US Court Answers Question: “Are Mutants Human?”

When it comes to money, people will go to great lengths to argue almost any point. This applies even moreso in the world of big business, where a company can lose millions of dollars in the blink of an eye. But when it comes to taxes and tariffs, many corporations pay what they’re told to and don’t bother to put up a stink about it. After all, not many people are willing to fight the United States government. Not so in the case of two lawyers who went to great lengths to fight for a client, even trudging through a decade-long court battle over the issue.

The court case came about when two lawyers who specialized in international trade, Sherry Singer and Indie Singh, recognized that there were two different classifications for many children’s toys. Even my use of the word “toys” is incorrect according to the United States Customs. According to the international law, “dolls” are anything which represents humans, such as Baby Alive and Barbie. Meanwhile, “toys” are anything that represents non-humans, such as Transformers. The classification is important because the taxonomy is what determines the tariff on the individual items. “Dolls” are taxed much higher, for whatever reason, than “toys”, by a difference of nearly 6%. That amounts to huge dollars when you consider the millions of dollars of toys US companies import into the states.

How does this matter? Well, the lawyers I mentioned earlier, Singer and Singh, noticed that Toy Biz, who for quite some time were producing all of the toys for Marvel Comics, had classified all of their toys not as “toys” but as “dolls”. This got Singer and Singh thinking. Sure, the heroes of the Marvel Universe have many aspects that the government requires in human “dolls”, like a face, two legs, eyes, a mouth etc. However, humans don’t fire laser blasts from their eyeballs. Essentially, it came down to are the X-Men really human?

The folks at RadioLab, a podcast sponsored by New York Public Radio, posed that very question. Strangely, it’s the exact same question that’s argued constantly in the comics themselves. Are mutants different from humans, as Magneto would have the world believe, or are mutants just humans with extra powers, such as the teachings of Charles Xavier? RadioLab spoke with Singer and Singh, as well as Joe Liebman, who helped shed some light on the government’s stance of the issue. Liebman worked for the US Department of Justice as an international trade attorney so he’s well versed in these matters. Bryan Singer, director of the first two X-Men movies also chimed in on the debated, drawing parallels between the struggle in the real world as well as the fictional world.

The court battle raged on for ten years, with Singer, Singh and Toy Biz taking small victories throughout. One example that RadioLab provide in their podcast is Beast. He has two arms, two legs, a head, a mouth, and many other things that would describe him as a “doll”. Yet being covered in blue fur is clearly not a human trait, so how would he resemble a human?

So what was the outcome? Well, the courts upheld Singer and Singh’s claim that the X-Men are not human, and those action figures based on their likenesses should not be classified as such. Though a rather pyrrhic victory for Toy Biz, as the Marvel license was acquired by Hasbro in 2006, this ruling applied to the rest of the toy line, including Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and all of the other figures imported into the States. Except, strangely, for the Silver Samurai. The courts were dead-set in their decision that the Silver Samurai was human.

For anyone interested in reading more about the case, I’ve managed to locate the full transcript of the ruling, in all its legalese glory. It’s kind of surreal to discover that an argument that began in the pages of comic books and continues to rage on there bleeds over to the real world. While the comic book world still does not have a definitive answer to the question “Are mutants human?”, we certainly do. Though you can almost hear Magneto whispering “I told you so”.

Tags: Action Figures, Bryan Singer, Comic Books, Comics, court, Hasbro, Indie Singh, International trade, Magneto, Magneto Was Right, Marvel, Michael Wirth, New York Public Radio, RadioLab, Sherry Singer, Silver Samurai, Toy Biz, Toys, US Customs

About the Author

Written by Michael Wirth

Hailing from the armpit of America, New Jersey, Michael has been collecting comic books since the age of 10. Now, he deigns to keep his finger on the pulse of pop-culture, keeping up with every passing fad or iconic innovation, never losing sight of his comic book roots.

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