This is my collection of DC minifigs. They're compatible with educational building blocks for children, if you take my meaning. Not a single one of them is official or licensed, which means that despite upholding truth, justice, and the American way - they're actually all a bit naughty.
You can't buy these in shops - aside from that brief time when Two Dollar Shops were common on your main streets, and their toy shelves were sheepishly crammed with various knock-off minifigures from assorted pop culture franchises and cartoon guff. Minions, super heroes, sci-fi characters - all were fair game. For some reason the quality was usually on the low side of variable - so much so that, in the Simian household a well-meaning great aunt bought her great niece an unlicensed Peppa Pig minifig sight unseen - only for it to be unboxed, boasting two left legs and a machine gun.
So these have been sourced online instead, from a global retailer with a name borrowed from the Arabian Nights. Many of these figures are based - or quite likely stolen from fan designs of unattainable figures - fans of the brick, hungry for representations of Characters That Should Not Be, deemed as they were beyond the approval of the Danish company. Hence Deadpool - who, despite Jet Junior's classroom familiarity, is definitely not family friendly - nor the site's slasher movie ghouls, or Watchmen.
Which brings me to my collection; for these are largely characters unlikely to be made by the official masons of merchandise and their lucrative movie licenses. Sure, you can have any of your Batsmen or Spider-men in onscreen and non-canoncal combinations and their ever-increasing range of vehicles. They clearly sell - but there's also very little likelihood of a licensed Lego Alan Scott Green Lantern, much less Justice Society, Black Lightning or TV-accurate Killer Frost. Even those heroes and villains who made the casting call were shortly withdrawn from the range to make room for more Star Wars, Harry Potter, or Jurassic Park. The existence of copies of these particular withdrawn figures likely only hurts the opportunists out there otherwise profiting from the laws of supply and demand.
The Danish brick men know where the money comes from, though - hence the popularity of the Marvel and Star Wars ranges. Thank the gods for the Lego Batman Movie, then, for its mad range of obscure DC heroes and villains (El Dorado! Polkadot Man!) - but in world where the huge success of Wonder Woman boasts one Lego set restricted to a single US chainstore (and one local one if you were lucky), and family movie Shazam is rewarded with a single figure seemingly shoved into another Batman giant box set just before release, then it's not surprising the bootleggers moved in to fill the small demand. Unless Warner Brothes change tack and produce more profitable movies, it's unlikely to change.
So in essence here is a collection of the unlicensed, unmade, unrenewed, and unallowed realised - and in some cases improved. However, I think I've done my dash with the still grubby enterprise of propping up dodgy outfits and an already scary economy with these still IP-busting bootlegs. It always made me feel a bit squeamish. So, this collection is now complete, and the museum is closed. Don't forget to wash your hands as you leave.
