Before I begin, let me clear on one thing. The title of this little essay is "I Toxie" not "iToxie" as in "iPod" but as in "I Sparticous." Normally I don't feel the need to explain such things but already some people have had some confusion on this issue. Perhaps a more accurate title would have been "Why Toxie" instead since the whole point is to explain the star status of Toxo-Zombie in Toxie's 1:18th Universe.
Along about 1992 by my recollection an oddity in the toy world premiered, Toxo-Zombie came out as part of the GI Joe Eco Warriors line. His whole purpose was that he was a Toxo-Viper subjected to horrible experiments by Dr. Mindbender and Cesspool. Ever chilling in his Pink and florescent green outfit, it was easy for me to pass on this character. In those years my toy collecting had mellowed somewhat. While I was well beyond the age of "toys" I had deemed myself a "collector" and was "investing" to justify my desire for action figures. GI Joe had been a major focus for years for me. He-man had died out, Transformers were strong but hadn't really gotten to the point we see today, or even just a few years ago, Star Wars had disappeared and for all intents was gone forever. Small toy lines would pop up, but none of them had staying power.
At this point GI Joe was on a sharp decline, by all accounts no so in sales, but at least in quality. Florissant colors and oddball characters were dominating a line I had worshiped just a few years before. While I still found quality figures, really most of the figures were outlandish and not near the "realism factor" I loved of the original line from 1982-1990. My interest was waning mostly because I didn't see the potential of this Pink and green monstrosity.
Years went by, Star Wars returned stronger than ever, Transformers had a quantum leap in style. Basically toys got better and eventually shopping online for those toys you missed in your youth was born. It was fun too, catching that deal you almost missed or beating out someone at the last minute on an auction. It was a great time to be a kid at heart.
Eventually people began selling "lots" of figures together. It is here that I acquired many figures I would have passed on normally. Toxo Zoombie was in one such lot with Leatherneck, Blowtorch and Salvo. Wanting the other figures I purchased the lot (at a fairly decent price) and tossed Toxo-Zombie to the side, never seeing any potential in him. Still my mind was stuck in "serious only and always" and never saw the potential in a situation.
My new Toxo-Zombie didn't look like his last owner appreciated him either, his hand was chipped (looking as if he had lost a pinkie finger). He had some chips around him, basically as bad as the figure looked mint, he looked worse than that. I didn't think about him for a few years. It was the turn of the century and new Joes were on the horizon to help augment the SW figs. That is until they arrived.
But that is a whole other story, I also began what the GI Joe Community refers to as a "Dio-Story" I have found out recently different fandoms refer to this in different ways (ie Star Wars Community calls them Photo-Novels, others web-comics. Ironically web-comic communities refers to them as phunami. Very confusing, isn't it?). Diostory/Photo-Novel/Photo-comic, whatever you want to call it, I started one. The basic premise is set up the figures, snap pictures, edit them in a photo editor (of which I went through many, but the best has been Photoshop) and you have something. Of course people have had mixed reactions, one thing I kept doing was using real world background to simulate a battle in the middle of the floor (rather than try to make the whole thing look like a shrunken real world location). That never went over well. I really was trying to play off the idea this was a toy world in which all this came about and was in someone's imagination being played out in the real world. Yeah 20/20 hindsight on that one. Still I worked with it for years, why I stopped, well, a lot of reasons that don't need to be covered here.
Back to Toxie though, in all of this I became involved with a site called Joecustoms. One year there was a Joecustoms Awards show and a bunch of us thought it would be fun to have a diostory type presentation. I looked around cause I defiantly wanted in on this and wanted to have some fun with it, so I needed a visually unusual character, I started to customize one and when I went looking for parts I found that old Toxo-Zombie. Don't ask how or why, but I instantly thought of him saying in the middle of the show something about blue poop (cause as you know, what else would a green and pink monster pass through his bowels) and just fell over laughing.
From there I poured stupidity, silliness, crudity and a host of other attributes into his character and he became a huge shining light in my collection. Incorporating him into the "regular" dio didn't go over well at all, but hey it wasn't his medium anyway. Still he kept on hosting the Awards, first with Night Creeper Leader (another slightly odd looking GI Joe Character) then Beachead who tried to make him serious, Later with the Incredible Hulk whose stupidity made Toxie look like a brain surgeon and then Dr. Doom. Always I threw in guests and odd situations. Finally The JCA's went on but people got tired of doing the Dio show.
My problem was I had this super idea for a show, involving Luke, Leia, Vader, and Padme and how Luke and Leia ended up on a date. Vader, being a good Dad and all, tried to stop it and had to bring Padme back into the mix. Note too that I never killed her off, never saw the reason to as she had a ton of comic potential. What I did was rather than scrap the whole idea I incorporated it into a larger one. I figured that I could pretty much use anything in my collection and just tell jokes with it. With another slash of irony what happened next was serendipitous.
Essentially I was flooded with ideas, and truth be told I have only gotten through about 30% of the ones I was coming up with 2 years ago. Yes I have been flooded with even more since. But ideas is a whole other issue.
So I hope with that everyone has a new appreciation for why Toxo-Zombie is such a central character to me. If not, well, the world will figure out what to do with you in time ;-).