Years of withdrawal after my parents threw out my action figures inspired me, after I ran away from home (to college), to begin collecting again. I started collecting at the early stages of Toy Biz’s Marvel Legends and the already churning DC Direct line. Every few months, about a dozen new and awesome figures earned a place on my shelves (yes, I open them…and play with them). And this went on for a few years until now I have a modest 300 or so figures.

But recently, the wind has left my plastic shell. DC Direct has shrunk their action figure lines to four characters instead of the previous five. When one or two of these figures is Superman and/or Batman, it doesn’t leave room for much variety. And Marvel Legends now under Hasbro have plummeted in quality, loosing most of their articulation and featuring cheap looking sculpts with plain paint jobs.

And you’d think there was a silver lining in DC’s expanded Mattel Superheroes line, but those figures have never been an example of quality. My Justice Black Canary figure is taller than the Mattel Doomsday.

The odd race to the bottom between Marvel and DC’s toy lines is depressing. Only a year or so ago, both companies produced amazing figures. I would have craved more variety in DC’s line-ups (and more articulation) and a steady release schedule from Marvel Legends, but these were minor quibbles in a sea of awesomeness. But things keep getting worse. DC’s lines are even more homogenized with no creativity except which artist rendering of Superman they will feature. And the cheap pieces of plastic that get passed off as Marvel Legends aren’t even good characters. Do we really need all these X-Men 3 characters?

Having one line drop in quality would suck, but I could survive knowing I still had some figures to look forward to. But with both lines devolving so rapidly makes this action figure collector sad. Here’s what I’d like to fix this:

DC Direct: Bring back the five to six character line-ups filled with classic recreations of our favorite characters. I don’t want to see Tony Daniel’s Teen Titans. I just want Teen Titans. And it’s not a deal breaker, but let’s see some more articulation.

Marvel Legends: Hasbro, either shit or get off the pot (well, something is shit…). Don’t make these half-assed half-painted figures. They look terrible. They play terrible. It’s embarrassing to have the Marvel Legends Xorn or White “Ann Coulter” Queen stand with the rest of my X-Men because they look so bland. Somehow Toy Biz managed to mix tons of articulation and detailed paint jobs work together. Don’t fix what ain’t broke. Fix yourselves though, cause you’re broken.