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2023 New York Comic Con Recap Featuring the Hasbro Marvel Legends Team and Shartimus Prime
605 Plays1 year ago
The 2023 New York Comic Con is in the books! Dave and Erik spent 3 days among the masses of con-goers to talk about toys with a variety of creators, and got to see a lot in the process. In this jam-packed special episode, here their thoughts on the show overall and hear exclusive interviews from the NYCC floor including a chat with Ryan Ting, Dan Yun, and Dwight Stall from the Hasbro Marvel Legends Team as well as Russ Akin, AKA Shartimus Prime about his current Kickstarter for Street Humans!
Back the Hasbro HasLab Marvel Legends Giant Man project here:
https://hasbropulse.com/collections/haslab
Back the Street Humans campaign here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/streethumans/street-humanstm
Save 12% at BlendJet - use our special link and the discount will be applied at checkout! zen.ai/aicpod12
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Intro and other voices by Joe Azzari
https://www.instagram.com/voicesbyjoe/
Theme Music is "Game Boy Horror" by the Zombie Dandies
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Transcript
Introduction and Hosts' Background
00:00:04
Speaker
Are you ready, kids? Get your parents' permission, check your mailbox, and grab your shopping cart. It's time for the Adventures in Collecting podcast. I'm Eric. And I'm Dave. Welcome to Adventures in Collecting, where we talk toy news, culture, and halls, along with our journeys as collectors.
New York Comic Con Experience
00:00:28
Speaker
Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Adventures in Collecting.
00:00:34
Speaker
Hi. Uh, we, we are, we are Groot. No, we are tired. Yeah. Uh, it's been New York Comic Con. New York Comic Con happened. Uh, we were there. I feel like Bridge is doing this a week though. Something like that. Yeah. Right on the heels of, of New York toy fair. We were back at the Javits center, uh, for New York Comic Con.
00:01:02
Speaker
And, um, much like we've done for, uh, comic cons past, uh, and toy events past, we have some fun interviews, uh, or yeah, multiple. Yeah. We have fun interviews for you guys. Um, one year is a bunch of familiar. Well, actually I think to you guys, they should all be familiar. Uh, voices. We have the Marvel legends team. Uh, Dan Ryan listening to familiar faces. All of you.
00:01:31
Speaker
Dan, Dan Ryan and Dwight, or we're going to be talking all things giant man has lab.
00:01:36
Speaker
with them shortly, and then after that, or I don't know what order they're gonna be in, actually, we'll figure that out momentarily, but we're also, you're also gonna hear from Russ, AKA, Chardomus Prime, as we talk about street humans, but before we get to all of that, we're gonna talk a little bit about just our Comic Con experience, some things that we saw that we really liked.
Toy Fair Schedule Changes
00:02:00
Speaker
We could even talk about some things that maybe we didn't like.
00:02:04
Speaker
Because I can bring up a couple of things that I think Dave might expound upon, his not so favorite parts of Comic-Con. Maybe, we'll see. But the other thing too, just kind of, we mentioned Toy Fair briefly, during Comic-Con there was actually some Toy Fair news. So if you're following us on social, which Dave, how do they go about following us on the socials?
00:02:33
Speaker
Um, you go to at AIC underscore podcast on Instagram and TikTok. Um, smash those follows, hit those likes, subscribe. I think, I don't know if you can subscribe to TikTok. I've never been on it. Um, and then go to YouTube and hit that subscribe button and hit the bell to find out when new videos are coming and
00:03:02
Speaker
Help the algorithm download and share and tell everyone. And actually, um, while we're talking about subscribing to things, you can actually subscribe to us now on Instagram. Um, it's 99 cents a month. And once we have subscribers right now, we have no subscribers because we've never advertised that we can do subscriptions.
00:03:27
Speaker
Uh, once we have subscribers, we'll do like behind the scenes stuff. So if you pay 99 cents a month, you get to see just kind of like a peek behind the curtain maybe. And then we'll see as things develop, if we get more subscribers, we'll do more fun stuff for subscribers. But in the meantime, uh, you'll get access to an exclusive channel on Instagram. Uh, and then you'll, you'll also get some behind the scenes goodies, but, uh, yeah.
00:03:51
Speaker
Back to that New York Toy Fair news. New York Toy Fair is staying in old New York.
Debate on Toy Fair's Location
00:03:59
Speaker
The news was that Toy Fair was taking a year off, so there would be no Toy Fair in 2024, and then in 2025,
00:04:10
Speaker
It would be returning to New York for like one last hurrah at the Javits Center, which it's still doing in March of 2025. So it's like March 1st, I believe. And then the plan was for 2026, 2027, and 2028, they would be doing events in February in New Orleans. I think it's been made kind of obvious that
00:04:39
Speaker
the industry was not happy with that decision in terms of just kind of nothing against the wonderful Big Easy, the city that never sleeps, the heart of jazz. New York's the city that never sleeps. I guess both cities don't sleep. Yeah, especially during certain times of the month, especially if you're down there for Mardi Gras, right? Certain times of the year then. Yeah, yeah, certain times of the year, yeah. Mardi Gras is not monthly.
00:05:10
Speaker
No, no, Mardi Gras. I almost called it carnival. I think that's like Brazil. Um, but, uh, yeah, so it's, it's a little bit difficult to travel to whether it can be a little, little more, you know, not that it's not unpredictable in New York, but
00:05:27
Speaker
The weather can be a little more violent, one would say, in that part of the country. And again, just in terms of travel, it's difficult for the international folks to fly into very easily, whereas of course New York City is a hub. So the New Orleans experiment has come to a very, very abrupt end.
00:05:47
Speaker
And we are looking at a return to the old ways, as it were, in 2026. New York Toy Fair will be back in New York, and it will be February 15th, from my understanding. So if you want to read more about it, you can go to thetoybook.com.
00:06:11
Speaker
and read the article all about it, they have the scoop. But yeah, so long story short, New York Toy Fair, staying in New York, going back to February. So we're not gonna have this weirdness of having two very massive toy-centric events within two weeks of each other. Yeah. I feel like many bodies were not ready for that.
Reflections on Comic-Con Crowd
00:06:35
Speaker
No, and I mean, you could honestly like, so first of all,
00:06:39
Speaker
General reaction to New York comic-con Dave you did not get to go last year. You were you were on the bench With a with a broken leg
00:06:49
Speaker
Um, with a broken freaking leg. Uh, so I, I did, I did three days of common con last year by my lonesome. Um, and boy, I, it was, it was like, I would say 30 to 40% more empty last year, uh, than it was this year. It was crowded. Uh, thank goodness. I did not have to have to do it this year alone. I probably would have quit, uh, by Friday.
00:07:17
Speaker
Um, yeah, it was packed. It was, it was back to being the way that kind of like, I guess I remember, uh, Comic-Con being, you know, first one in like almost a decade. Yeah. Um, well they also, too, this was only your second time. Um, Toy Fair doesn't, doesn't take up as much of the Javits center as, as Comic-Con does. Um,
00:07:40
Speaker
It's a little more enclosed, I guess you could say. So you got to experience for the first time the new wing of the Javits Center and all of that kind of expanded area. Yeah. Which was, I'm sure, a lot of fun for you. Once I knew that it was there, it was fine, but I didn't know it existed.
00:08:02
Speaker
But yeah, so you could, you could tell though, just by talking to some of the folks that, uh, you know, that we saw literally two weeks ago, um, they, they were tired. I know some of the companies actually, it was more cost efficient for them to just put their.
00:08:17
Speaker
their employees up in New York in the entire interim instead of having to do the flights back and forth.
Logistical Challenges of Events
00:08:25
Speaker
They were able to get better rates on hotels for a little bit of a longer stay. Some of them were on day 20 of being in New York, which is just crazy to think about it. I think it put a lot of people in a bind, made a lot of companies make decisions that
00:08:45
Speaker
maybe they didn't want to make, you know, just in terms of like not being able to come out for both events, not being able to, you know, in terms of their large, if you've never been to something like Comic Con, you could check out again on our social media. That should
Highlights from Bandai Booth
00:09:02
Speaker
be up at this point, but you know, we took a lot of footage from around the show floor just to kind of give people an idea. A lot of photos, a lot of videos. I've done a half marathon and I've never been this tired.
00:09:15
Speaker
So yeah, but there's a lot of things that these companies build incredibly large booths, especially the folks at Bondi. They had 10 booths this year. They had a one-to-one scale cat bus that you could take photos with and walk through. And then they had these larger-than-life inflatable and or assembled
00:09:44
Speaker
diorama pieces of like they had like a giant Luffy they had a giant Goku pick orange piccolo a giant monster from from Naruto Godzilla they just so many crazy things and you know they need to be able to store those things in places and ship them you know carefully so you know putting them back to back like that is a
00:10:07
Speaker
It's kind of rough, but all in all, it was a fun show. Let's talk about some of the things that we really enjoyed. Dave, do you want to start with something? I can start. We saw my new favorite TV show live in person with
00:10:29
Speaker
I think I watched the first episode of the season.
Ultraman Blazer Panel Excitement
00:10:33
Speaker
We basically saw the whole episode, um, just kind of cut up into pieces. Um, just if you haven't seen it yet, I haven't watched yet, but, uh, and then we saw what show is that battles and all that stuff. It is a ultra man. Blazer. Um, that was my imagination of the, the narrator. Yeah.
00:10:59
Speaker
Yeah, all the voice cast. There's voice casts that you know and all the voices are just fantastic. And it's fun. I watched the first episode before the airing of this, which was the day after we saw the panel. And we definitely saw the whole episode just kind of chopped up in pieces.
00:11:26
Speaker
Which by the way, it's more of it. It's it's the episodes are half hour. They're all available on YouTube. Yeah. And, you know, I've been kind of looking into it. A lot of the old Ultraman is on through Shout Factory. So you can catch up on all of that through like Pluto or other shout factory forms. I think their website as a thing to where you can watch stuff.
00:11:56
Speaker
Um, but that was pretty great. Um, you know, after that, that was, that panel was a lot of fun. It was very cool. Um, I told Eric after it was over, I was like, everything is wrestling. Um, ultra man dropped the power bomb. It was, it was pretty pretty solid. There was a sit out power bomb, which I wasn't expecting to see ultra man do a sit out power bomb on a, on a, on a Kaiju.
00:12:25
Speaker
Yeah, that was really cool. It almost reminded me of, well, if you've ever seen the show, or you've seen Super Sentai, or you've seen Kamen Rider, or you've seen Power Rangers, you kind of know that guy in a suit versus another guy in a suit sort of thing. They're fighting around like a model of a city.
00:12:49
Speaker
We found out from our friends at Bandai who were very involved in the panel as it's, you know, Bandai has the master license, of course, for Ultraman. That some of those suits were screen used. I mean, they're the ones that they actually use in the show. So you're effectively seeing the choreography and like how they film these fight sequences just without the model city around them. So, you know, seeing how well
00:13:20
Speaker
or in some cases, how encumbered some of the suits are. And the fact that they're able to do what they do is really cool. And it made me think of they have those touring stunt shows, like the Marvel stunt show that was touring a few years ago, or going back to the days of Six Flags Great Adventure, the Batman stunt show, that kind of stuff. Or Mortal Kombat Live. Yeah, jeez.
00:13:47
Speaker
You know, this is very akin to watching something like that, just with better choreography. Cause I mean, this is the stuff that they're doing on, you know, on the TV show. Um, and there's commercials for like in front of Japanese commercials in the show for like ultra man conventions and stuff like that, which look rad. And it looks like they kind of expound on what we saw at the panel.
00:14:12
Speaker
I'm tired. I may use the wrong words today for sentences. I would love to see something like that live, like a full thing. And make it the wrong adjectives. That's fine. We'll make it work, Dave. We'll make it work. Yeah, but I also enjoyed that panel. Something else that I really enjoyed, we got invited to two very
00:14:37
Speaker
really, really cool experiences at Comic Con that were both off-site.
Goosebumps Series Launch Party
00:14:44
Speaker
So on Friday evening, we got invited to the Goosebumps launch party, the new Disney Plus series, which I have not had a chance to watch yet. I'm very excited. I love Goosebumps with Justin Long and there's a bunch of other people in it too.
00:15:03
Speaker
We got invited to the launch party for that. It was just a really cool experience. It was at the Chelsea factory, very close by to the Javits Center. They did a really, really great job on kind of the theming throughout. We got to see the screen used, a Slappy prop. They had some scares built into the experience. They had one of which got me really well. And also just great food. And overall, we got to hear from the
00:15:32
Speaker
the president of Disney, Disney Plus, or excuse me, president of Disney Television. It was a really cool kind of experience to be part of something, be invited to attend something that was so meaningful to me and kind of my development as a reader and just that really kind of scratched that horror itch for me.
00:15:58
Speaker
We got invited to a, so this year, November 3rd is Godzilla Day every year. And it's the 69th anniversary of the original Godzilla. And of course, you know, Shin, I'm sorry, not Shin Godzilla. Godzilla minus one is coming to theaters in December. Kind of looks like a reboot from Toho. Toho invited us out to a special screening at the Japan Society in New York City of one of their
00:16:28
Speaker
archival grade prints of the 1954 Godzilla.
Godzilla Film Screening Experience
00:16:34
Speaker
It was in glorious four by three grain, you know, grainy cigarette burns, you know, all the good stuff on, on one of those original prints. Really, really cool experience. Got to meet, you know, people from the Japan society, people from, from Toho directly.
00:16:53
Speaker
Of course, again, shots to our friends at Bandai who were heavily involved in the event as well.
00:17:01
Speaker
the Tamashi Nation's New York exclusive SH Monster Arts Godzilla on display there. They had, everyone got to go home with some Godzilla themed nano blocks. Just a really, really cool experience. A poster for... Oh, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. The minus one poster. Paint for the new movie. Yeah. They made a one sheet poster or one sheet sized poster.
00:17:25
Speaker
specifically for those who are in attendance. It's a gorgeous like watercolor looking art print. Yeah, really, really well done. I mean, the building that we were in, you know, has significance as they share. They like, you know, presidents, Nobel Prize winners, you know, and kings of monsters have all kind of shared the stage there. It's renowned like, you know, actors throughout history. They've had
00:17:55
Speaker
like, um, performances there. It's just, you know, a phenomenal building. I'm disappointed that it was only my first time having been there, but, um, you know, what, what a venue. Um, and I, I definitely want to, to see more, um, see more programming that they're going to be having.
00:18:17
Speaker
Shouts to Peter, who heads up the film programming there. We'll definitely post on our socials when they have new stuff coming. As we've mentioned countless times on the show, where we both absolutely love film and cinema and getting a chance to see a print. I think we were both talking about this after the screening. I think that's the oldest
00:18:45
Speaker
print we've probably ever seen. And we've gone out of our way to see some crazy 35 millimeter and other types of prints over the years. But yeah, seeing that such an iconic film, literally the seminal film in Toho's library, getting to see an original print of it from Toho's archive, it was wild.
Comic-Con Toy Highlights
00:19:15
Speaker
Those were two massive, massive highlights for me. So let's get a little bit just into like some of the toy stuff and we'll make this part quick before I know everyone wants to hear the interviews while you're here. Aside from just kind of the experiential things at Comic Con, Dave, was there any toy thing, any collectible thing specifically that you saw that really kind of jumped out at you?
00:19:46
Speaker
The mothership was cool and seeing the two things that I saw that were kind of, you have to see them to really get into, to really get to kind of take in what they are. And this is probably going to be a great segue into one of our segments. Of course, the Cobra Mothership, the Super Seven,
00:20:16
Speaker
Crowdfunded. Project that's going on there and with them now, you know, there's there's a bit of a Hasbro tie in with the, of course, the license, but also the O-ring figures. And I believe if you go to YouTube. You can see that panel, the whole panel, the whole panel could see. Previous guests, you could see Emily.
00:20:44
Speaker
From Hasbro and of course Brian super 7 And then Giant man, which is another one before you get into giant man because you are absolutely right We are going to use that as a segue
00:21:00
Speaker
to the Marvel team. There's just one thing I wanted to say about the mothership. First of all, thank you to everybody who has watched already the panel video on YouTube. Really appreciate it. It was something that I noticed when we kind of set up that no one was set up to record.
00:21:20
Speaker
Everyone needs to see, you know, especially GI Joe fans. I know, you know, how important this content is to, you know, to the, to the community. So we wanted to make sure we got it out there, but I am seeing that a three and three quarter GI Joe community. Yeah. And I'm seeing a lot of comments, uh, about the O-ring figures. Now, while they said in, in the video on the panel,
00:21:47
Speaker
that there are no future plans at the moment for O-ring figures. And again, this is pure just like adventures in collecting perspective. We have no additional knowledge, no access to anything that we're not being transparent about. This is the pure reading between the lines of statements that were publicly made. Exactly.
00:22:12
Speaker
If you are a three and three-quarter O-ring collector and you want to see additional O-ring figures in the future, if this project doesn't fund
00:22:29
Speaker
That probably doesn't look good for your prospects in the future. If you want those O-ring figures and the community is loud enough and this project funds,
00:22:48
Speaker
I think kind of, again, reading between the lines, this is the kind of litmus test of how hungry is the O-ring community. Now, do not take this as us, again, telling you, if you want O-ring, yes, you have to back this. That's not what this is at all. But this is just kind of additional context, right? So this is the case for anything?
00:23:17
Speaker
Yeah. We always talk about you, you, um, vote with your wallet, right? Like if you want a film series to continue, if you want.
00:23:27
Speaker
to show a sports team whether or not you appreciate what they're doing. If you want to show a toy company that you appreciate what they're doing or what have you. It doesn't always have to be like the negative, I'm going to vote with my wallet and not buy any of this. You can also vote with your wallet in a positive way and say like,
00:23:51
Speaker
This is something that I want to support and want to see more of. This is, you know, there are numerous crowdfunded projects that are out there that you can do that with and that, hey, it's going to say like, hey, maybe, you know, by this succeeding, we want more of this or by it not succeeding. We don't want more of this. But ultimately, if there is more of it, it's because there was a bunch of people that wanted it.
00:24:21
Speaker
If it doesn't, it's because there were a bunch of people that didn't want it. But ultimately, the decision for this to be a thing that goes on is up to the community. Yeah. And I think we can leave it at that. I think that's a perfect way to kind of put a bow on it. But go ahead, check out the panel. Not right now.
00:24:43
Speaker
Listen to this episode first, then go do it. Um, but check out the GI Joe panel with that in mind. Um, you know, the mothership is, is what $495. Uh, it's got a bunch of unlockable tears. It needs 4,000, um, backers in order to, um, yeah, it has an early bird. Um, so yeah, check out the panel. It'll give you all the information. Um, and now we can, now we can, we can move over to, uh, to giant man, Dave.
00:25:11
Speaker
Yeah, and so that was, I'll give this to the, it's through December 11th for the mothership. Super7.com. Super7.com. You'll see it in the banner there. So to kind of start to kind of echo what Dave was going to say about Giant Man, because I think we're both kind of on the same page here. Giant Man is a figure that you need to,
00:25:40
Speaker
You need to see in person, and I know that's a terrible thing to say, with only being like, what, 11, well, I think it's less than two weeks left in that campaign, and there's still quite a bit of ways to go. It's one of those things, you know, and I think... Well, I mean, they're gonna hear it right now. They're gonna hear this whole thing, so why don't we cut to past us?
00:26:06
Speaker
from the Saturday of New York Comic Con, from day three of Comic Con, New York Comic Con. Derek and Dave take it away.
Marvel Legends Interview on Giant Man
00:26:17
Speaker
Hello, everybody. We are here at New York Comic Con with Giant Man, who's currently behind Ryan right back there. And we are, of course, with the Marvel Legends team. So we have Ryan, we have Dwight, we have Dan. What up, what up? Yo, yo. Hey, guys. Hello. How's everybody doing? How's your con so far?
00:26:35
Speaker
It's good, it's good. Half over maybe. We just did a stage activation talking Nerf, which I know you guys are super interested to talk about. Love Nerf. Everything Nerf. Next Strike Mecasaurus. Get it right. Come on. Available at Amazon. And yeah, we've got some Giant Man, you know, whatever. It's cool. No, no, no, no, no, no. No, whatever. No. This is why we're here, right? We're here for Giant Man. Look at this guy.
00:26:57
Speaker
So tell us what we're looking at here. What's this configuration of Giant Man? So we actually just updated this in case anyone was by earlier today, but we have a slightly different stand that will allow for a new pose. So Dwight put him in a nice kind of action pose, and I brought a bunch of Ultron's from the office. So we have kind of the Avengers versus the Ultron army here a little bit. Things only Ryan can say. I brought a bunch of Ultron's from the office. From the office. That's right. Only Ryan can do that, honestly.
00:27:27
Speaker
And when I bring stuff, I bring them with all the accessories and all the pieces, and I'm very organized, you know, because I can't lose anything. No, no, no. I mean, the fact that they're not on cards sitting in there is surprising. Yeah, I left the trading cards at the office, brought the figures with me.
00:27:43
Speaker
Well, it's great to finally see him in person. We were fortunate enough to have the case off before yesterday, actually, for Friday the 13th. So we got to see the head swap process. It's been a while now since we've spoken about the launch of this. So what are some of the new things, the new changes, new additions that have been made since the campaign has launched?
00:28:06
Speaker
I think the two biggest things that were updates throughout the campaign were the eyes. When we found out that we were going to be able to swap the plates the way we do, it allowed us to also swap the eyes, which allowed us to add that addition of different looks. So he's going to be looking straight. He'll be looking down. He'll be looking to the side. And you can intermix any of those eyes with any of the standard heads or the zombie head if that one gets activated as well. Along with that, the one thing that we've done very recently
00:28:34
Speaker
I need to get louder! But that's not in the case as we've adjusted the back of his neck. When I was playing with the Gray model for the last couple of weeks, I realized that when he's in his lower crouching poses, which you can do with this figure, which is awesome, he can't look up enough.
00:28:49
Speaker
So we were making a notch in the back of his neck, kind of like the Renew Your Vowels Spider-Man, so that giant man will be able to tilt his head up for a little bit more. If I want to look up at Galactus, or if I want to be crouching and looking more forward, he'll be able to do that better now.
00:29:05
Speaker
Yeah, that's really cool. And then we're seeing now, too, the white and the black antenna on him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was something that we were looking at early. And then the fans actually brought it back to our attention as well. And we were like, yeah, that's something that we want to get in there.
00:29:20
Speaker
We were able to run some numbers and get that in there and make sure that we were able to give you guys as many options as possible because if we're asking you guys to come to the table and drop $200, which is, we think a deal when you consider like Galactus was 400, but
00:29:36
Speaker
you know with that we still know let's give you guys as much fun as you guys can have out of the box and the extra eyes the extra antenna the swappable plates we thought was a really fun way to give you the opportunity to pose them out however you'd want on your shelf or if you want to actually get on the floor and play with them you can do a lot more awesome stuff with them.
00:29:55
Speaker
speaks to the team's focus on making the best giant man experience possible, whether it's the eyes, the antenna, the articulation. A lot of discussion has been about other figures, but we're really focusing on a $200 ultimate giant man experience. And we've had some other interviews and we've shared where it's like, yeah, those other figures, guys, those can come out on their own at another time. It's either you buy them now or you buy them later. And so in this case, it'll be later. But that allows us to keep it at $200 and 10,000 minimum backers.
00:30:25
Speaker
And you can even make the argument, right? Like, if this thing is popular enough and people get it, it shows the emphasis that you need to put on some of those additional characters to support this one. That's right. And if this one is successful, you know, we could go back and do some more classic comic Avengers characters that aren't even in the pipeline right now, because there are some that are in the works. We're very eager to show them. Once Giant Man, you know, is successful, we hope. Yeah.
00:30:49
Speaker
So what you guys don't realize is this interview is actually broadcasting over the loudspeakers. They're cheering for Ryan. Yeah, they're really, really excited for Giant Man. Yeah, that's it. So speaking of large reactions, right, we have
00:31:06
Speaker
you know, Giant Man behind us, but a lot of comparisons have been made to the previous Giant Man, the ToyBiz one. I thought this might be a good opportunity because, you know, something else you might have from the office is something you could show us to really... This is what Dwight brought, yeah, just to really show the sense of size and scale. I'll get out of the way, Dwight hop in here, you know, but...
00:31:24
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, back in the day, Toymiz made this amazing Giant Man figure part of their Walmart wave, which was like 10 figures, I think, to complete, which was a lot. And it was very hard for people to find. And when we were looking at the new one, we wanted to look back at the past, because it's always good to learn from your history. And we kind of like, I mean, it's a really good figure. So how are we going to update this new one to be, you know,
00:31:50
Speaker
better fitted for the current collection. And when we now have 26 inch Sentinels and 32 inch Galacti, we were like, we needed to make sure to have a giant man that paid homage and respect to the origins and those classic costumes, but was more in scale with those other giant baddies that you now have. So this is, you know, this is a nice comparison. I don't actually know exactly how tall the Toy Biz 1 is. I want to think it's around 13 inches or so.
00:32:18
Speaker
But, you know, it's a quality piece from the past, and if that's what you have in your collection, it's a wonderful, cool thing about Giant Man is with him being a growing character, you can display him at many different heights. So if you're lucky enough to have this figure, good on you, but if you don't, you have the opportunity now to jump into this new campaign and add a brand new one for everybody to add to the collection. Which is, in fact, a giant.
00:32:41
Speaker
Yeah. Yes, more giant. Because you can see here in the case, and I don't know if you can, but we'll take a picture later, you see Hulk compared to Giant Man as opposed to Hulk who is a very large character. You have Giant Man who is towering over Hulk. Yeah.
00:32:59
Speaker
And as this campaign starts to come towards that end date, what's one thing from each of you guys, what's one thing that you want to make sure people realize about this giant man? Your favorite part, the thing that you think the most attention got put into, the thing that makes you the happiest about this figure?
00:33:18
Speaker
For me, the new addition of the eyes, being the clear eyes so that we're not painting highlights anymore on this size figure, they're actually going to be a clear plastic eye with deco on the backside, so it'll catch natural highlights to be able to, you know, look like, it looks like it's alive, which is something we've never been able to accomplish or deliver on the normal six-inch scale, so the eyes and the swapping ability for them is probably my favorite piece of this campaign. You said clear eyes, please stay.
00:33:47
Speaker
Is it blind hearts? Or what is it? Full hearts, full hearts, full hearts.
00:33:55
Speaker
Oh my god. I knew it, but all right. For me, to be honest with you, it's probably that $199 price point. I think for us, we know everybody's going through a lot. Such a marketer. We know a lot of people are going through a lot right now. And it was really important to us to have that goal of trying to get a HasLab at $199. And we think it's a very fair and awesome, not more than fair.
00:34:24
Speaker
If this doesn't get backed, I'm literally going to cry, maybe. I might actually cry. So go for it. Remember, remember, tears, not tears. Yeah, we were originally going to make it a no-tier campaign, but then we kind of went back and added some extra heads. But yeah, I mean, I'll also lean into the marketing a little bit. But it's like, guys, those other figures, again, I want to say this multiple times to every interview.
00:34:49
Speaker
Yes, we know Wasp. Yes, we know a regular size, you know, Hank in this type of costume are obvious kind of requirements for that classic Avengers team. And we also agree it just will not be part of this has lab, but they are, you know, very likely to come out. You just don't have to get them now and you don't have to pay.
00:35:21
Speaker
It's like I'll take a hamburger today.
00:35:27
Speaker
I'll pay you tomorrow for a hamburger today. Very likely we'll see a wasp character at some point. There's a phrase, it's like read between the lines.
00:35:42
Speaker
the other thing too that you just don't kind of get and this is something that you know me being the first time seeing it in person like you just don't kind of understand it until it's here yeah you want to touch it you get to see the fingers like yesterday we got to see Dwight posing the fingers to have them be gnarled for the zombie
00:36:05
Speaker
you know, you get to see really the shading on it and everything, like the light coming from underneath really shows kind of what you can do with this figure once you have it. The thing that jumped out to me immediately with this, and I gotta say, like, kudos to you guys. When you get up close to this thing, and I've seen a ton of pictures of this, you know, so far, even the pictures that are posted on Hasbro Pulse, this detail does not come across in any of them.
00:36:34
Speaker
the suit looks like the mesh material like that like your gym shorts are made out of like you could see the little like holes and the little like patterning to it detailing in the suspenders yeah like there is so much on this thing that like when you see it in person you're gonna
00:36:52
Speaker
Yeah, there's so much to appreciate about this seem like around the thumb part of the glove to like read like the way like a real glove would be reinforced like Yeah between the sculpting and and you know shouts to other friend of the pod Tony for the the paint job on this thing is it looks amazing
00:37:12
Speaker
But yeah, the attention to detail is just awesome. And Dwight, we recently spoke about kind of the engineering aspect of it, how you did the harness and everything. Yeah, I mean, I don't know what else there is to say about this, guys. If you are a Marvel Legends collector and you have a comic Avengers team, you need Giant Man. The other thing you can't see, too, is as we're standing here talking about it, there are people like, what are they talking? Oh.
00:37:38
Speaker
Yeah, so wait, actually before we go, tell us about that. What's been the reaction here, like the in-person reaction? How have people been responding to Giant Men? It's been in the 99 percentile of loving what they're seeing. The only thing that I've heard, and I don't know about these gentlemen, the only thing that I've heard is some people are saying, oh, well, I wish it was a slightly different size. And that's fine. He's a growable character. He could be anywhere from 13 inches to 24 inches to, you know,
00:38:05
Speaker
Six feet tall. I mean, you know, there's there is no right or wrong answer here people This is just the scale that we thought worked best with our other giant baddies But everybody like literally everybody has loved seeing this thing a person and a lot of the things that you just Remarked upon or what they've been saying. It's like and and I think that's the problem. I
00:38:24
Speaker
with the world we live in right now. We live so much in our phones and our laptops. It's really hard to understand and appreciate how big and impressive and how much love went into something of this size until you can actually see it, which is...
00:38:38
Speaker
I don't have a fix for it yet, but I'm definitely gonna be spending some months thinking about how we go about doing these things as we go forward, because being able to see this thing has made such a positive mark on everybody that's come by. We need to figure out a way to have that as an opportunity more often, because looking at this on your phone, it's like, oh, that's a great, it's an action figure. It's the same scale as every other figure I look at, but then coming to the show, it's not, yeah.
00:39:07
Speaker
The other comment that I've heard is they don't want to back it until it's fully funded. And I just really want to clarify that we will not charge your credit card if you back it early. It doesn't charge until after it is fully funded. And I just really wanted to clarify that because I've met a couple of people who are like, oh, we thought it's going to be charged immediately after I back it. And I just wanted to clarify that.
00:39:31
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I procrastinate, too, a lot of things, but there's really no benefit in doing that here. And, you know, we're kind of trying to rise above the temptation to change the campaign and throw things in at the last second because that's kind of not really sustainable in the long term. And that's why we were very upfront with the tears from the beginning. We said this is what we fully revealed everything. You know, Dwight and team are making these minor additions that just make what you've seen better. But in terms of
00:40:00
Speaker
what the campaign entails. We think at $200, it's a good value. If you guys want to back this thing, back this thing. Well, let me rephrase that. If you like the work that the team does, back the thing now. Because I'm getting older, and I don't know how much my heart can take the stress of these campaigns. Because I love the product. I
00:40:21
Speaker
I hate these campaigns because they are so stressful when the team pours their love and soul into these things and people say, I'll back it if it funds because I want it. But it just means I'm going to be stressing more. And at this age, look at this gray people. This is your fault. All this gray is you not backing these things, stressing me out, man.
00:40:45
Speaker
So if you guys want me gone shorter than later, then keep doing it. You're doing a great job. But if you guys want some more of this stuff, and I want to give you guys more of this stuff, then make my life a little bit easier. If you have the funds, if you don't have the funds, I get it. It's not for everybody. Guys, I annoy him every day. Don't worry. I shoot Nerf darts at him all the time now, apparently, too. He almost assassinated me earlier on the stage. Yeah. Oh, man. We forgot to talk about Nerf. Oh.
00:41:10
Speaker
Maybe next time. Maybe next time. Okay. Guys, Back Giant Man. Ready? Let's all on three. One, two, three. Back Giant Man. When do we have to back it till? October 23rd, 11.59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. So at least just setting an alarm, like set a reminder for yourself on the 23rd just to go take another look at the web page like, you know, at minimum and then and then that FOMO. Let's not keep with that. Let's not do it.
00:41:57
Speaker
And now a word from our sponsors.
00:42:11
Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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00:43:38
Speaker
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00:44:06
Speaker
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00:44:35
Speaker
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00:44:56
Speaker
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00:45:24
Speaker
See, I said you would, you would hear everything that, uh, that we were about to say. That way we didn't repeat ourselves. Um, but I think everything, everything that was, everything that was said there was what needed to be said. Right. Yeah. You know, it's. And what we said beforehand, when speaking of, uh, the mothership and of this, uh, project giant man and you know, anything that's out there, um,
00:45:53
Speaker
You know, it's funny. This is not just a Comic Con episode, but a very crowdfunded episode. It is. So, you know, and there's a lot of these projects out there and yeah, it's, it's all on. It's ultimately like, do you, is this for you? And if it is and you can afford it, cool. If it's not, and you can't, or you can't also cool, but it's also that, you know, if
00:46:23
Speaker
if it doesn't continue, you know, if there's no more WWE stages or if there's no more Marvel Legends big vehicles or what have you, you know, that's why. So we, you know, we, we talked about two toys, uh, the giant man and, and, uh, and the mothership, uh, before we get into our, our second and last interview of, of this, uh, comic con episode,
00:46:50
Speaker
One thing that I wanted to shout out that really kind of sings to me from a toy perspective, one of my favorite things that NECA is doing right now are those Remco-inspired glow-in-the-dark universal monsters. They're one of which was a New York Comic Con exclusive, Phantom of the Opera. Was very happy to be able to come home with that. But they also showed off for the first time one of the coolest playsets
00:47:19
Speaker
From that kind of era of toys is the monsterizer and it's come it's coming to that line And it's just like what what a what a way to put a exclamation point on an on an homage line They still have to get Dracula out there. He was he was on display Not sure if he's gonna be you know a target or you know the target exclusive or another exclusive down the line somewhere But um, you know that they had him on display. He's he's ready to rip So very excited to add him to the collection too. And then of course the monsterizer
00:47:49
Speaker
We can't talk about Neha without talking about our buddy Blaine. Yeah, shout out to Blaine. Another Comic-Con exclusive was the... And another thing you can watch on YouTube. Yeah, absolutely. We have a little exclusive walkthrough.
00:48:10
Speaker
the exclusive tour walkthrough with Blaine. This was a big, big event for him. The first ultimate figure that he got to oversee and design, Creative Direct, is the New York Comic Con exclusive, Ghost Face, very much so a nod, a wink and a nod to the Scream 6 film that happened in New York.
00:48:34
Speaker
The timing was just perfect. Having it be a New York themed exclusive in New York around Halloween was just Jeff's kiss. There were so many people walking around in ghostface costumes, you know, coming up to their booth, which was very heavily influenced again by that exclusive and the design and everything. But the big thing is that
00:48:58
Speaker
It sold out before the end of the convention. They are by mid Saturday. Yeah, they could not. They could not keep the thing in stock to the point where they had to keep, they had stock allotted for each day and and they had to keep releasing more and more and more in order just to keep up with the volume of people that were coming through the booth. And by Sunday, by Saturday, like Dave said, midday, I think it was actually even earlier, they were gone. So huge, huge congrats to Blaine. It's an awesome figure.
00:49:28
Speaker
Yeah, it's really cool. Once I get a chance to decompress from everything, I'm going to open mine. I'm going to save the packaging because he signed it for me, which is awesome. But I'm going to open it up, take a bunch of pictures. It looks gorgeous. If you're familiar with the Ghostface figure the first time around, you know what to expect. But it's got some really unique accessories in there. So I just wanted to give a quick shout to
00:49:54
Speaker
Past guest, friend of the pod, Blaine, congratulations, man. I know we told you it in person, but we're happy to shout it from the rooftops. It's so awesome to see his kind of development and career. And I think things only go up for him from here. But talking about a previous guest, talking about a brand new guest, and pivoting back to the concept of crowd funds,
00:50:23
Speaker
Dave, we got a chance to talk to, uh, to a new
Interview with Russ on Street Humans
00:50:26
Speaker
friend. Yeah. We met, um, Russ, who you may know as, uh, Chardimus Prime, um, from his, his toy reviews and, um, Russ and the great David Voner are, uh, working together for a new, a new property, a new, um, new creation.
00:50:51
Speaker
Yeah, and that's going to kick us to the interview with Russ. Treat humans. Yeah, for street humans. And you're going to hear this interview, and that's going to be the end of the show for us. So enjoy our chat with Russ. And again, make sure you check out our social media at AIC underscore podcast, where we've got tons of videos, other interviews that we did at New York Comic Con.
00:51:22
Speaker
There's, I promise there's going to be a video up. I'm really hoping I can get it edited by the time this airs, but, uh, fingers crossed of just kind of an overall comic con experience. All, you know, a bunch of things that we saw, but, uh, yeah, there was a lot of other cool stuff too. Like the, uh, we saw the John Carpenter table for storm King got to talk to the sacred bones people, be friends, be friends. Of course. Bondi, uh,
00:51:48
Speaker
our chat with Justin. That should be up by the time this airs. Yeah, head over to AIC underscore podcast for all of the the New York Comic Con things and also
00:52:02
Speaker
the interviews that you're about to hear, there may also be video versions of these interviews. I would say there probably will be at some point. Yeah, there might be. So yeah, and yeah, let's throw it to, again, past us and Chardomus Prime.
00:52:21
Speaker
We are here with Russ, who you might know better, of course, as Chardomis Prime. Chardomis Prime. Hey, how's it going? How are you guys? So we're here at New York Comic Con, live in person, to talk about street humans, man. So tell us a little bit about this line.
00:52:39
Speaker
I wanted to make a toy line that I've always wanted to see, which is civilians. Like I've always felt that there's been a hole in the collection. So I conceived the idea based off of kind of fulfilling this need to have more civilians in my displays.
00:52:58
Speaker
So these are 112 scale figures that are meant for collectors that are really into photography and posability and there's a lot of interchangeability to go along with the figures. So there's that aspect of it and then on top of that there's a whole storyline
00:53:17
Speaker
of the Street Humans actually being shape-shifting aliens from another planet and there's a whole story of their conflict that's kind of moved over to Earth and that's been a lot of fun too and you know interest has been shown in that as well as the figures which makes me really happy to see.
00:53:35
Speaker
So it's kind of a twofold thing, right? Like you said, you have these gaps that you're addressing, but also you're getting to tell a new story, a new IP out of this. What were some of the considerations that you made when you were designing the kind of street human element of it before we get into the kind of the monster alien design? Right.
00:53:54
Speaker
Well, right from the beginning, I wanted this to have different ethnicities being expressed in the line right away. So we have an African-American figure, we have a Latino figure, we have an Asian figure, and we have a Caucasian figure. Two of those are behind stretch goals. We have to kind of pace ourselves on how
00:54:23
Speaker
We have these figures roll out. Everything costs money. So we have to have everything. So we started with the African-American and the Latino figure first. And then our designer Vinnie from Brazil with Love, he flushed out the pant designs and the hairstyles and that stuff with all the figures. I wanted to have alternate heads for displaying options.
00:54:50
Speaker
It's very much a troop building center line where you can really fill things out and have different aesthetics for these civilians. Now you mentioned the stretch goals, so tell us about the Kickstarter campaign.
00:55:04
Speaker
Yeah, the campaign is, so our first, our funding goal is 120,000. We're about 25% of the way there. We have quite a few days left. We have more than two weeks left. So if you haven't backed it, back it now. And the stretch goals, our first stretch goal is at 126,000.
00:55:28
Speaker
which is really close to the 120 initial funding goal. And with that first stretch goal, the main character of the series, his name is Alago. And he is going to, now the figure itself initially comes with three heads. So you have like a regular neutral human head.
00:55:47
Speaker
an angry human head and then we've now included the alien head to come along with it with the basic figure offering at no extra cost so that's gonna be part of that basic figure which by the way was by popular demand a lot of people asked for that and that makes me so freaking happy because that was one of my favorite parts of working on in this thing because these alien heads are designed
00:56:15
Speaker
in a way where it's supposed to have the silhouette of an animal that you're familiar with, but when you actually look at it, it's very different.
00:56:25
Speaker
While having a creative blast, putting them together, I feel like we could pass on that creative fun to the consumer. Just for fun, I put the bat alien head, the lago alien head on a Han Solo figure just to see how it would look. And it looks awesome. It could fit into Star Wars if you want to do that with those. But within the lore itself, it's very cool to have. So anyway, yeah, we have that stretch goal.
00:56:55
Speaker
And then the stretch go for Lago means that he's going to come with a hoodie accessory and then interchangeable arms. So I have a grayscale prototype with me right over here and a feature that I really want to incorporate.
00:57:12
Speaker
three different removable or four different removable part features. You have the removable hands and then you have the removable head, right? That's kind of industry standard now. But what I wanted to bring to the table was something different over here. And the basic figures can pop off right at the waist. So you can pop them off at the waist. If you want the African-American figure in your display to have the beige pants instead of the camo pants, you can make that happen if you want.
00:57:42
Speaker
If we get everything unlocked, you could switch to your desire. So I really like that. This also allows for a little bit more articulation on the figure, so it adds another joint down there at the waist. So we have three joints right there. But the other feature with the stretch goals that's really awesome is if you take the head off. I don't have them with me right now, but if you take the head off and then you pop the arms off, and then essentially what you'll do is you take the sleeve piece
00:58:09
Speaker
for the hoodie. And then we have different sleeved sweater arms for the stretch goal for a Lago. And then you could port in those sleeves to match the hoodie. If you want to use the flesh arms, you can get that aesthetic as well. So you can have cut off. I mostly do the cut off shirt thing, not today.
00:58:32
Speaker
It's a little chilly here in New York. It's a little bit colder in California, not too bad though. But no, but I love New York, by the way. That's not a jab. That's not a jab. That's not a jab. But it's actually a really nice stay out here. But you can have that look if you want cut off sleeves. So if you have three figures and you have those deluxe accessory packs, you can set that up now.
00:58:56
Speaker
And then from then on, each of the stretch goals are basically kind of following the same pattern of having a basic figure. So the next stretch goal after that is that, correct me if I'm wrong, I think it's my own Kickstarter, but 130K, you get the deluxe pack for Eon.
00:59:14
Speaker
So that will come with, oh, and on top of the hoodie, you have the hoodie down, hoodie up feature, and then you have two more human heads. A mohawk head and then a different hairstyle head. And that's the theme for each of the deluxe accessory packs for these figures. So basically the initial offering, two starter-packed figures, and then you have the Alago
00:59:39
Speaker
accessory pack and then we have the eon accessory pack which comes with two more heads the mohawk and then the different hairstyle and then he'll come with the jersey instead and then different arms for that jersey then the next stretch goal would be for edel he's the asian character and he'll have the same accessories he'll come with an alien head he'll come with the two human heads the angry and neutral bald head
01:00:06
Speaker
and then the deluxe pack for him is and then and then actually i'm sorry after him is the iras character and that's the caucasian one with the two heads two sets of hands i'm sorry three heads two sets of hands because we've added that alien head in there now and then after that we have the deluxe pack for edel and then the deluxe pack for iras
01:00:27
Speaker
So with these figures, going back to the purpose and the usefulness of them, what's the one selling point about these that you want to get out there? What's the thing to you that is most important that you think resonates most with collectors, toy photographers?
01:00:45
Speaker
To be honest with you, if you haven't held it in hand, it's hard to say how fun this figure is. If you're an action figure collector that loves posability and that loves displaying, that fun factor is just through the roof with this figure. It's just so fun to pose around. I've been having a great time with it.
01:01:06
Speaker
And I think really the fun factor of this thing is through the roof. And that's like one thing that I feel like, you know, while I'm pretty new to making toys, I've been talking about fun figures for 15 years on YouTube. I'm not going to all of you know what I mean? I have an idea of what's a fun figure and what's not a fun figure.
01:01:23
Speaker
So, I feel confident that, you know, once this gets into people's hands and so far everybody that's held on to this figure has had a great time with it. So, it's an incredibly fun figure to have, and I think there's just endless possibilities with that fun factor if we hit these goals and we also have other
01:01:42
Speaker
other stretchable ideas for motorcycle helmet heads or bandanas, beanies, all kinds of different accessories that we can incorporate with this. So the fun factor is very strong with these. Now you've been working with renowned designer David Voner for this project. What's it been like working with him?
01:02:04
Speaker
it is it punk rock to jazz is kind of like he's he is the maestro and he yeah he's he's been very helpful with this and there's a lot of insight in the industry that i wouldn't have been able to just obtain from you know my personal experiences a lot of a lot of design pointers uh he's he's really helped a lot and
01:02:27
Speaker
in countless ways so I'm not giving away all the secrets or anything but like he's he really has a great knack for for knowing how to make the figure fun you know and he's helped us a lot with the designs also for some of these alien heads especially the eon and the edel heads so
01:02:47
Speaker
getting his creative juices in the mix is kind of also kind of hard to like hold back from geeking out a little bit because it's like oh yeah oh that's it that is a cool that is a cool idea oh yeah we should do that it's like yeah that well yeah that's why you're Dave honor and I'm not you know like so he's he's really helped us you know a whole bunch and it's really helped helped with the development through and through
01:03:11
Speaker
Now, you said each figure comes with two at the base, comes with two human heads, and you went with a neutral and an angry expression. Were there any kind of other expressions, like maybe a scared expression or something else that maybe you guys were considering? I've had several ideas for me. I would like a really pained expression, like an open mouth, like getting walloped in the face really hard would be really cool.
01:03:38
Speaker
I also wanted to have a different silhouette. So especially if people end up deciding to use them as background characters, I think it would be more beneficial for the collector to have maybe a different hairstyle head than one that has the same bald head but a different face. Maybe it may not come through so much in the background. So I really want a lot of variety in the collection. I want to add
01:04:06
Speaker
some more stuff that could make things look more unique. Now if successful, and we hope it is, so we'll say when it's successful, do you see kind of more accessory packs being the future as opposed to, or kind of in conjunction with adding more characters?
01:04:24
Speaker
Yeah, we already have plans for accessory packs for additional stretch goals beyond the Lux packs. So being able to have that available and seeing where things go as far as popularity wise, I'm definitely keeping my ear out there as far as what people want to see.
01:04:42
Speaker
like this, adding the alien heads in there. It's like, I really want to keep a close eye on it. So it's going to also depend on see where, you know, people, what people like more so and where we can go with it. But definitely deluxe, definitely more accessory packs is on the horizon for this for sure.
01:05:01
Speaker
So you mentioned it. I mean, you've been reviewing toys. You know, we've been watching your videos since long before we've been doing this. You know, now you're kind of stepping on the other side of it for the first time. What are some of the things you've learned about just kind of like the design and production and that whole kind of process?
01:05:19
Speaker
God, it takes so long. You have to be so patient. This is not a one man show. I don't know what it's like for other people that design these. But for me, it's very much been like playing in a band. And you have to be receptive towards other people's ideas. So having that mindset being open minded, putting your ego aside,
01:05:45
Speaker
Do what's best. I'm a musician, part-time musician. As a drummer, I could always do the cool new fill I've been practicing that week, or I could do what's best for the song, right? The guy gets hired again when he plays what's best for the song.
01:06:02
Speaker
I'm trying to do what's best for the song with this. And that's what it is, is listening to other people's ideas and working around what people, other people will think would be best. So there's that part of it. And then the other side of it is that there's like this whole other manufacturer community that I've kind of just
01:06:20
Speaker
been discovering recently and they've everybody's been very very kind and very nice and welcoming to me and you know very honest about everything so it's kind of like jumping into this other art artist community and like oh wow this is this is very different and this is really interesting so and very cool like everyone's been very kind to me and and helpful so I really appreciate it a lot been learning a lot yeah
01:06:46
Speaker
So has the process made you go back like the countless toys you've reviewed over the years? Like do you think about them a little bit differently now? Like do you go back and think like oh wow this kind of is like this because now I know you know making it this kind of goes into the decision. Like has it made you kind of reshape how you think about that? Yes, but more with new stuff.
01:07:07
Speaker
Like hearing Dwight talk about the has lab giant man and then him talking about having all these different samples to look at and picking and choosing. And I'm like, I'm familiar with this. I like, Oh, okay. Like I, I'm kind of seeing parallels in what they're doing and some of the stuff I did. Now it's not the same of course, right? Much smaller situation compared to Hasbro. I'm not saying I'm the same as them, but there are similarities in development, you know, and it's kind of interesting seeing that happen in it.
01:07:37
Speaker
And it's, yeah, it's kind of changing my perspective a little bit, but I still need to be very critical when I do my toy reviews, right? So just because I do feel more sympathy for all toy makers, not just Marvel, you know, not just Dwight and the Marvel team, but like all action figure manufacturers, I have a much grander respect for all of them now.
01:08:01
Speaker
So, but I still, then there's the toy review side. I have to, I have to put that away. And I did a review on this. I was critical of my own thing. So I'm trying to be critical all the way through and maintain all of that while still holding onto this new knowledge.
01:08:17
Speaker
So typically when we have somebody on the podcast, one of the last things that we do is we have a special question that we reserve for our guests. So in this kind of short interview here, we're going to spring our typical final question on you. So Dave, would you like to fulfill your role as this podcast's James Lipton and ask our final question?
01:08:37
Speaker
Why, yes, I would. So, Russ, what is your favorite or strangest piece in your collection? It can be one of each or it can be both. Favorite or strangest piece? Oh, God. I will say...
01:08:58
Speaker
Like right now, like my two favorite figures in my collection, I know you said one, but it's the Haslab Galactus and the Haslab Unicron. Like those two, like whenever I go into my garage, I start the Unicron. Whenever I go into my dork room, I stare at the Galactus. So because I have two.
01:09:16
Speaker
collection sections. Yeah, it's each of those two are my favorite right now. I have a whole bunch of other favorite figures though. But the real answer is the prototype. The Street Humans prototype is the favorite, right? That's the number one favorite one. It's actually the figure I've been playing around with the most, like, you know, recently. And then the strangest figure in my collection. Shoot, I kind of have to think about that.
01:09:42
Speaker
the strangest figure that I have in my collection? I don't have a lot of weird, strange stuff, man. Um...
01:09:51
Speaker
god yeah i don't have a lot of i guess it's no i was gonna say like my universal monsters but that's not even really that weird right there may have been something else i can't think of but you know i think um you know what's kind of strange and weird is my mezco nosferatu okay i'm gonna say that i love my my mezco nosferatu figure and i find it really weird because it's
01:10:13
Speaker
It's creepy, and it has the effect that Nosferatu has, but it doesn't look like him. It does look like him, but it doesn't. They took liberties with the design. And that one weirds me out, because I love that figure so much. But it's still very different from the source material, but it also delivers the way it should. So it's kind of a trippy figure. It's like, you don't look right, but you're doing all the right things.
01:10:42
Speaker
So yeah, I'll say my Mezco Nosferatu is kind of my strangest figure. So that's the one out of all of them. You don't want that one to wake up in the middle of the night and come to life. Is that my creepiest one? No. No, my creepiest one is the, well, another Mezco one is that the nun living dead doll. I love that thing. And then I couldn't, and then I had to turn her around in my office because my daughters freak out whenever they see her. But I love that thing because it's like the face, just those eyes and the muck around the eyes and everything.
01:11:12
Speaker
That's awesome. Thank you, Russ, so much. Yeah, thank you guys. Yeah, Eric, thank you.
01:11:34
Speaker
Follow us on social media at AIC underscore podcast on Instagram and Twitter. Stop by and say hi. Show us your toy hauls and share your toy stories. Maybe we'll talk about it in a future episode.
01:11:58
Speaker
This has been a non-productive media presentation, executive producer Frank Kablaui. This program and many others like it on the non-productive network is distributed under a Creative Commons attribution non-commercial no derivatives license. Please share it, but ask before trying to change it or sell it. For more information, visit non-productive.com.