Cornelius

I thought I had a Cornelius. While I was on our whirlwind trip to Florida, I bought three Medicom Planet of the Apes action figures, took them out of their blister packs for more room in loading them up, and brought the cards home. But the cards themselves don't have the names of the particular figure in that package on them (it's on the blister, as you can see in the picture), so in the excitement, work, and getting back into the routine of post-vacation trauma, I apparently forgot that it was a Lucius (Zira and Cornelius' nephew) that I had. It was not until I got a loose Lucius from eBay that I realized my mistake, and that every apester's favorite power couple was still incomplete. So back to eBay we went.

This Friday they had a Planet of the Apes marathon on AMC. The ones I had the time to see were Escape From the Planet of the Apes, the beginning of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, and parts of Battle For the Planet of the Apes that I dipped into now and then. I always liked Escape a lot, because it brought Zira and Cornelius to our world and time (1973!) and it seemed to bring the Ape experience that much closer to home. It was also the one that relied most heavily on their characters. It was sad of course, because they are killed at the end, but in the Seventies, kids, they didn't sugarcoat things.

Anyway, it was most appropriate, because around three o'clock that day the mailman trundles up, bearing my Cornelius figure along with the more mundane mail. He (Cornelius, that is, not the mailman) now stands proudly at Zira's side. The articulation isn't great, but the art more than makes up for that. Cornelius' harassed, beetle-browed expression is captured perfectly. And my second nephew Lucius has been most happily dubbed Ducius by my brother John, in honor of the old custom of the family in naming extra figures, the same custom that led to the name Adoy for our extra Yoda figure.

Zira

When I went to Florida some months ago, I got three of the Medicom Planet of the Apes figures: Cornelius, Dr. Zaius, and General Aldo. Medicom has, in my opinion, come out with the perfect sculpt and format for Ape figures (and by this I mean action figures, not dolls, which, let us face it, are basically what the old, much-beloved Mego Apes were). But I wanted--nay, needed, nay CRAVED--a Zira figure to complete the basic quartet. After all, what would Cornelius be without Zira? So my good friend at Z's Toys kept his eyes open and ordered me one when it became available on eBay. Today it came in, and I bought it for $22.

I tried and tried to get a scan off the card, but I'm having trouble with my new program Adobe Photoshop. I suppose it's probably because I'm not used to it, but it seems less straight forward and less intuitive than my old Adobe program. I think that's one reason for my scandalously scant output: this is only my third post of the month! Anyway I ended up using a picture grabbed off of Google.