them look pixilated. In practice, it provides enough detail to tell kids which end of the monster is up, where the face is, etc., though not enough detail to actually be scary. If I had picked up the Enderman plush without having any previous exposure to Minecraft, I might have interpreted the character very differently from the game; at the very least, I probably wouldn’t have immediately attributed the word “hostile” to it.
And there’s nothing wrong with that. Minecraft is an open world game, after all, and the key adjective in “open world” suggests a freedom to do whatever you want, so why shouldn’t that philosophy extend to how folks react to these licensed toys?
