A few years back I found a clearance sale and was about to pick up four “Muppets in Space” action figure playsets for a song. The pieces, though scaled for much smaller figures than my Minions, have turned out to be very useful. I elevated the control consoles and screens for use with larger figures, and by stacking together two of the back walls, top-to-top, I was able to create a nice, free-standing wall unit that felt equally at home in traditional science fiction as well as steampunk settings. You can see two of these units (with the vertical red beams) in this week’s cartoon.

But as it happens, this week I watched the latest installment of a Marvel Comics YouTube series, “What The–?!” and was surprised to see the exact same walls, and other pieces from the playset, consoles, screens, and even chairs! Here’s a screen capture, and you can see that it’s the same wall in the background. (The overhead piece is the main bridge console from the playset turned upside down and stacked on top of the wall, and the outside chairs in the foreground are also part of the set. The center folding chair is something else, I think an accessory for a wrestling action figure.) The playset shows up elsewhere too, like the front door and interior walls of the Avengers headquarters. Here’s the link to the full video if you’d like to see it.

Marvel What the