Mark this up as one more blow to human-mutant equality. Marvel lawyers are putting up a fight to prove the mutants aren't the same as humans after all. Unleash the Sentinels!


This strange piece of news comes via the Radiolab Podcast, which uncovered a weird saga of legal wrangling and tariff shenanigans.

Toys manufactured in various countries and later imported to the US have to be taxed. And the taxes for each kind of toy vary, depending on the description. Specifically, "dolls" are toys that represent some sort of human, and "toys" are representations that are non-human, such as robots or animals. And it turns out, the non-human toys are taxed at a much lower rate than the human ones, 6.8 percent versus 12 percent. Hence, two Marvel lawyers are arguing that Mutant action figures are not actually human — and therefor shouldn't be taxed as much. And thus unknowingly unleashing the age-old Mutant debate that has long been a part of the X-Men's world.


This argument has been going on for a while, and it gives rise to a lot of legal quibbling. But there's also a lot of entertaining discussion of the rights and nature of mutants. It's a wickedly entertaining addition to the Radiolab's podcast, they even got X-Men director Bryan Singer to chime in.

(And if opposing mutant-human equality wasn't enough, today we also learned that Marvel is one of the major supporters of SOPA, the bill that would wreck the internet. Someone did not learn that lesson about great power.)

We encourage you to check it out. [via Slashfilm]