Are the X-Men Human? The Law and Dolls
Some lawsuits are just plain weird. While catching up on comic book related things, I ran across this bizarre story about how Marvel requested that a court rule that the X-Men weren’t human.
The reasoning for this is because there is a higher tarrif on dolls than there are for toys (why that is, is anyone’s guess). If a toy is a small representation of a human then in the eyes of the law it qualifies as a doll. In the 80s Hasbro’s G.I. Joe figures fit under the doll category. They tried to fight it, but lost. ToyBiz, who was making X-Men figures at the time, was paying this extra tarrif, so Marvel had a court declare that the X-Men weren’t human. How bizarre, considering that the X-Men themselves have been fighting for years in the comics to be considered human. The court agreed and ToyBiz managed to recoup the extra cash.
Now if you think about it, there’s a few non-human looking X-Men, but it with the way G.I. Joe had a lot of sci-fi elments (B.A.T. troopers for instance) you’d think that Hasbro could have gotten away with the same thing. Who knows? Maybe the court was made up of people who thought of G.I. Joe in the old 12″ more doll like sense and didn’t think of the smaller line as an almost entirely different product.
July 14th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
That is an awesome bit of trivia I’m going to put in my back pocket to pull out for my next dinner party conversation.
‘Cause you know I’m rockin tons of dinner parties these days. And trips to the Playboy Mansion.