dashwood_one

You can attach the straps on his sleeves to buckles on the back, pinioning his arms. I think that is just a bit too weird, and stops this being ostensibly a toy, into something quite other, quite sinister. It's a great likeness, but the straightjacket renders it oddly distasteful and not a little creepy.

Why do I say this? Well, they all (Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert) all came home. I remember all the Apollo missions, and yes, I can remember my mum telling me that the spacemen (I was four at the time) had died in a fire in Apollo 1, and I remember being bothered, not by the catastrophe, but my mum crying. I stayed up to watch the reports on the TV about Apollo 8, and watching the grainy footage of Apollo 11 landing on the moon. I don't remember much about Apollo 12, possibly because one of the astronauts accidentally turned the TV camera on to the sun, which burnt it out. But Apollo 13 - you couldn't make it up. Right from the understated: "Houston, we have a problem." to seeing the CM parachutes deploy fully after re-entry, and that ominously long radio blackout, it was a drama that everyone watched. It was a real triumph over adversity, with the rulebooks being re-written several times. That's why I have an Apollo 13 mission patch.

In fact, this is how I always saw 'him', in my mind's eye, when I read the books.

It was meant to be temporary - that was five years ago. It still makes me smile on my way to and from work, every day.

Courtesy, like so much other cool stuff, of HorrorBlock™.

Just wait. Beneath that cuddly exterior beats a heart of pure evil.

A 3.75 inch action figure. 'Not a toy' apparently...