McFarlane Toys, one of the most prominent names in toy manufacturing for the last couple of decades, obtained the license for The Simpsons, a license previously held by Playmates Toys.
Straight out of the gate, McFarlane went with the classic "Treehouse of Horror" playset, which depicts Homer, fat with doughnuts, strapped to a chair, being force-fed pink and brown doughnuts by a blue-clad demon.

The playset, which measures a compact 8 inches across by about 6 inches in height, is a functional toy. The removable blue demon (the first time this figure has ever been created) stands behind a table filled with hundreds of doughnuts. Homer is seated in a chair with a device strapped to his nose forcing his mouth to open. As you turn a crank next to the demon, beadlike dougnuts rise up on a rail and fall into Homer's opening maw, where they fall through his body to a retrieval tray at the back of the base.

This clever playset is simple and fun. It makes a nice companion piece to Playmates Toys' previous "Treehouse of Horror" sets, but it does so in a new and different way, replacing sound chips with a cool, Rube Goldberg-like functional device.

Dunking the devil's doughnuts

Fair or unfair, McFarlane has a tough act to follow after following up Playmates Toys' long run of Simpsons offerings, and, like it or not, comparison is inevitable. Playmates' hook was its wonderful 3-D sculpts of flat 2-D cartoon characters, which it mastered, as well as sound chips in each figure that quoted passages from the TV show when placed on compatible Springfield environment playsets.

McFarlane is new to this franchise, and its hook appears to be playability rather than audio clips. No sound chips are included in the Ironic Punishment Playset. Instead, a cool crank action cleverly shoves doughnuts into Homer's mouth over and over in what the box declares is "Donut Eating Action." In a way, I wish they had included a sound chip of Homer saying "More ... more ..." each time a doughnut slips down his gullet.

The scale of these figures is about 10 to 20 percent smaller than Playmates' figures, but the detail is equally good.

As you turn the crank, the stack of doughnuts rises up and, seemingly at the last possible instant, Homer's mouth opens just as each doughnut slips off the rail and falls neatly into his mouth.

This must be said: It doesn't always work. The first game you learn is "fetch the lost doughnut." But perhaps what should be complimented is how often it does work, considering the precision required in the design and construction of this toy. As you crank, Homer's legs eagerly kick out (as they do in the episode). There is little room for error in the geared arrangement, and when it does work, it's quite charming.

Another negative must be mentioned. The box art proudly declares "Comes with over 200 doughnuts." This is a serious deception. While the table does include posts with hundreds of doughnuts, they are not individual doughnuts, but columns of solidly molded doughnuts. Only 11 are movable. Stating that the set "comes with over 200 doughnuts" makes it sound as if it includes over 200 usable doughnuts. And looking at the playset in the box, it is hard for a consumer to tell if the doughnuts aren't individually molded or just a few solid columns. And with only 11 easily losable doughnuts, McFarlane might have done better to have actually included a lot more functional pieces.

In fact, there are no spare doughnuts at all, so if you lose them, they're gone. Also, there is a hole in the gearwork under Homer's chair in which doughnuts can get trapped. So if you do lose any, turn the set upside down and shake out any that may have gotten lost underneath Homer.