The King of Horror, nightmares sold separately

I knew they released figures for every single one of the 15,000 original characters that ever appeared on screen in The Simpsons, so they had to run out of toys eventually, right? Apparently not...

When I first saw that they were releasing figures based on the show's celebrity guest stars, my reaction was a little bit like "Jesus Christ, they've reached 3,000 miles beneath the bottom of the barrel." And then I saw they did one for Stephen King and was like "Stephen King has an action figure. That's kind of awesome." So, I knew I had to buy one. Unfortunately, it seems that horror fans all thought the same thing, because it's been a bit of a bugger to track down. It goes pretty much instantly out of stock whenever a store gets it and scalpers on eBay are charging about four times its retail price.

If you're a horror fan of a certain age, I think Stephen King and his works hold a bit of meaning to you. The '80s were filled with adaptations of his books, on the big screen and small, so they were kind of hard to ignore. I also remember my horror loving aunt's place being littered with his books and how I'd go to the library with her and get some of his stuff. (I think the first thing I read of his in its entirety was the story that Silver Bullet was based off of, Cycle of the Werewolf. I know that's a short story, but, hey, I was a kid.) Stephen King's a giant of horror, so I wanted this figure as part of my collection of horror figures.

It depressed me a little to hear stories of people getting to meet King at book signings, though. He's such a giant that so many people are waiting to meet him that it sounds like they're just all rushed through on a conveyor belt. One story I read was reminiscent of Ralphie meeting Santa in A Christmas Story -- like the person is placed in front of King, and before they were even able to say "hello," he's done scribbling an autograph while a couple of assistants/guards just kept pulling them along, shoving them down that slide, dashing their hopes of getting that Red Ryder air rifle.

The figure was released just in time for Encore's month-long Stephen King marathon, which has been fun. The thing doesn't really have the right yellow coloring of the Simpsons characters, though -- it looks more like one of those creepy butter sculptures. Still, it's cool to have a Stephen King figure...