Did they ever make The Facts of Life action figures?* As recently mentioned at Cranky, I’m at a loss over how to proceed with the Firefighter review. Since dispatches from the McCheese office are usually only stickied for 24 hours, I’ll catch you up to speed: Firefighter, a Nancy McKeon telefilm from the mid-’80s, was going to be the subject of my next review, but stringent copyright protections have thwarted my quest for screenshots.
The images add something to these retrospectives, in my opinion, because some of the films I cover are impossible to find if they’re yanked from YouTube or other streaming services. My options, as I saw it, were either to take photos of my screen in lieu of screenshots or have Crankenstein provide a few doodles that capture all the drama, excitement, and (probable) sexual harassment the movie has to offer. Then, while priming crown moulding earlier, I was seized by a thought: “Did they ever make Facts of Life toys?”**
It was the sort of question that begets more questions, each dumber than the last. How would they accessorize, with backpacks and hairspray? Would Cloris Leachman’s character make the cut or only Mrs. Garrett? What would you do with any of them, anyway, when they only seemed to stand around and talk? If a Jo action figure existed, I thought it might be funny to pose it in reenactments of the scenes from Firefighter, so I did a little Googling and a bunch of eBay listings appeared.
To make a long story short(er), a trio of Facts of Life dolls were produced by a toy company just a few years ago. You can check out Jo, Blair and Tootie in this YouTube video. Scrolling through the auctions, I noticed something curious: a few of the dolls bore a genuine resemblance to McKeon, while most didn’t. Whether that’s a quality control issue or if bootleggers mistakenly thought there was a market for such items, who knows, but it brings us to this question: Should I purchase one, put her in firefighter gear and take photos for a review? Have your say below and I’ll find something else to review in the meantime.
* Apologies to anyone impatient for another “Help! My marriage has fallen and it can’t get up!” post, or maybe something about the time my dad took me to a Bob Dole rally in 1996. I’m still working on “Burn After Reading” and “Same Trailer Different Park,” but in my opinion none of that is more personal than the recent revelation here that Crankenstein and I are both worried about whether I’m on borrowed time not just physically but cognitively.
** The painted flooring in the crown moulding photo — I tried to give it a distressed look — will soon be covered by planks. The paint is for better glue adhesion and to provide color coverage in case of floorboard gaps.