It came from the dollar store: SPACE (in)action figures

Last year, my buddy Trent from the LittleRubberGuys forums kindly hooked me up with these amazingly bad-in-a-good-way cheapo action figures. He found them at a discount store and thought I'd be into them. How right he was! I consider these things to be gems in my little weirdos collection and have been meaning to do a post on them for months.

Actually, I shouldn't even call them action figures because there's no action going on here. The figures are about 3 inches tall and look like they should have articulation, but there's none to be found. Ha!

Here's what makes them craptasticly awesome:

• The name: They really went with the minimalist approach here. SPACE. It says so much, and yet so little...
• The package: These are recent, but the package graphics makes it look like they're straight out of some 1980s discount den. Which I actually find very appropriate for these figures.
• The weapons: Every figure comes with the exact same seven weapons.
• The inability to use the weapons: While there's no shortage of weapons, sadly the figures are unable to hold many of them. In fact, the robot character can't even hold a single one of his seven weapons. Whomp whomp.
• The figures: All six sculpts are wonderfully wonky, combining He-Man-esque muscles with utter oddness. The paint jobs are garish and questionable. So, pretty much just what you'd want out of weirdo dollar store toys.

Now let's take a closer look at each of the six sculpts:

This dude is some sort of space barbarian, I guess. In my mind, three of these figures are bad guys and three are good guys, and I'm going to put him on the villain team. He'd be the brute henchman of the bunch, carrying out the demands of his diabolical space master.

And here's who I'm pegging as said diabolical space master. This red-skinned weirdo looks sort of reptilian and pharaoh-like, so he's gotta be the head honcho of the baddies.

I'm going to say this one's the third villain. I really don't know what's going on here, especially with the head. Also, it looks like he's wearing knee pads and that he might have the ability to shoot lasers from his crotch.

Now we move into what I think are the good guys. This would have to be the heroic swashbuckling warrior that's leading the battle against evil. Also, he probably came from Earth, which makes him the least interesting of the group. When I posted pics of this set on Instagram recently, someone said he looked like a Chip Hazard knockoff. Could be.

Here's the poor aforementioned robot who can't hold any of his weapons. Let's hope he's the brains behind the operation, or that he can shoot weapons out of his face.

Rounding out the galactic gang is this masked man. I see him as the type of character who's fighting on the side of good but who is a bit of a wildcard and could go rogue at any time. This guy's gotta be knocked off of some superhero, but I can't place it. Maybe a mash-up of The Phantom and the Blue Devil?

And there you go, the wild and wacky world of SPACE. I hope you find these figures as hilariously enjoyable as I do. Have any of you ever seen them anywhere else before? Do you recognize any of them as knockoffs of anything else?