Go Figures

It’s old hat for Harrison Ford and Patrick Stewart, but Matt LeBlanc and Matthew Broderick are feeling like grown men in a toy store — literally. Action figures based on their upcoming films, ”Lost in Space” and ”Godzilla,” hit retail shelves soon. And unlike Ford (whose Han Solo figures have been around since 1977’s ”Star Wars”) and Stewart (”Star Trek”’s Jean-Luc Picard), LeBlanc and Broderick are action figure first-timers.

”We went back and forth on how the nose should look,” says LeBlanc, 30, holding a four-inch version of his ”Lost in Space” character, Major Don West, and grinning like a proud papa. ”I think it looks just like me.” This isn’t LeBlanc’s first brush with plastic. ”There was almost a ‘Friends’ toy line,” he says. ”But all you could do with them was sit down and sip tea.”

For his part, Matthew Broderick, 35, admires the plastic surgery that turned his very human ”Godzilla” character, Nick Tatopoulos, into an action figure as chiseled as an Olympic decathlete. ”I was in great shape when they made the mold,” jokes Broderick, who’s better known for playing a geeky computer hacker in ”WarGames” than a Schwarzenegger look-alike.

LeBlanc and Broderick are understandably pleased with the buff action figures they’ve become. After all, certain Han Solo and Jean-Luc Picard figures fetch hundreds of dollars. But will price-savvy collectors pay big bucks for a Major Don West doll? Probably not, according to Jim Tomlinson, editor of Action Figure News & Toy Review. ”Unless the figures are an exact likeness and are ‘short-packed’ (a ploy manufacturers use to create artificial shortages),” says Tomlinson, ”there’s not going to be anything special about them.”