Welcome to the 1st of what I hope to be a series of articles on what I hope will end in the creation of my own action figure. Crazy right? Well one can only hope.

As many of you know I started Spy Monkey Creations with fellow AFI “Man of Action” Jeremy Sung a few years ago. Feel free to check us out at www.spymonkeycreations.com.. Jeremy and I, along with our new partner in crime Brian Stevenson, specialize in creating weapons and accessories for 6 inch action figures. Over the last few years we have been fortunate enough to produce a small line of niche products that many folks seem to enjoy. Like most toy fans I have dreams of producing my own line of action figures…but I got to tell you it’s tough to try to pull this off. Not only is it very expensive to manufacture a physical figure, but it’s hard to establish a fan base of folks who are interested in something that is not a licensed property. That’s why most of the figures we see nowadays are licensed, cause without a fan base it’s hard to bring in the sales. And I’m sure if you ask fellow AFI “Man of Action” Jason “Plastic Soul” Lenzi he’ll tell ya sometimes even licensed properties can be a tough sell.

So that’s the challenge of this series of blogs, try to establish a small, yet loyal, fan base for an original property, design a low cost figure and find the funding to produce some fun toys without losing your shirt.

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Read the rest of Making your own Action Figure (Is it even possible?)…Part 01

Your pal Fresh Monkey here. It’s time for another installment of :

“A Discussion that looks Inside the Mind of the Insane Ramblings of Spy Magician & the Fresh Monkey!!!”

Spy Magician and I haven’t had the time to tag-team a review in a long while cause we’ve been busy.  He got married, I had a baby, etc.  However Julius called and said he got in a set of the Hall of Heroes (HOH) G.I. Joes and he asked us if we’d review them for the site. How could we say “no” to Mr. Marx? Well you can’t.

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Read the rest of G.I. Joe Hall of Heroes Review

Now available at BBTS.
 

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 Well I fear the end of Marvel Legends is almost here. Even though I’ve heard from a few industry insiders that Hasbro is still gonna support ML, I think the end is near. Here are the signs:

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Read the rest of Hello Marvel Universe, Goodbye Marvel Legends.

Belloq in suit
Walter Donovan
Indy in Tuxedo
Marcus Brody
Deluxe pack with Henry and Indy on a german motorcycle
…and even the remote possibly of some comic packs. 

Well as the sales have not been what was expected I’d be surprised if we even see the next Raiders wave they announced at comic con. Instead when "Crystal Skull" makes it to DVD we’ll get a few exclusive Battle Packs that  won’t sell either cause they give us figures we already have. 

It’s really too bad cause this line has been great so far and I still think there is a fan base that would support it. At least to get a few of the characters listed above. So the whole point of this blog post is to tell Hasbro to go DTC (Direct to Consumer) on this line. They already have Indy license and the distribution window via HasbroToyShop.com. Sure the price of the figures might increase to $11.99, but I think folks would still pay that to get the figures missing in their collection.

It’s just a thought Hasbro…chew on it.

In the meantime I’m gonna make a custom Marcus Brody like this.
 
 

Until next time.

So after reading Scott’s reviews of the new Indy toys I decided to go out over my lunch hour and pick some of them up. Being that I had a $40.00 TRU gift card eating a hole in my wallet I thought that’d be the best place to go. Well to my surprise there was NOT 1 single carded Indy figure left on the shelf. Not that they had that much shelf space for them to even begin with. I hope that TRU decides to give Indy some more room as we get closer to the movies release. So I made my way back to work and thought I’d check out my online options. 

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Read the rest of Missing the hunt while managing the costs…

It’s not everyday that you catch a really great cartoon.

Let’s face it Saturdays morning cartoons are made for kids, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have great characters and tell good stories. Unfortunately these days, those are few and far between. Bruce Timm and company really raised the bar with Batman the animated series and JLU, but since then everything I’ve see on Saturday mornings has been rather blah. Ever since JLU went off the air I’ve been looking for a new cartoon series that could take it’s place. I thought The Batman might have been it, but it never really reached it’s full potential. It got good the last couple of seasons but it never really "took off" in my eyes. Then out of nowhere came The Spectacular Spiderman. 

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Read the rest of Spectacular Spiderman is Spectacular