By David Wharton | 8 years ago

There’s nothing Hollywood loves better than merchandising. It’s the reason why the Batman of action-figure world has 12 times as many uniforms as the Batman of the movies (and several of them inevitably, inexplicably neon-colored). Every once in a while, though, Hollywood will take a stab at creating merchandise that targets a different demographic than the source film. For instance, was John Carpenter’s The Thing crying out for a toy line? All I know is, I would totally have bought these.

Sadly, these Hasbro Thing toys are nothing but a spot-on parody of the ’80s toy commercials I grew up with, and the action figures are only real in our imagination and a number of significantly more awesome parallel realities. But even though they are merely an amusing exercise in “what if,” I have to give major props to the video’s creator. He absolutely nails the look and feel of the toy commercials from back in the day, from the cheesy voiceover to the hands clumsily walking the figures through the action.

And honestly, Thing toys don’t make significantly less sense than the Rambo cartoon and toy line…