Just as the swallows return every year to the Mission At San Juan Capistrano, California every Spring, so then do the McFarlane NFL Figures (or, you know, toys) return to shelves around the country every summer.
A little background on the company. McFarlane Toys is owned and operated by Todd McFarlane, one of the greatest comic artists of all time. He and a group of compatriots started Image Comics back in the Early 1990s and made so much money they could literally just set it on fire as McFarlane figuratively did when he bought Mark McGuire’s 70th home run ball in 1998 for $3 million. A few years later he bought Barry Bonds’ 73rd home run ball for $500,000.
In between, he started one of the most prestigious and profitable toy companies in the world.
For the last few seasons, McFarlane has been hooked up with EA Sports and the Madden NFL video game franchise, producing figures that come with special unlockable codes for the Madden Game. I don’t care about that. What I do care about, is collecting every single figure in a Los Angeles/St. Louis Rams jersey since McFarlane first started releasing figures in 2001.
But there are some people out there who go beyond their team loyalty and collect all the figures and, because McFarlane sometimes makes odd choices on who gets his likeness forever cast in resin and rubber, these are probably conversation pieces. That conversation being, “Who the hell is that?”
While you can forgive McFarlane for the occasional No. 1 pick figure that doesn’t really pan out, other choices seem harder to justify. Even at the time they were created.
Here are my picks for the Top Five dumbest McFarlane NFL figures of all time.
5. Giovani Bernard, RB, Cincinnati Bengals, 2015 Collection
Best season: 2015 – 730 rushing yards, 4.7 yards per carry, two rushing touchdowns, 49 receptions, 472 receiving yards
Giovani Bernard is a perfectly serviceable NFL player and a solid third-down back. What he isn’t, is a starter and worth being mass-produced in plastic and placed on your man cave shelf. You can forgive McFarlane for guessing wrong on some RBs early. I mean, there’s a Saquan Barkley figure in this year’s collection and the dude hasn’t played an NFL down, but this was three years into Bernard’s career and he’d never rushed for more than 700 yards at that point.
What makes it worse is that McFarlane made two figures, a standard home uniform Bernard and an All-Black variant.
4. Tim Tebow, QB, New York Jets, 2012 Collection
Best season: 2011 – 11 starts, 7-4 record, 46.5 completion percentage, 1,729 passing yards, 12 touchdowns, six interceptions, 452 rushing yards, two touchdowns
Like Bernard, Tebow got not only one figure (a standard away uniform version), he got a home variant. These were actually Tebow’s second and third McFarlane figures (fourth if you count his Florida variant) as he had a Denver Broncos figure the year before.
The Broncos figure makes sense. So does the Gators variant. This one? A stunningly poor decision from a company that made two different Drew Bledsoe figures and neither of them from when he was with the Patriots. A company that crafted not one, not two but three different Marion Barber figures in a single season. Who’s Marion Barber, you ask? Exactly.
While Tebow had won a playoff game in the previous year, any thought of him as a long-term answer at starting quarterback was pretty much over when this figure was produced. Tebow couldn’t beat out Marc Sanchez with the Jets and was cut after a single season. He never appeared in another regular season NFL game after 2012.
Click here to read Part 2.
