But at the risk of sounding like every other apologist jackass out there, sometimes these things really are out of the control of the people in charge of shepherding the line from concept to manufacturing to store shelves. Things like parts missing from packages, or bad paint jobs, or bent legs are all factory related issues. And no matter how many samples you may check and sign off on at the end of the day you really have no idea how well the factory is going to follow your master samples or the checklists you devise to make sure all runs smoothly. Even having someone stationed in China doesn’t fix everything. When I was designing toys, I worked for small enough companies that I was often the one overseeing the process through the factory, even staying in China from time to time. Mistakes happen on every job, it’s just part of the process.

But the factory stuff at least gives you the opportunity to fix things. If you catch it early, most times collectors never have any idea about the daily problems that crop up. And for large runs, you can always make running changes to try and fix it as early as possible. But some of the things that collectors complain about are simply out of your control. And nowhere in the process is that lack of control more frustrating than in dealing with Licensors (or clients).  These people are the ones with the ultimate control of their properties, and they are the ones who dictate what you can and cannot make. Even more frustrating is that most of the time the people in charge of licensing are not creators or artists, but simply account people working their way up the ladder and happen to have stopped there. They don’t know the property, they don’t watch the cartoons/movies/tv shows. No, what they have is a style guide, which to them is THE BIBLE.

No joke! That style guide went through a long, complicated process designed to take thinking out of the equation. The licensing rep can be very pleasant, and fun to work with, and very smart, but if you want to deviate from the style guide or the approved corporate branding, then you have huge problems. Because they do not want to “color outside the lines”, because they a.) have no power to make those decisions, and b.) don’t know what they can and can’t do since they didn’t create the property. This whole drawn out preface leads me to what are arguably two of the biggest complaints with some toy lines out there today: character choice, and color choices.

When I was designing toys for Wendy’s, we didn’t often get opportunities to reward the toy geeks within the design team; most of what we worked on was aimed at 5-8 year olds, with licensees such as Maya & Miguel or Pokémon. We did get to make a really cool Mario action figure (with resealable card!) but even that was a battle, from having a card in the first place to adding a peg hole for verisimilitude. It was a success, though, so we kept wanting to do an assortment of nothing but carded figures for one month. Unfortunately, when the right properties came along, most of them already had other companies making action figures and we were blocked from doing it. (Eventually, Wendy’s requested that we finally make a full figure assortment…for Charlotte’s Web. Yes, we made carded figures of ducks, sheep, and spiders. Get the picture why this job is so hard, yet?)

But occasionally, a fun geek property would drop in our laps. And the year after it debuted, we got Teen Titans (Short note: we lobbied for the TT license probably a year before it debuted, but the execs thought it wouldn’t be a big hit. When we finally made the the price had gone up, of course). Being very aware of the Bandai line, we looked at ways that collectors might be able to integrate what we make with that toy line. Keep in mind, whatever we made had to be fun for little kids first and foremost. So we churned out the usual 100 or so concepts, took about 25 to color, and proceed to weed down to the final 4-5 toys from there. Now, anyone who collected the Teen Titans Bandai toys are sure to remember one fact about the line: They didn’t make the line 3.5″ SCALE, they made all the figures 3.5″ period. I’m not sure why; sometimes this is a function of contracts in splitting the license. In any case, those that wanted a Cyborg figure to be in scale with the rest of the TT kids were out of luck. Instead of the relative sizes matching the picture up above, this is what they got:

So that was a problem. Wendy’s to the rescue! One of the concepts we pushed and pushed was a Cyborg figure that was perfectly in scale with the Bandai Titans. I knew that collectors would buy them up, AFi could have publicized the scale unity, win win all around. Now, since Bandai had the license for action figures, we couldn’t make a perfect representation. We could make a “figurine”, though. And after a bit of back and forth, we came to the agreement that as long as it had a base it would be considered a figurine, and not a figure. We would just make the base removable. Keep in mind that we only had less than $.50 to play with, so the only articulation would be in the arms, which would pump with the press of a button on his back. But standing on the shelf the idea was for him to fit in perfectly with the Teen Titans figures. The concept got pretty far down the chain, ending up in the near final mix, going all the way through costing and into engineering. But unfortunately, the licensor felt that Cyborg just wasn’t leading man material. It was decreed that we could use the whole group on toys, but any individual character could only be Robin, who parents would recognize. So adios, Cyborg.

That wasn’t the end of our problems, though. And it brings me to the second complaint fans make: color choices. Specifically, this was a huge problem throughout the life of the Justice League Unlimited line.  And it has a very simple answer. The WB style guides have color callouts, showing the Pantone number for each color used on every character and prop. It also has specified callouts for the paint chips and plastic used for merchandise. And here is where we get back to the licensing reps not wanting to deviate from the guide. The callouts for the plastics only use one color for each section of a character’s costume, since you don’t paint shadows and highlights on a toy like you would on a drawing. But the guide chose the shadow color as the base color for the plastic! So all of the colors are too dark. To make matters worse, one of the first steps you do is send the factory the Pantone numbers, they send back paint chips that match, and the studio approves those paint chip so the paint/plastic can be ordered. This process happens every month with many different licensors, so it’s just a well-oiled process. In general, why would you ever question the style guide or licensor that they might be wrong BEFORE you see any of the toys? The answer is, you don’t. You’re busy with all the other projects on your plate.

So when we couldn’t make Cyborg, we went ahead with a Robin spinner (that had a really neat 3D Teen Titans logo with a magnet inside!) You push the sculpted logo near the figure (which also has a magnet inside) and it’s pushed away as it spins wildly. Fun. Everything went according to plan until we received the final painted sample. At that point he ceased to be referred to internally as “Robin” and instead became “Sunburn Robin” to everyone involved.

All of his colors were way too dark. The yellow of his costume could barely be seen against the red. So we had a problem. To compound matters, the figure was 100% approved. You don’t mess with anything that is approved, as approvals are always a pain. And look at this from an exec’s point of view: the studio is happy, the client is happy, the toy will be gone in a month anyway. Why open a can of worms just to have to pay for more paint, delay production a bit, and possibly cause bad blood with the licensor by giving them more paperwork? To their credit, after we argued a bit and brought in the Bandai Robin to prove our point we were able to go back to the licensor to request a new color palette (props to lead creatives Greg Leibert & Brian Sandlin for really fighting that fight). And that’s when things got weird. For whatever reason, WB was convinced that the colors were too dark. But they said we could only change two of them. I have no idea why. Maybe that was the cost limit for new paint? Who knows. We ended up choosing the go bright with the yellow and skin colors as those were the ones that really stood out. But it still was not “right”. (And we couldn’t afford the paint apps to make the inside of the cape yellow or his grey boot tips, in case you were wondering).

And if it had been an action figure, no collector would have said “Well, they got some of the colors right, I’ll give them that”. They would have screamed bloody murder that the other colors were wrong. And I can’t argue that. But no one saw the fight to get it to that point. The rest was simply out of our control.

Or so I thought. Last year while home for the holidays I made an off-hand remark to that effect to my mother, who then asked why didn’t I look in all the boxes of slides we had stored upstairs. Turns out that my parents DID take a tremendous amount of pictures, only they were almost all slide film and then put away once we stopped gathering around the ol’ Kodak Carousel. Since I was curious as to what slides we had, I took it upon myself to scan them all and convert them into nice digital files.

Well, over 6000 slides, 12 months, and many hundreds of hours later, I now know what is on all of those slides (and might I add they date back into the 1950s, well before I was around). And I still have around 2000 more slides to scan…unless they find even more boxes, which is a very distinct possibility. But within all of those pictures, I did find a number of great shots of what I received for Christmases past. I haven’t gotten into the 1980s yet, and if you had asked me before I scanned them what toys I received, I would have told you that I mainly got cars & planes, model trains, and a toy drum set until 1978. At that point my life was overtaken by Star Wars, (I even made my own xmas stocking shaped like Boba Fett’s leg, seen at right!) and I can’t really remember owning any other toys until I started collecting in earnest in college (well after throwing away everything I had in childhood).

What I wouldn’t have said I owed was any GI Joe toys. I do remember having the awesome Sea Wolf sub, and maybe a Joe with Kung-Fu grip, but I would have stopped there and said I didn’t play with the Joes. I would have been a damn liar. Turns out there is photographic proof that I indeed played with Joes. In fact, I owned a number of Adventure Team Joes, playsets and vehicles. And now that I’ve seen all these sets in their awesome packaging, I really, really wish I still owned them! Ah well. Take a look at the coolness below, along with some other early 1970s toys I wish I still owned, and a few other shots for a geeky childhood. I do still own that great Mickey Mouse head bank, along now with the other 3 characters they made. And as much as I claim to not like the Muppets, I apparently liked them enough back then to have a big-ass poster of Kermit and Fozzie on my wall. Anyway, enjoy the nostalgia!

Just Did!

And brother, do I have a clip for you! Featuring the International star Chiru (known around these parts for his “Indian Thriller”) this scene contains the craziest, most jeep-flipping, horse-skidding*, glass-shattering action you’ve ever seen. They just don’t make them like they used to. Enjoy!

*Animals were most definitely harmed during the filming of this movie. Sweet Jesus, the horse sequences just make me cringe.

The Space Shuttle Columbia Lands at Kelly Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas, March 1979

Or, what the Space Shuttle means to me. On Thursday, July 21 2011,  US Space Shuttle Atlantis touched down for the final time, returning from the last mission that the shuttle program will fly for the United States.  The program and the shuttles themselves have been retired, cast aside due to a national lack of enthusiasm and a casualty of the ludicrous economic battles that pass for governance these days. But none of that matters to me when I think of the Space Shuttle.

First and foremost, to me it remains the last exciting moment of the US Space program that really touched people when I was growing up. Sure, the Mars rover and the various interstellar missions of the past 20 years have been interesting, but the Space Shuttle program was a continuance of that bright, shining age when it really looked as if the science fiction was being coming the science reality. It was totally conceivable that by the year 2000 we might have (small) colonies on the moon, or a floating city in space to replace Skylab.

In 1979 my dad was in the Air Force, working at Kelly AFB in San Antonio when it was announced that the newly christened Shuttle Columbia, the first shuttle to go into space, would be stopping at Kelly overnight to refuel on it’s way to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. I was already excited about the shuttle, having seen the promos for the new James Bond movie, Moonraker, that was coming out that summer, so when dad woke me at 6am so we could drive across town to Kelly Field and watch it take off the news morning (on the back of a 747) I was beyond excited. I, of course loved Star Wars, and Buck Rogers, but this was REAL. I remember there were a lot of people who showed up to watch what was basically a big plane sit on a runaway, it an event that was closed to the public.

Afterwards, we went to a hobby shop where he bought me a small toy Space Shuttle. I remember keeping it sitting on my desk for quite some time, enamored by it’s unique shape and markings. Unlike previous spacecraft, the shuttle was a sleek, cool looking vehicle. I think it’s no coincidence that so many movies worked in the actual shuttle design instead of aping Star Wars when dealing with “non-fighter” craft. Unfortunately, we know how the rest of the story goes: I saw the Challenger disaster happen live on tv in my 11th grade art class. I remember how horrified and distraught my teachers were that one of their own was on that ship. And the Columbia herself came to rest back in Texas in 2003 in another horrific accident, although I was in California by then.

But with all that, when I think of the Space Shuttle my mind always goes back to that little toy one my dad bought me, and the long gone hobby shop where it was purchased. You can still find hobby shops, where you can buy model planes and trains, but they are becoming few and far between. Like Borders bookstores that are closing for good this month, and Circuit City, And Linen’s & Things, and all the mom & pop bookstores and variety stores before them, we are left with just one or two big box stores for each category now. The era of stores that catered to specialty items exist online, but it’s not the same. There is something to be said for riding your bike to the hobby shop for a model, then to the variety store (Winns? TG&Y?) for some action figures, then on to the drugstore for trading cards and a soda, ending up at the neighborhood used bookstore where the owner has a little side room filled with old comics and pulp paperbacks to leaf through. But those days are gone, and they’re not coming back. And now I fear the days of excitement over space exploration are joining them on the shelf marked “nostalgia”.

Five years ago, shortly before I left California for Texas, Julius Marx and I paid a visit to the studio of a truly fantastic artist, sculptor, and all-around great guy: Rubén Procopio. If you don’t recognize the name you surely will recognize his work (and if you don’t recognize the name, shame on you!).

First, Rubén  has recently written an awesome book (with Tim Bruckner and Zach Oat), Pop Sculpture, that anyone who is interested in sculpture should read. If you want to be a sculptor, I would even say stop reading this blog right now and go buy a copy. It’s a really, really informative look at the whole process of creating action figures and statues based on popular media properties.

Second, Rubén has been involved in so many areas that are near and dear to my heart that I alternate being in awe of him and being bitterly jealous. Just kidding! But seriously, he started at the Disney Studios in the 1970s, following in the footsteps of his father, Adolfo Procopio (and if you’ve ever been to Disneyland or Disneyworld, you’ve seen a lot of Adolfo spectacular sculpts), and was mentored by the fabled Nine Old Men (Eric Larson in particular) as he rose through the ranks of Disney Animation.

In the 1980s, he was a key figure in bringing back the art of using animation maquettes to guide the artists, creating some of the first ones for The Great Mouse Detective, Oliver & Company, and The Little Mermaid. While at Disney, Rubén was also being mentored by Alex Toth, whose comic art style can be seen influencing Rubén’s take on The Phantom and Zorro. Since leaving Disney as an animation supervisor, Rubén has created sculptures for Walt Disney Consumer Products, Walt Disney Classics Collection, Bowen Designs, Sideshow Collectibles, and DC Direct through his Masked Avengers Studio.  Most notably, he’s produced a wide array of items for his former Disney colleague Tracy Mark Lee at Electric Tiki. Rubén was further able to honor his long time love for pulp heroes by spearheading the Classic Heroes Collection, featuring everyone from Dick Tracy and Doc Savage to The Rocketeer and Hellboy. Even Lassie got some love! I can’t tell you how much I love this series; the only thing that would have made me happier is if they were able to make a figure line that looked just like these sculpts, only articulated.

He also oversaw a lot of product for the Disney Store through Disney Consumer Products in the 2000s, notably the new take on “Disney Heroes” as detailed, articulated action figures. We see some of the original sculpts in the pics below, but you really should go check out the second series that was never made. Just stunning stuff. The Beast would have made a terrific figure. A compatible line of Disney Princesses was also on the drawing board, but alas.

Rubén was gracious enough to let me take pictures of his workspace and some of his past projects to share. The artistry on display here just blows my mind, especially considering his medium of choice is Super Sculpey! So check out the pics below (click on a picture to enlarge and get commentary below each shot) and then leave some comments! And go check out his own blog for lots more gems! Sorry this article is less than timely, but hopefully it was worth the wait.  And I’ll see you kids on the other side!

Toy Fair 2011 has come and gone and while this year seemed a bit more sedate for what new items were shown, one group of action figures stood out above all others: DC Universe Classics Wave 18. Why are these toys special, you ask? Because for the first time ever, not only do we get a mass market assortment of Super Friends specific toys, but it’s centered around four figures that you would be justified in thinking no one would ever think to make figures of, let alone all four in one wave! Yes, I’m talking about the controversial "ethnic" heroes: Samurai, Black Vulcan, El Dorado, and C&C Apache Chief.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I know some people think these characters are superfluous, or not "comic based" and therefore not worthy of a figure, but I don’t agree with that logic. First and foremost, there is a big section of fans who do want these figures and have waited for them for 20 years.  And on top of that, this is a toy line, not the comics. And these guys make GREAT toys! And they do give a selection of diversity to an all too-white toy aisle (with the occasional black character thrown in). How many Native Americans are on shelves? Asians? Hispanics? Is it going to kill collectors to add one more? And Mattel made it super easy to skip this wave if you don’t like it by tying in the C&C to the theme, so if you just want Bronze Tiger, then by all means just get Bronze Tiger.

Plus, with the addition of Toyman the Legion of Doom is now complete as well!

But the big "completion piece" is Samurai, who wraps up Mattel’s recreation of the fabled Super Powers lineup. With the further additions of Dick Grayson Robin from Wave 16 (out now!) and the upcoming SP Mr. Freeze repaint in the Batman: Legacy line I’ve updated the DCUC/SP picture below. Sure, we could still use repaints of Superman, Batman, and Penguin in more Bronze-Age accurate colors. And Kalibak and Orion would need resculpts to be perfect recreations (although it’s been hinted that the new Lex Luthor armor will be repainted and rereleased down the road to be more SP accurate as well).  But if the line ended with these guys I would be content that we have a complete SP lineup in the greater DCUC line. And with Creeper, El Dorado, and Black Vulcan we’re three more characters closer to finishing off all the unmade SP figures as well!  Now all we need is for the Four Horsemen to make some awesome figures of the sculpted-but-never-produced  Quadrex, Silicon, Rocketman and a C&C Shockwave and I’ll be happy. All of these guys have form factors or special treatments that would make them really neat toys. I’d probably buy Howitzer and Executioner, too, but even I don’t think they’re necessary as figures…

I’m not exactly sure how they did it, but I think Bollywood (Russia? Azerbaijan) somehow was able to film Michael Bay’s actual dreams. This is everything he wishes he could do in real life, but just can’t muster that much awesome in one container. Be prepared for your mind to explode! (And they even throw in a Wilhelm Scream!)

It’s just a shame that this never got to see the light of day in all of its super poseable glory. Not that it really ever had much of a chance, even had Toy Biz kept producing toys. As Jesse Falcon explains in the video below, Disney holds the rights to this guy, and they wanted waaaaaay to much money to make a figure. Go listen to the man himself:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Man. You know, since Marvel was recently sold, maybe the new buyer would give it a shot to see if Disney would work with them and maybe do some Rocketeer projects, maybe even some new comics. Now who was the new owner of Marvel again? Ohhhh yeah….DISNEY. With all the noise that has been made over the past couple of years about Marvel dancing around the Marvelman license, you would think that SOMEONE would be talking up the Rocketeer. Wouldn’t that be something, to fold the ol’ Rocketeer into the Marvel Universe. And maybe into the Hasbro deal as well. Maybe even give us one nice Cliff Secord figure in the 3 3/4" scale to fit right in alongside all those great 30s era Indiana Jones toys as well.

Still, looking over the slides of all that unproduced artwork, I did notice that we have recently been given two of those concepts at least: check out the Paul Komoda concept art next to these recent releases from Hasbro. Looks like someone in Rhode Island has been raiding the Toy Biz archives…

5 comments ]]> http://www.actionfigureinsider.com/ottertorials/2010/12/31/up-up-and-away/feed/ 5 http://www.actionfigureinsider.com/ottertorials/2010/12/30/harry-steele-i-always-knew-some-day-you%e2%80%99d-come-walking-through-my-door/ http://www.actionfigureinsider.com/ottertorials/2010/12/30/harry-steele-i-always-knew-some-day-you%e2%80%99d-come-walking-through-my-door/#comments Thu, 30 Dec 2010 20:47:26 +0000 ToyOtter http://www.actionfigureinsider.com/ottertorials/?p=397 So Hot Toys unveiled its new Indiana Jones figure at their 10th Anniversary showcase last week and it got me thinking: who would have thought 10 years ago that we would have so many Indiana Jones toys to choose from? Back then all you could find were the old Kenner figures and the extremely hard to find Toys McCoy versions. Now we have an embarrassment of riches, with figures and accessories in all scales, the ability to recreate Jones’ actual wardrobe, and more paraphernalia than you could crack a whip at.

But one piece of Indiana Jones lore has remained relatively hard to find: The Secret of the Incas!

What exactly *is* The Secret of the Incas, you ask? Well, while Raiders of the Lost Ark had many influences in its development, the one most often cited as the key film is this 1954 movie starring Charleton Heston as Harry Steele, a rogue Soldier of Fortune searching for a lost artifact that will bring him "fortune and glory". While TheRaider.net can detail all the similarities far better than I can, suffice it to say that Steele dresses and acts more than a bit like our favorite archaeologist.

In recent years this lost gem has become easier to view with poor copies on youtube and ebay, but for some reason Paramount has kept it pretty well hidden from tv showings or any home video/dvd releases. So imagine my surprise to stumble across it ready for instant viewing on Netflix’s streaming service in pretty good quality! Now, is this a great film? No. Not even close. But it is fairly interesting, if only for two reasons: one, it introduced the world to the Peruvian Soprano, Yma Sumac (whose voice should be familiar to fans of the Big Lebowski), and it was surprisingly filmed almost entirely on location! If you’ve ever been interested in Cuzco, Peru or the fabled Machu Picchu ruins, you get to see them in lingering detail in this movie. And it sure feels a lot more exotic than the sets in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull…

So go check it out if you’ve got Netflix, because they shift what’s available in their Instant Viewing section frequently, so there’s no telling how long before this curiosity will be put back into its crate in that endless warehouse.

And lo and behold, they had new pallets of merchandise on the floor, waiting to be stocked. And right on top of the toy pallet in front was one box of DCUC Classics. And when the very nice stocker opened the box for me I found one complete set of DCUC Wave 14. Which is the first time I’ve found any of an exclusive Walmart wave in Dallas at all, let alone in the first week or so of shipping! FYI, the box had doubles of Zatanna, Alan Scott, and Hourman. And it was lucky for me, since I haven’t seen any of them since.

What was unlucky for me was that I didn’t realize until I got home that my Tyr was all jacked up. Of course, at first I was too busy being mad that my Obsidian had two right biceps, until I realized that he actually did have a left bicep, it was just bent so badly it looked like the wrong one. A little hot water and rubber bands holding it down fixed that one overnight. But Tyr is a different story: his chest piece thing is completely malformed. And by the time I figured it out (at first I thought they had changed it from the package images for some reason, since it looks like a new chest piece, not necessarily a deformed one)  I had thrown away the receipt and package. And have I mentioned that I’m kind of a big Super Powers fan, so this was a figure I’ve been looking forward to more than most? So my choices are to try and find a new one, switch packages and try to return the bad one, live with this one and forget about it, or just eat the cost, buy a new one, and go to my blog to rant about Mattel’s consistently crappy Quality Control.

Guess which one I’m choosing?

So yeah. Mattel just can’t seem to keep these things from having defects. I don’t mean flaws (Zatanna has a paint smear on her boob, but whatever, it happens).  But QC at the factory should be catching these kind of malformed pieces and throwing them into a bucket to be regrind. These things happen throughout the run, and someone is not doing their job when one goes through. And for $16 a pop now, I’m not that forgiving when it costs me even more money and time to replace this because of Mattel’s mistake. This isn’t the first time this type of mistake has been made at the factory level: in Wave 15 Martian Manhunter and Jemm figures both were released with no one catching that they had the wrong bicep pieces. This was corrected in a running change, but woe betide you if you got one of the mistake versions, because Mattel does not exchange bad figures for good ones. Once again, the consumer pays for poor QC, with no consequences for Mattel.

Of course, that’s not the only reason to be miffed at Mattel. Let’s take a look at their upcoming DCUC wave 16, which on the surface is one of the better overall waves, especially if you’re a Batman Family fan. I’ll overlook the Robin variant being a tad weird by having a kid’s head on an adult body, and zero right in to the baffling decision to add extra elbow and knee joints 3 years into a line. Actually, the knees I could live with. They are nicely sculpted, and don’t ruin the flow of the figure too much. But the elbows, especially on Robin, look horrendous! And even worse, these figures now don’t match the rest of the past line. And if there was one big prop I’ve been giving Mattel on this line that other lines just don’t have, it’s a relative abundance of consistency, that makes for a very cohesive collection.But you know what makes the extra joints an even worse idea than the flawed appearance? It’s the amazingly low quality plastic that keeps showing up on this line.

Look, I realize that costs have gone up. That the license costs money. That Mattel needs to pay their CEO huge amounts of scratch every year.  But if you know you’re going to have to use prophalactic-grade PVC on your toys, why wouldn’t you engineer them to compensate for the low durometer, instead of adding joint that REMOVE stability and thin out areas of stress? These guys are hard enough to stand without their limbs acting as if they were made of spaghetti. Of course, the crappy plastic causes them to be deformed right out of the package, so even with the old joints getting some of them to stand was a major, if not impossible, challenge. Hey, you know what would help them deform even further? Posing the figures unnaturally in a tight vac-formed shell! Yep, even though this line is ostensibly for the "Adult Collector",  Mattel still insists on trying to make it eye-catching on shelves for the kiddies and pose the figures in all kinds of goofy arrays. Except go back and read what I wrote about not planning for your limitations, etc. etc.  I don’t even feel like going into the fact that their new packaging for 2011 is twice as big as it needs to be, probably for no other reason but to steal shelf spaces from other toy lines in Walmart. Way to go green, Mattel!

That’s the end of the rant. If you’ll excuse me, I need to go hunt down another Tyr.

So there was that thing back a few years ago where we found out all about the plans for the final years of the Super Powers Collection including concept art for many possible figures. And that other thing, where some extension plans for the original Kenner Star Wars line showed up in a found presentation. Or the ill-fated Mattel Wonder Woman and the Star Riders? And how about when it was revealed that there was another Raiders of the Lost Ark assortment to be made in Hasbro’s Indiana Jones line (OK, that one still hurts).

You’d think we would have heard all about toys that never made it into production by now. You’d think that with so many collectors and so much time having passed, there are no surprises left any more from the golden days of action figures (1970s & 1980s).

Well, partner, you’d be wrong.

What if we told you that there were more gems out there? Gems that might Dazzle and Annihilate your senses with their Fantastic concepts? Can you keep a secret?

That’s right, true believer! Mattel’s toy line of Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars lives again! And it’s a crazy tale that will Thunderball you over with its twists and turns. But first, let me lay down a little background on you for those not already in the know:

It all started with a phone call. In 1983 Mattel, the largest toy company in the world, contacted Marvel Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter. Having recently lost their bid to make toys of the DC Comics characters to Kenner Toys, Mattel immediately went to Marvel for the chance at a competing toy line. Shooter was intrigued by the talks, but Mattel did have one condition: they wanted a big event to base the toys on in lieu of any TV or film support. The specifics weren’t important as long as it was called "Secret Wars"- two words that Mattel had found tested well with adolescent boys. And so the tongue-twisting "Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars" was born. Although Mattel had input into the mini-series’ direction and Marvel did everything they could to facilitate new toys (creating new characters, changing existing character’s costumes, and highlighting vehicles and play environments), Mattel ultimately used very little specifics from the Secret Wars comics itself.

Roger Sweet, the creator of Masters of the Universe at Mattel, was responsible for oversight of the new line. "I had been put in charge of managing the design creation of the 1983 He-Man / Masters Of The Universe line, and continued to do so through the 1987 line.", said Roger. "But, in about 1984, I was also given responsibility for managing the design creation of the Marvel Secret Wars line. Mattel had gone to Marvel in the hope of picking up the Marvel line, and did so. Previously, Mattel had been to DC Comics in the hope of acquiring the DC license. But, Mattel lost out to Kenner. By Mattel Marketing and upper management, the Marvel Secret Wars line was viewed as a "flanker brand" to Masters. In other words, it was considered as a secondary brand to pick up additional male action sales for Mattel, but while cutting little into Masters’ sales. That is why the Marvel figures were designed smaller and far less muscular than the Masters figures." So these figures were intentionally "dumbed down" to not only save production costs, but to literally be a lesser product to not compete with MOTU, but still pick up subsidiary sales, much like Marvel’s SuperHeroSquad does today (of course, we still see this theory in effect today at Mattel, with lines like JLU). This also explains how a smaller company like Kenner got the DC license instead of Mattel; because they were willing to put more money and effort into it.

Secret Wars figures were articulated only at the shoulders, hips and neck and had no special "action feature" like Kenner’s Super Powers or Mattel’s own Masters of the Universe. Most of the figures shared one of 3 basic bodies, with only minimal custom detail tooled for each character. This also meant that there would be no characters with unusual bodies that couldn’t be reused or that were oversized and would need unique packaging. Mr. Sweet explains how the direction of the line was decided: "I was quite familiar with the Marvel Comics characters. I had grown up with some of them, and had read about them in the Marvel comics. Marvel provided very little actual support, but would have if Mattel had needed it. My design group and Marketing handled the selection of the Marvel figures to go into the Mattel Marvel line, and the creation of the other product like vehicles and playsets."

Costume seams and line were painted rather than sculpted, and even paint details such as eyes were dropped on some of the figures. There were almost no unique accessories, but all figures instead came with the same common guns and "Secret Shields"; the Heroes came with round shields and the Villains came with square shields. These shields came with a series of 4 two-sided lenticular inserts that featured art showing the characters in action. Each scene changed when the shield was tilted.  Even the figure packaging had uniform art on the front with only the character name changing from figure to figure. The backs of the cards did feature a brief biography of the character, along with a short comic strip that resembled the old Hostess Fruit Pie ads more than it did the actual Secret Wars comics.

The first series to hit store shelves featured the customary stalwart Marvel characters along with some new fan favorites getting toys for the very first time. Roger Sweet’s design group, "along with Marketing, selected the figures. They were selected largely because they were the main known Marvel good and bad guys at that time, or appealed to someone at Mattel". It’s safe to say that colorful characters and ones that were easy to produce also played a factor in figure selection.

Series 1- Wolverine, Captain America, Iron Man, Spider-Man,
Doctor Octopus, Doctor Doom,  Kang, Magneto

Series 2 hit shelves in early 1985, but by this time the line was already ceasing production overseas. Whereas the first series featured characters that all played a big role in the Secret Wars comic, nearly all of the characters in this next series didn’t appear in Secret Wars at all! Even during production then, some concepts never made it to shelves. "There was one vehicle that I created and designed that was very neat. And, I commissioned an outside designer to do a beautiful full-color styled illustration of it. The vehicle had one figure sitting inside a cockpit and another figure standing on the back manning a machine gun. But the vehicle later was deleted in the Mattel visual design department and replaced by a much less appealing vehicle of another type." laments Mr. Sweet.

Series 2- Falcon, Hobgoblin, Baron Zemo, Black Spider-Man, Daredevil

Unfortunately the toys were not a giant hit on the scale of He-Man and his pals and within just 2 years of launch, the Secret Wars line was already in clearance bins at toy store around the country. The cancellation of the line was so abrupt that three figures for the third series were already in production. Rather than destroy these toys, they were released in Europe only as there were not enough of them to distribute to all the American markets.

European Figures- Constrictor, Electro, Iceman

Once again, the only three new characters never appeared in the Secret Wars comics, and in fact they were not even very well known or popular in the comics of the day. The cost cutting could readily be seen by this point: outside of new heads, each of their bodies are recycled from earlier figures with no added details. Like much of the other characters, this would be the first time any of them had been made into toys. Unlike the other series, these three are by far the rarest pieces in the entire line, and even at the time of their release were hard to find if you didn’t like in Europe.

And that’s where it ended, as a pale shadow of other contemporary lines, yet the only glimpse fans had of their favorite characters in plastic during Marvel’s heyday. But was it really the end?

Well, apparently Mattel had further plans for these stalwart heroes…and heroines. Yep, now it can be told: there were TWO more assortments planned and it seems that they were a good ways into production when the line was cancelled. We’ve done a little detective work coupled with the find of some artwork for those final waves to bring you the whole story. The artwork in and of itself is quite a find. This isn’t concept art, but actual production art to be used for one of the most overlooked items in the Secret Wars saga: the lenticular shields used by all of the figures! Each figure came with four lenticular inserts- one in the shield and three in a baggie. The inserts showed unique scenes on front and back pertaining to each character; some of them showed secret identities, some showed a demonstration of their powers, and most showed them in battle with other characters that had figures so kids could act out the mayhem on their own.

And that fact is key to figuring out what was going to be made: no shield produced featured characters that were NOT a part of the Secret Wars line. So looking at the artwork created for the unmade figures’ shields we can see that the characters that were previously unknown are: Mr. Fantastic, the Abomination, Annihilus, Thunderball, and…Dazzler! Yes, as crazy as it seems (and really, this entire line-up is pretty crazy) the first female figure that the toy line was going to have was not Phoenix, not Invisible Girl, not Scarlet Witch, but Dazzler. Oh…kay.

But maybe she wasn’t going to be the first. There were two more characters featured on the shield artwork that hadn’t been seen before, but didn’t have full set of art themselves: the Hulk and Mystique. And this is really the final piece of the puzzle, because some of the existing characters seen on the artwork include Iceman, Electro, and Constrictor: the 3 "European" Secret Wars figures. If we assume that Mattel’s plans going forward were to mirror the second wave, and offer 5 new characters with some re-released older figures in each assortment, then it seems apparent that wave three would have actually been Electro, Iceman, Constrictor, The Hulk, and Mystique. The Hulk has long been reported by multiple sources to have been sculpted, and Mystique would have made a very striking, colorful figure. Especially since the prevailing mantra of the time was "girls don’t sell" in the action figure world, having an "alien" looking girl just might help counter that wisdom. It also makes sense why only three of them were released to Europe: this figures only needed tooling for new heads, and their bodies were straight repaints of earlier figures and there fore were cheap to produce and recoup costs on what was already in production. But tooling new bodies like the Hulk or Mystique would cost much more, giving them no chance to make their money back unless they were released wide in a big market like the U.S.

The fourth wave probably wasn’t that far into production, with most of the artwork not even having been inked yet, let alone colored and formatted for lenticular prints (and that also explains why there is finished artwork so far out; the lenticular process took more time than normal printing schedules). But we can see how Dazzler would have been meant reuse the Mystique body, Abomination the Hulk body, and the rest reusing and repainting existing bodies with maybe new wings for Annihilus and a new neck or arms for Mr. Fantastic.

Of course, we haven’t talked yet about WHO exactly drew this artwork. Earlier series had art by comic pros such as Mike Zeck and Bob Layton. But Mattel also had their own stable of artists that they used for lines like Masters of the Universe. Some of them were established comic artists, too, like the great Mike Sekowsky, who drew some alternate Mr. Fantastic pieces, and Pete Von Sholly, who drew the Thunderball artwork. But the majority of these pieces were handed over to a young artist who was then doing a bang-up job on the MOTU mini-comics. An artist who would go on to establish himself as having not only a distinctive art style, but also a unique voice that would remake how people saw superhero animation. Yes, these images would have been the first professional published superhero art by Bruce Timm, who confirmed it for us himself. "Holy crap, I’d completely forgotten about that stuff ", said Bruce. "It was so long ago, my memory’s pretty hazy, but …these were the only pieces I did for the Secret Wars line — and yes, I guess this was my first "professional" spandex/superhero art". Another artist who worked on the line remembers that "the line was cancelled while they were working on it, but [I] really don’t have more memory of it. Bruce came in at the end, which is why I don’t believe any of his were ever produced." According to him, they were specifically commissioned by Mattel to create this final art. His notes on the last two assignments character assignments reads: Abomination, Dazzler, Mr. Fantastic, Annihilus, Hulk, Glider (1st of two), and Mystique, Vision, Thunderball.  Color was never produced for these two batches, so they got a kill fee for that aspect. This is the only mention of the Vision, as no artwork involving him has shown up anywhere (it is possible that the art for the Vision was never started,with the cancellation of the line happening before that point and much of the artwork in pencil only).

Hero Shields

Dazzler	Dazzler vs Annihilus	Dazzler vs Constrictor
Dazzler vs Villains	Dazzler vs bars	Dazzler vs Abomination
Mr Fantastic	Mr Fantastic vs Abomination	Mr Fantastic vs Doom Roller
Mr Fantastic vs Electro	Mr Fantastic vs Villains	Mr Fantastic vs Abomination (Sekowsky
Mr Fantastic vs Hobgoblin (Sekowsky)	Mr Fantastic (Sekowsky)

Villain Shields

The Abomination	Abomination vs building	Abomination vs Captain America
Abomination vs wall	Abomination vs Hulk	Abomination vs Wolverine
Annihilus	Annihilus vs Hulk	Annihilus vs Base
Annihilus vs Captain America	Annihilus vs Dazzler	Annihilus vs Daredevil
Annihilus vs Spider-Man	Thunderball	Thunderball vs bike
Thunderball vs Captain America	Thunderball vs helicopter	Thunderball vs Spider-Man
Thunderball vs Iceman	Thunderball vs wall

Bruce didn’t just draw the figure’s shields, though. Also included in his artwork were some new gliders (like the Doom Star and Star Dart) and "Battle Board" art that appears to be tied to new "mini-rig" type vehicles that probably would have been packaged with a figure or two for a deluxe package.

Battle Boards

Iron Man	Captain America	Constrictor
Daredevil	Mystique	Spider-Man
Electro	Dr. Doom	Wolverine

Mystique	Spider-Man

With this great new look at what might have been we can only step back and marvel at how amazing, fantastically bizarre this toy line really was. To this day we do not yet have figures of Baron Zemo 2 and Dazzler, and Constrictor is only just showing up now. But the likelihood of turning up actual sculpts of the unproduced toys seems to be pretty slim. According to a source "in the know", there is nothing in the Mattel archives concerning Secret Wars.  Apparently Mattel kept terrible records back then and anything pre-1995 is kind of a lost cause.

There is a copy of Dr. Doom’s original weapon (?) that was not included with the figure in one of their display cases.  And the rumors swirl that Hulk and The Thing were sculpted.  But unless the prototypes were still on someone’s desk who has worked there all these years, or in a retired designer’s drawer hidden away from the world, it is doubtful we’ll ever know just what could have been had Mattel stuck it out for just one more year back in 1985.

Special thanks to Bruce Timm, Roger Sweet, and others involved in this line for the great information! Go watch Bruce’s awesome WB DVDs, and go check out Roger’s book on the making of the MOTU line. And be sure to check out co-author James Sawyer’s super Star Trek blog, "A Piece of the Action"!

But at its core, SDCC was and is about comics and comic culture. That’s what drives the train. So when huge news breaks, it is a tad disappointing that the major outlets like USA Today, Entertainment Weekly,  and CNN that are covering the con do not highlight it in an appropriate manner (kudos to TIME for recognizing the significance of the news, though). What news is this, you ask? Well the biggest news of the con is this: Fantagraphics will be publishing the Complete Floyd Gottfredson run of Mickey Mouse comic strips, starting in May 2011. This is huge.

Fantagraphics has spent over two years negotiating with Disney over these reprints. And while Carl Barks’ and his Ducks comics are well-known and revered, a much smaller group of people is aware of the seminal work done by Gottfredson on Mickey Mouse. These strips are pretty much the last of the "greats" to be reprinted, in what is now the Golden Age for classic comic strip reprints. What is big about this news is that these strips have NEVER been reprinted uncut before, and many of them not at all. Think about that: for 70 years, Disney has let some of the best work featuring their flagship character go unseen. Can you imagine if Marvel had never reprinted the Ditko Spider-Man issues, except in compilations? Sure, many individual stories have been chopped up into comics over the years, but these stories were heavily edited, rewritten, and relettered. 

While it remains to be seen if Disney can bring themselves to go through with a hands-off policy, Fantagraphics has the best shot ever to not only show these strips as they were originally seen (and from all accounts, Disney keeps excellent copies of everything in their morgue, so they’ll look better than anyone has seen them) but do so in a great presentation, judging by their treatment of Peanuts and Popeye among others. I’m just hoping that Disney sees that these are of historical value and let’s Fantagraphics reprint EVERYTHING, warts and all.

Now where are those Gottfredson Mouse & Friends toys?!?

OK, it’s been a bit of a roadblock lately with me trying to get back to my series of blogs looking back to earlier blog entries, but I think I’m finally over the hump at work. With that said, I’ll be trying to catch up and post a few more "sequels" over the next week or so. So for this post I’m once again revisiting our look at how DC Universe Classics is reviving the 1980s touchstone toy line Kenner Super Powers Collection. 

Of course, I’ll first need to update that iconic pic of the 33 basic Super Powers characters again:

Wow.  We’re only one figure away from having the whole line announced. I don’t think anyone saw this coming in their wildest dreams a couple of years ago when the line started, nor that it would happen this quickly. Sure, Scott and the Four Horsemen are big Super Powers fans, but the red tape involved has held back revisiting this line for quite some time. Not to mention DC Direct and Hasbro not having the confidence to look at it when they’ve had the chance. So for all the crap I and others give Mattel, my hat is off to them BIG TIME. No matter how flawed some of the execution might be, I still will take it over not getting these figures. Same goes for the hassle of getting con exclusives.  I’m going to guess we’ll see Samurai in either Wave 16 or 17. And then…the circle will be complete. Or will it?

After all, Kenner did plan on making a whole bunch more Super Powers figures before the line was axed. And they even sculpted a nice set of prototypes for the 4th wave, including Man-Bat, Silcon, Shockwave, Rocketman, El Dorado and Quadrex. While we only have Man-Bat out of that line-up (so far) in DC Universe Classics, we have gotten a lot of the characters that were presented in concept art. In fact, we have enough to complete a whole "imaginary wave", from a certain point of view. As shown below, Mattel has made nice versions of Man-Bat, John Stewart, Kid Flash, Blue Devil, The Wonder Twins, Clark Kent, Bizarro, Vigilante, Deathstroke, and Obsidian. I don’t doubt that Creeper and 70s Supergirl are too far behind. What I really would love to see are new versions of the other Kenner created characters, like Quadrex and Executioner. And now that we have Cyclotron and Golden Pharaoh, that goal doesn’t seem too far out of reach. More to come on this topic…

Would that wrap up the line then? Almost. While it’s true we do have versions of some of the same characters in DCUC, we do not have the Super Powers versions. I don’t think we’ll necessarily get new sculpts for Orion or Kalibak, but we could get repaints that would put them much closer to their earlier counterparts. And of course, we still do need a Dick Grayson college age Robin! How great would it be to get a new 5-pack of these guys below (minus Kalibak) with the new figure being that Robin? I put the pic below together using some customs from other places online and some photoshop tweaking. And I have to say that the idea of a SP colored Mr. Freeze didn’t really appeal to me until I saw Adventurevault’s awesome custom repaint. I want this figure NOW. Custom Robin is by Lesternessman (just incredible work), Penguin is by Rich (check out his other DCUC repaints), and Kalibak is by Tyke. I highly recommend checking out all the links above. Batman and Superman are just more color accurate, with brighter grays and blues than the production figures. In general, ALL of the DCUC figures have duller, less vibrant paint jobs than SP did, even when the paint masters have them. I don’t know how these get so dull in production, because when you see the prototypes at conventions they look fantastic. I really wish they’d ditch the darker oversprays so it didn’t look like Mr. Miracle has been mud wrestling.

 So that’s about it. Once I actually have all of these in hand I’ll probably shoot that pic one more time with all of the figures at once, and put it on here poster sized. And now to work on getting all of these made in 4" scale…

So the news hit today that a county in California has banned fast food toys in some fashion. As someone who designed these toys for many years I’m of two minds on the subject.

First and foremost, it’s not really the government’s job to police what you are allowed to purchase if it is not harmful. Yes, childhood obesity is a pretty bad thing, and is even worse for our future than it is today (see: Wall-E). But I’d much rather see them crack down on the way things are cooked, the ingredients in them, and the choices being offered first. I do applaud that they at least try to make this make sense, and only take away toys from kids’ meals that exceed a certain calorie/fat level. But the sad fact is that pretty much all of them exceed that level.

What makes me not hate this altogether is that I think by leaning so heavily on licenses you are de facto bribing the kids to eat at your restaurant. Fast food places learned in the 1980s that kids are the one who make the decision where to eat in the family, and they saw that by dangling the best toy property in front of those kids they’ll win the battle. Dave Thomas never liked that Wendy’s had toys, because he wanted the food to stand on its own feet. But he was realistic enough to know that he couldn’t compete with McDonald’s and Burger King without them.

I think it you went back to having non-licensed toys that are once again just something to keep kids quiet and not used as a traffic builder/profit center it might make the licenses last a bit longer in the retail toy world instead of burning out so quick, and let creativity and craftsmanship rise in the fast food toys without having the license as a crutch. And maybe then parents and kids would pick the place to eat at that had the best food and not the coolest superhero of the month.

For the first time, I’m actually getting all of a new DC Universe Classics wave without looking for it, without hunting it down, and without paying more than retail cost. In fact, I’m paying less! I ordered the entire wave through Amazon a couple of weeks ago, and got them all for the average retail price of $14.99 each. Plus, there is no tax going through Amazon, and since I’m signed up for Amazon Prime I didn’t pay shipping, either. Pretty cool! I got a notice that they all shipped today, and Negative Man is already here, having shipped a few days early for some reason.

If I can pull this off for every wave I may never go on a toy hunt again. And I’ll be all the happier for it, too!

OK, I didn’t make any new predictions for 2010, but in all honesty my predictions for 2009 can pretty much be reused without much modifications (the less said about my 2009 resolutions, the better. Ahem.) So how did I do in forecasting the future? Let’s take a look:

The toy industry is going to get worse in 2009.

I would say this one was on the money. Prices went up, quality went down, distribution was terrible across the board. SDCC exclusives caused a panic. Online toy sales were incredibly erratic. Lines were canceled, Star Wars/GI Joe faltered. It goes on and on.  Will it get better in 2010? I hope so, but really the most I’m wishing for right now is for prices to stay where they are, and not increase yet again before the economic recovery picks up steam. Every dollar they go up is a dollar that the companies will continue to keep even after things get better.

Toys R Us and Walmart will do very well. 

I think this was also true. Walmart is getting more and more exclusives, and we saw this year that they’ve been almost the only game in town for many new toys while Target has the same old stock languishing on shelves.  TRU needs to pick up the slack on distribution and quantities, but no one can deny that they are on an upswing over the last decade, and are filling the gap left by the collapse of Tower and Suncoast for smaller collector driven lines.

Hasbro & Mattel to initiate mergers…or spin-offs.

I kind of blew this one. I really though we’d see some consolidation with the industry in turmoil, but it seems they’d rather hike prices to make up for the shortfall in sales. With the economy showing signs of life, I’m backing off this one even further. 

Licensed toys will stay strong…but become even less worth paying big bucks for the license.

Yeah. Avatar, Terminator, Star Trek, TMNT, GI Joe, Star Wars have all fallen far from their heights or didn’t hit those heights to begin with.  The perennial superhero lines are doing OK, but only the Marvel movie lines are really hot. We’ll see overall how "How to Train Your Dragon" does as a Walmart exclusive line, but everything is still easy to find. Don’t look for Shrek to burn up the sales charts, either, although Toy Story 3 might do decent numbers. The sad fact is that no matter how bad sales get, don’t expect studios to back off the cost of these licenses anytime soon.

And those were my predictions! And as an added bonus, here is your moment of Bollywood greatness; is it Teen Wolf? E.T.? The Absent-Minded Professor? You got me!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Wow, five years. I think this makes it the longest that I’ve been at one online "home" (not counting ToyOtter.com, which is really more of a rest stop than a home for new content). And it’s easily been the best place I’ve had the pleasure to be a part of.

So, to celebrate our "wooden anniversary" (thanks for that bit of knowledge, Mr. Lenzi), I’m going to write a series of blogs this week with each one being a follow-up to an older post that I’ve made, possibly even going back to old content on RTM and ToyOtter in the spirit of celebrating what has come before. Yes, believe it or not that means a new Ottertorial for every day this week!

I don’t believe it either.

And what could be a better way to kick this off than revisiting my very first blog that ran here at AFi? I’m speaking specifically about my appreciation of Funko’s Wacky Wobblers, in particular the ones based on Ad Icons. When I started collecting these things were much different in my life: I was a toy designer who liked the old marketing mascots, but outside of Wendy I hadn’t had a lot of contact with them (although you won’t believe how many times I pushed to get a head bobber made of Dave Thomas!)

These days, though, I actually do work in marketing, thinking up promotions for such diverse brands as Kraft, Castrol, Frito-Lay, Campbell’s, etc. And while I’ve tried a couple of times to push promotional merchandise on my bosses (sad to say I can guarantee you won’t be seeing a Frito Bandito Wobbler anytime soon) I really haven’t had much more opportunities to see cool retro stuff make it out than I used to.

And it seems like that’s how it goes for Funko, too. It’s been awhile since they’ve really pushed out any nostalgia properties; I talked with Brian Mariotti at Toy Fair this year and he confirms that they really don’t have any plans to make ad icon wobblers anymore. I can see where he’s coming from: back when they were a smaller company, Funko only made a few thousand of each Wobbler and the licenses were for small, one-shot runs. Those sold OK, but many of them took a little while to sell through all the way. And that was when they had outlets to sell them like Tower Records and Suncoast, which have gone the way of the dodo. Nowadays Funko plays with the big boys: they make hundred of thousands of Marvel and Star Wars Wobblers and sell them in big chains. The last one they made was the modern Burger King, and he’s easily available still.

So what it appears to be is that my collection is more or less complete…at least, it is as of a week ago. That’s when I acquired the last of the Wacky Wobbler Holy Grails: the Outback Kangaroo! Who, you say? The Outback Kangaroo?!? Since when does Outback Steakhouse have a mascot? Well, they don’t. Except for this Wobbler that was made solely for a corporate event and never available on the mass market. Funko used to (and stay may for all I know) make small runs of custom Wobblers for whoever wanted them, and better yet made them with actual packaging so they were considered as part of the overall collection. So you could pick up great icons like the Gorton’s Fisherman or the Empire Carpet Guy if you went to a little effort and expense. The only other corporate one I know that they did was Magic, the Old Navy dog who kinda existed as a real dog in their ads 10 years ago.

But Outback had no such mascot, so they created this boomerang throwing Kangaroo to fill the gap. I had never picked him up before as I refuse to spend more than $20 or so on any wobbler (I got lucky to start collecting when they first came out, as prices for some of these hit the hundreds of dollars, easily). I only have a few of the rarest ones already because I traded logos and website designs for them. So I pretty much forgot about getting a Kangaroo, and since he’s not really a legit mascot it didn’t bother me too much. Not enough to spend $100 in any case.

And then a couple of weeks ago I was looking over some old emails and noticed one from a few years back where I was watching an eBay auction for one. So I went to do a search to see if any of them still show up. And found one…for a Buy-It-Now of $12.95. Sold! And that, my friends, is the end of a collection. Why so cheap, you ask? Well, I think two things are in play here: one is the principle of "all good things come to those who wait", namely that toy prices in general are their highest shortly after the toy is released, when the maximum amount of competition is after it. As each collector’s need is satisfied, the demand goes down and supply goes up. Unless an item is truly rare, the longer you wait the easier it is to find. Ebay helps this factor tremendously. Second, the hobby of collecting these Wobblers has diminished quite a bit from the mid 2000s, when Funko was releasing new Wobblers every few months at short runs. So like me, if you aren’t always on the prowl for new items you just aren’t paying attention to what’s out there. Pretty much all of the "rare" wobblers that commanded hundreds of dollars a few years ago are readily available at reasonable prices.

Still, I do hope that one day Funko cranks out a few more of these. I really would like the rest of my favorite icons to make the grade: CrunchBerry Beast, Pizza Hut Pete, Sugar Pops Pete, King Ding Dong, or the Piggly Wiggly Pig among others. But if this is all I get, them I guess I’m pretty happy. After all, who would have though ANY of these guys would get a toy 30-40 years after their heyday? Not me. Although one day I still would like to see that Dave Thomas sitting on my shelf, pitching his square hamburgers to the rest of the marketing legends…

So I think I’m going to make a decision on my Star Wars collection in general based on this one figure: get rid of almost everything else. Now, I’ve been working to ditch the majority of my collection over the past year. How I’m going to do it will remain under wraps for the moment, but I’ve been sorting and documenting what I’ve picked up in the past 20 years as time has permitted (most of it is in storage). I had planned on getting rid of most of my Star Wars figures, having given away my entire vintage collection a few years back to friends with kids. But now that I’ve seen how nice the latest figures actually are (I stopped collecting Star Wars around the time of Attack of the Clones, with their stupid action features) I’m rethinking that a bit.

The toys that I’m keeping are small representative batches that make good displays. And the things that got me started in the first place, the figures that hold the only nostalgia for me are the original 21 figure from Star Wars, and the first set from The Empire Strikes Back. In fact, that first set from Empire holds the most memories from my childhood (although I can tell you where I got each and every one of the first 40 or so Kenner figures).  So here is what I’m going to do: replace a set of the first 32 Kenner vintage figures, and acquire the best Hasbro modern day versions of those figures to make one big display. And that’s it. No more Star Wars figures outside of those. I’d be lying if I didn’t say this idea wasn’t heavily inspired by our pal CantinaDan’s awesome evolution blogs. No joke, go check them out now!

And since I haven’t been paying attention the SW for the past 6 years or so, I’m asking all of you: What are the definitive versions of those original 32 characters? Post a link to the figure you think is the best one in the comments below, and I’ll keep everyone updated with my progress as I pick them up. (Picture links are a must, especially for ones like Boba Fett, who has way too many to choose from!)

No, I instead found a plethora of Hasbro products that wore down my resolve and forced me to purchase them. Which items? Well, I’m glad you asked.  First off, I had decided to only acquire the Marvel Universe figures that were in the original Mattel Secret Wars line. But tonight I saw the new 3 3/4" Spider-Man line and had to pick up the Green Goblin and Venom. The Goblin will replace (in my mind) my old Mego Pocket Heroes Green Goblin, which I loved dearly as a lad of 8.  And now we finally have a Todd McFarlane version of Venom that can replace the one by Toy Biz waaaaay back in 1992. (Hey, do you realize that it’s been longer since Dazed & Confused was released in ’92 than it was from 1976 until 1992? Crazy!)

I would have left it at that, but I had to pass the Star Wars display on my way out. Now, I haven’t bought any Star Wars figures except the McQuarrie ones since 2002. But of course they now have a NEW SW concept figure out, the Empire Concept Snowtrooper (#2). And with it they have a finally perfect on-model Snowspeeder Luke, which was another favorite figure of mine as a lad of 9. 

So that was it. But as I left to toy section, I happened to look at the Xmas clearance section…where they had the MU Giant Battles figures for 50% off. I don’t really care about the big figures, but I did kind of want that Bucky Cap…

Damn you, Hasbro.

Lots of rumors are hitting as to what’s coming next. The biggest being that next year’s SDCC exclusive will be a Plastic Man figure with multiple attachments.  Fans are already going nuts over the news (and not entirely in a good way) so we’ll see what actually plans out in the next year. There has also been talk of completing the line-up by SDCC, with Desaad in Wave 12, and a Golden Pharaoh/ Cyclotron 2-pack to be revealed on MattyCollector.com next year. 

Is any of this true? Who knows for sure. We did get a pretty accurate leak about Waves 10 & 11 all the way back in Nov. 2008, so anything is possible. It’s a pretty safe bet in any case that we’ll wrap up the Super Powers homage sooner rather than later. And that’s where it gets really interesting for me:once the full lineup is released, will we see any of the characters that WEREN’T produced? We already have a few of them: Man-Bat, Bizarro, Kid Flash, Vigilante, John Stewart, Deathstroke, Supergirl, and the Wonder Twins. But is it possible we might see Quadrex? Silicon? Howitzer?!? 

Only time will tell. 

But this year I did get what is probably my favorite exclusive yet: Hasbro’s Marvel Universe Invaders set! (Although the Wonder Twins were neck and neck. I love those goofy bastards!) True, it is a bunch of repainted and/or kitbashed figures, but they did such a good job I can’t really complain. And Mattel take note: this is how you do exclusive packaging! New art by Marvel EIC Joe Quesada, all on new individual cards that fit in with the regular collection, in a special case with Cho’s pencil art backing each figure PLUS a neat Marvel 70th Anniversary magnet holding the front closed. 

And if you pick up Union Jack you have almost the whole Invaders team (although it’s a shame that the upcoming WW2 Cap and Bucky figures weren’t ready before this set was made. They really would have plussed it up). As is, at least they repainted Cap in desaturated colors befitting the period. If you repaint Firestar’s hair yellow and give her Hobgoblin’s cape she makes for a convincing Spitfire. I did a photoshop mock-up of the sorely needed Baron Blood to round out the lineup. Can you believe we’ve never gotten a figure of this guy?

This set is what’s forced me to give in and pick up a few select MU figures. I’m not going to be a completist on this line, by far. I’ll outline my MU collecting strategy in an upcoming blog, though. I hope Hasbro fulfills the promise of this line, with a few playsets and even crazier forays into depth of character down the road.

But I don’t want to remember them like that, as an odd factoid. Nor do I want to remember them by just their hits, although they had many. No, this is the way I like to remember them:

In the wake of the big hits of the Lay’s Spirit of Obi-Wan offer in 1996 and the  Froot Loops Stormtrooper Han Solo in 1995, Lucasfilm wanted another big product tie-in to push Episode I on the masses. Unfortunately for the marketing gurus, pretty much every brand under the sun would be also launching Episode I promotions at the same time. Pepsi cans, Pizza Hut boxes, Taco Bell toys, and KFC cups were just the tip of the iceberg of what would probably be the largest promotional movie launch ever to be seen. Multiple companies pitched ideas to Frito-Lay as to what their big promotion would be, one that would stand out from all the other Star Wars items on grocery shelves and most importantly, what would sell more bags of chips. Keep in mind that Pepsi/TriCon/Frito-Lay paid up to $2 Billion for the license, so you better believe they needed to move product to make that worthwhile.

So what was pitched was this: trading on the success of the Spirit of Obi-Wan, each bag of chips would have a mini-figure inside it. There would be 128 (!) different figures to collect, from Episode I and the Original Trilogy. Not only that, but there would be a handful of rare figures, and a possible mail-away display case for all of them. Talk about an incentive to buy chips! And you have to think back to how it was in 1998: still relatively little Star Wars product was out there, and you had a ravenous base of fans who were desperate for new items to collect! And these would hit months before the movie actually came out, so it didn’t rely on how well the movie was anyway. It really was the only time this program could have been pulled off and been a massive success (and anyone who doubts it would have been a success didn’t go through the pain that was the initial Hasbro Midnight Madness launch!) But Lucasfilm pulled way back on promotions for the next two films, so this was the one shot it had.

Ok, so if I didn’t work on this at all, how do I know about it? Well, my company was contacted to help out a bit on the toy aspect of it, and make some prototypes for the pitch itself. This was fun, if a bit frustrating as we couldn’t affect any details of the actual promotion, just what the figures might be. And that in itself was a challenge; to be fiscally viable, each figure could only cost a few cents! So much of the work we did was exploring the possibilities with such a limited budget.

We had Gentle Giant sculpt and cast a few sample figures. You can see how fragile these had made resin figures are; I don’t think any of the Luke’s lightsabers survived the first time we moved them around. One way to save money was to have limited paint on each one. To save even more, we could have them as only one color. We also experimented with themed materials, as seen below: Luke is a sandstone finish, Leia is pearlescent white, and Yoda is glow in the dark! Another possibility would be for each figure to have a flat back with a peg that would plug into a cardboard diorama that featured a background from the respective movie that the character is from. These dioramas could then be fitted into each other, making one long scene when all connected. The backs of the dioramas would have character/film information on them.

But even then the cost might have been too high for Frito-Lays’ tastes. If that were the case, we also had a back-up plan: two-dimensional characters that would be die-cut from styrene that could plug into "puzzle bases" that you could make a large display out of.  The bottom of the bases would have added info about each character. The art would either be photos from the films or would be drawn by popular comic artists as almost 3-D trading cards. These samples were drawn by Art Nichols and myself (and I had to cut A LOT of these by hand the night before the presentation…not fun!)

So why did you never see these on store shelves? Well, unfortunately the simple answer is that back then it was hard to explain just how big the collector base had become. Frito-Lay executives thought that it didn’t have a big enough payoff apparently, and they went with an instant win game with a limited number of game pieces that had the same movie pics that everyone was using. But it had one million dollar winner, and they felt that was a bigger draw than a tiny plastic figure. But what they just couldn’t grasp was that the chance in millions to be that one winner was no going to drive you to buy more chips. But you would if you were trying to collect 128 different figures!!! Hasbro proved the viability of the mini-figure idea nearly 10 years later with their 2006 Star Wars Saga mini Hologram pack-ins (one of which is shown in some pics above for scale). We tried to explain to them why the collectibility aspect would sell more chips, even if it had less of a surface "wow" factor, but they didn’t get it. We talked about seeding in some gold Yodas that could be redeemed for an instant full collection OR $1000. And we even talked about posing online as a wealthy collector who offered $5000 to the first person who could put together a full set for him. Not sure if we could have gotten away with that one…

So that’s this installment of regrets from my past. Sorry for the huge watermarks on  all the pics, but the last one of these I ran ended up with lots of folks just taking the pics for their websites without a link back here. At least one more Rejected! Star Wars article to come, probably two!

Make no mistake, The Dream never involved new toys. It always started with you being in a store (most likely a store that no longer existed, frequently a department store that still had a toy section) and as you wander through the store you find all the toys you wish were still there brand new on the shelves. And tons of them: the first 12-back Star Wars figures, all MOC. The original run of Master of the Universe. The 3rd wave of Super Powers. Maybe a Bionic Bigfoot, or Micronauts vehicle peeking around the endcap. And even better, toys that were never made! A vintage Tie Bomber! A Bantha playset!  A whole rack of He-Ro figures!

And then you wake up.

Well, I didn’t have that dream often, but I did have it. Up until about 12 years ago, that is. And then it went away, probably because nothing was hard to find anymore thanks to eBay, and everything you wish had been made in the 1970s was now being made in the present day. But last night, I had the dream again! Sorta…

I dreamt that I was buying Marvel Universe figures. And not just the ones I’ve been passing up, but ones we haven’t seen yet, like the Lizard, and Juggernaut, and Wendigo. And even better, there were a lot of DC characters there too: Superman, Joker, Killer Croc, Blue Devil. All sculpted just like the MU figures. Now, I don’t know what this means. I’m in the process of dumping most of my toy collection for good, and I surely don’t need anything new outside of DCUC to take my money these days. 

But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t do some mental calculations about just how much it would cost to catch up on the MU figures as soon as I woke up…

I know I’ve found them.  Loose joints, bad paint masks, bad tampo printing, oversprays, mold marks, splatters, frozen joints, scuffs, nicks, and on and on.

These things used to really bother me. I mean, really, really bother me, in an OCD/can’t stop fixating on them way. But now, today, they don’t anymore. Because I’ve come to a realization: flaws are inherent in the manufacturing process. They’ve always been there. The toys haven’t changed…I’VE changed. And it’s not just me.

When did this happen? When did we, as collectors, start expecting perfection in a cheap, mass produced item? When did toys stop being toys, and start being "works of art"?  Was it when McFarlane pushed the boundaries of sculpting and modling in the late 90s? Was it when toy companies stopped targeting kids and started catering coley to adult fans? Was it the advances in molding technologies that allowed sculpts to be incredibly intricate while the painting and manufacting processes haven’t changed as much? I don’t know. But I do know my memories of always being this demanding are faulty. 

Now, before I go further, let me clarify the difference between "flaws" and "bad decisions". I’m not talking about figures that look like bootlegs, or that can’t stand due to engineering mistakes, or ones that have clear mistakes, like two left legs.  Those are problems. Scale differences are not flaws. Painted detailsinstead of sculpted details are not flaws. $5 figures priced at $10 are not flaws. 

That said, it took Cantina Dan’s awesome blog that compared old figures to new figures to really open my eyes that figures have been far, far worse in general in the past few decades than they are now. I think when we have such high standards now for sculpts and articulation, when there are flaws it is that much more glaring to the critical eye. I’m not caring too much if Bob the Goon has a lazy eye, but the Riddler better damn well have multiple crisp, clean question marks on his jacket!

But you know what?  I’ve been focusing on things that just don’t matter, even at my nerdy collector level. I’ve now realized that once these guys are displayed on a shelf, especially if they overlap each other in a tight group, I can’t see those flaws, even if I look hard. Yeah, my Metallo’s legs didn’t fit in the sockets. But superglue fixed that real quick. Yeah, the Eradicator’s goggles aren’t clear. But his eyes don’t really work, do they? Yeah, Shazam’s ankles have a bright red overspray. but who is looking at his ankles?!? I look back at my Toy Biz figures from the 90s, and wonder why I wasn’t enraged when those were out of scale, or badly painted, or had crazy articulation that didn’t make sense. I dunno, I just liked that I got a Swarm, and a Stegron, and Spat & Grovel (well, maybe not the Spat & Grovel!).

So look closely at the picture above and tell me what you really see: is it a bunch of figures that just aren’t as cool as they possibly could be, or is it sheer amazement that we have figures of all of these characters in the same year? I know what my answer is, and I’m all the happier for it.

SUCCOTASH!!!

I’ve worked for the past 48 hours with only 2 for sleep, so I didn’t see Star Trek. 

Click here to view the embedded video.

Enjoy, you Star Trek watching bastards!

Click here to view the embedded video.

And of course our very own Vader had the answer: Gravatar. 

Yes, my friends, Gravatar. 

You go to their website, sign up for free with the email you use for forums, wordpress blogs, comments, what-have-you, and upload your favorite avatar. Those programs then do a search whenever you post and grab the avatar associated with that email. You can register multiple emails, too, and it’s all free!

Sweet, sweet Gravatar…will you marry me?

(Yes, I realize I’m just avoiding finishing my Star Wars post at this point).