Action figure remixing on a multiversal level

Back when I was 12 and obsessed with all things GI Joe, I would try to get the most out of the few action figures I could get my hands on, by taking to them with a small Philips screwdriver, pulling them apart and mixing them together. I would take bits off the armoured Cobra Commander and meld him with the Techno-Viper, and give Sci-Fi the legs and arms from Iceberg.

It was a fun way to make new characters out of old ones, but I ended up breaking a lot of them by clumsily pulling them apart - that fucking rubber band was always the first to go - or would lose vital legs and arms when they weren't being used.

While I can understand that zeal for something new created from familar elements, it's always just a novelty, not really anything truly new. While I did dig it when DC and Marvel did their Amalgam thing back in the 90s, I was grateful it was only for a week or two, and not a serious ongoing thing.

Marvel have been trying to spark something up with this kind of creative remixing in the past decade, but it can be hard to see what the likes of Cosmic Ghost Rider and Weapon H really bring to the table that's new.

It's obviously a lot easier to take bits and pieces of other characters and try to make something out of them, and sometimes it works and they catch on, with the first appearances of some of these remixes going for shocking dollars. But it's also easier to end up with a lot of broken toys that are missing vital parts, instead of the one thing that actually worked in the first place.