Reinventing the Toyman
I kinda hate the Toyman.
I can't entirely hate him. I like the concept. But I've always loved toys and the Toyman never really resonated with me, with the closest to hitting the mark for me being Hiro, but he's, as the name implies, a hero. The BTAS version was okay, but a very different concept.
Mostly, I never found the Toyman terribly interesting because he's deeply anachronistic in most incarnations, with his once-retro obsessions now absolutely antique all wooden horses and Betsy-wetsy dolls. All Babes in Toyland, a toy-experience that I found alien and lame as an 80s kid.
One of these is going to give the Justice League a bit more trouble than the other.
And if we need a toxic fanboy villain, I think Control Freak is way more fun for that role.
And DC is sitting on an opportunity for some delightful cross-promotion opportunities. So here is my proposal for a new Terrible Toyman:
He's Having Fun and So Help Him So Will You
"Nobody has fun anymore. They closed the parks, the arcades are gone, there's no toy stores. Everyone's just angry all the time! If I don't make them stop and have some fun, who is going to?"
I see Toyman as being a lot more Gotham than Metropolis, in that he's an obsessed eccentric who takes his worldview to supervillainous levels. The world isn't fun. Everything's too gritty, and the world needs to learn a lesson. The world needs to learn to play nice.
So, much like the Riddler, he sets out to challenge the heroes with his robot toys and schemes, but unlike the Riddler he's not trying to show he can beat them. He wants the heroes to win, but he can't just let them win, otherwise its no fun, and they won't learn anything.
His targets are what he perceives as the enemies of fun. Foreclose on a toy store? Bulldoze a playground? Cancel a fun TV show? The Toyman may be there. Remove a McDonald's Playplace? Rebuilt by plastic robots because the Toyman is there.
Though he might also be there because your TV channel shows 3 hours of golf when kids should be watching cartoons. Proportional response does not a villain make.
He's Smarter than He Lets On (It Rarely Helps)
"Doc Magnus, pfft, he's so proud of his tin soldiers, but I practically figured out how to do it with plastic when I was 15. I just have the sense not to make a toy self aware. Except for Deadly Ruxpin. Boy that was a tricky recall. Lesson learned."
The Toyman is brilliant, able to make lifelike full-sized robots out of plastic, functional mecha, and all manner of super-gadgets. But he's got a psychological block that makes that genius pretty much only apply when he's making a toy. Any attempt at a serious project bores, frustrates and irritates him until he turns it into a toy somehow. If he somehow were to manage to finish a "serious" project, he'd subconsciously self-sabotage it.
Lex Luthor: You found a way to make plastic come to life and you use it to make giant toys? You could use that to bring the world to its knees with an unstoppable army!
Toyman: But I don't WANT to bring the world to its knees with an unstoppable army, I want to make giant toys!
This ability does not apply to things like planning, strategy, or catching obvious flaws in his reasoning.
He's a Fanboy (And a Marketing Opportunity)
"Enemies? Batman? Superman? No! I love those guys! They're so cool, with their gadgets and costumes and things! They just don't get what I'm trying to do. They don't understand how I'm just like them, just for fun instead of justice."
And this is reflected in his devices. One of the main problems with the Toyman is his toys are always so inauthentic because they're unhip, retro, public domain concepts. But DC makes tons of awesome fun toys.
The Toyman uses those in-universe. All the non-canon, highly toyetic stuff that hit our shelves in the past three decades hitting the heroes in the face at 1:1 scale:
The Least Creepy Incarnation
The "collect my heroes" aspect in a lot of other incarnations is missing here. Would he love to have a real utility belt or kryptonite ring for his collection? Sure, who wouldn't? But he'd rather just get some good reference to make his own more fun versions. As to kidnapping people to seal on card or dip in plastic? That's no way to treat playmates!
And his most silver lining is that he genuinely wants kids to have fun, happy childhoods full of play. He will not abide children being harmed (definition subject to being akimbo), nor their caregivers as long as they're good ones, and he's generally got a code against killing.
But an adorable monster plush toy that defends its owner against mistreatment via mauling? Who could object to a toy that protects its child? And those toy execs that cut corners and kids got eye injuries from that missile? We'll see how they like getting hit in the eye with an unsafe projectile! And those kidnappers who tried to ransom Bruce Wayne's ward?
Well if the Batman hadn't gotten to them before the lifesize Harpoon Action Jak Steele(TM), they'd be put in a permanent time out, that's for sure.
He's Got a Partner in Crime (And life)
The Toyman wants people to play nice, and the GameMistress wants them to play fair.
Childhood fun is all about toys and games, but videogames aren't the Toyman's bag. Thankfully, he's in a committed-yet-open relationship with the GameMistress, a villainess with a similar ethos and an obsession with games, especially video games.
Sometimes they work together on schemes, sometimes their schemes are a game they're playing with each other for fun, sometimes they work alone.
GameMistress does see herself as a rogue, and is much more competitive than Toyman, but she shares his contempt for people who ruin fun, but with an extra layer of revenge for cheaters.
She's a meta, the kind of conceptual-type that normally fucks with the Doom Patrol. She can pull data out of carts, disks, etc, and manifest into a zone of altered reality with herself at the center, essentially manifesting a version of a given game into the world. The main limitations are that she's at the center of it running the whole thing while in a trance (fulfilling the role of a game master) and that everything from the game follows its own rules and logic, and she has no direct control over individual actions once it starts.
She can use an array of game-weapons and powers with minimal concentration for slobbernockers with the goodies, but those, too, still follow the rules. Irksomely for Superman, whatever her power taps into, it's technically magic.
She allows for stories with a bit more bite, as she's not as ethically restricted as the Toyman, and he's far less restrained when he's caught up in a game with her. Plus, I don't think there's enough middle aged couples doing villainy.
So that's my take. Whatcha think?
