This holiday shopping season, kids across America have been clamoring for rescue-worker action figures — like the new Fisher-Price Billy Blazes New York Fire Fighter — which have been selling faster than last year’s Pokémon. "As soon as they hit the shelves, they’ve been selling out," says Colleen McMillan, the communications manager at the Toy Industry Association, a trade group representing 80 percent of all toy manufacturing companies. "The definition of hero has kind of changed," she explains.

And now, officers from a notorious police department some 3000 miles away are hoping to share some of the lucrative action-figure action. This month, the Los Angeles Police Protective League (LAPPL), a union representing around 9000 LAPD officers, introduced two Elite Force action figures decorated in full regalia and equipped with pepper spray, handcuffs, an automatic pistol, and a baton. The figures, plastic-y Patrol Officer West and his severe-looking female counterpart Officer Sommers, stand a foot tall and sell for just south of $40 on the LAPD’s Web site (www.lapd.com).

The police playthings were originally planned as part of a larger campaign to boost the force’s public image. As police reps go, it can’t get much worse than the LAPD’s, following the Rodney King beating in 1992 and the Rampart station drug-embezzlement scandal in 1999. But as it’s turned out, the LA figurines hit the streets at the start of the rescue-worker-action-figure renaissance, a boon for potential business.

"[The action figures] are a great way to show pride in the law enforcement heroes that are protecting our nation right now," said LAPPL president Mitzi Grasso in a press release last week. "[Police are people] who kids can look up to, people who serve in their community," McMillan agrees.

But while folks in the industry may buy the police pitch, local store owners are a little more wary. "LAPD action figures?" snorts TD Sidell, an employee at the Cambridge comics store Million Year Picnic. He doubts his store will stock the figures, but he suggests a likely set of buyers. "I think there will definitely be a market for them for the artist who wants to do something really nasty with them," he says. "Like the Jesus action figure. Nobody is going to buy the Jesus one and play ‘Last Supper.’ " He uses a silly high-pitched voice to mimic the game. "Here, Jesus, have some wine."

Ultimately, the whole idea of heroic LAPD figurines strikes him as humorously off. "Do they come with nightstick-beating action or drug-smuggling action?"

Issue Date: December 13 - 20, 2001

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