So the other night, just before Thanksgiving, I decided to hit Walmart around midnight. It’s been many years since I made a late night toy run, for a variety of reasons. But mostly because I usually have much better things to do with my time than to make a special trip just to turn up empty-handed at the usual dearth of new toys on the North Texas shelves. But for some reason, I felt like this would be a good time to take a break from working and drive the 10 miles to the nearest Walmart. Plus, I needed a few groceries and things, so the trip wouldn’t be a total waste.

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?

by Jason "ToyOtter" Geyer and James "Sallah" Sawyer.

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

 

Gliders

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"!

 

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Here’s the thing: San Diego Comic Con is no longer about comics. Yes, I know this is not news. Many, many, many people have pointed out what a shame it is that movie, tv, and toys have taken over the con in the past decade. I am not necessarily one of those people: I enjoy the con more for the broader scope and the inclusion of hollywood. I especially like that SDCC has replaced Toy Fair as the place to celebrate collectors and unveil new toys for the year (although I really wish companies could figure out how to keep a lid on news better so there were more genuine surprises). 

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!

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…

Ok, so I broke down last night and bought a bunch of toys that I don’t technically collect or was looking for. And one of them, Luke Skywalker Snowspeeder Pilot, is so well-made that it just might be my favorite figure in a long, long time.

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!)

So I just got back from a futile trip to my local Walmart to look for DCUC 11, but I didn’t leave empty handed.

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.