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McFarlane Toys and Marvel?! Todd Talks His New Deal with Marvel Comics!
308 Plays7 months ago
Cats and dogs, living together! Joining Erik for this special bonus pod, returning guest and friend of the pod Todd McFarlane of McFarlane Toys talks about his two most recent deals: Marvel Comics and UFC!
Follow McFarlane Toys on Instagram @mcfarlane_toys_official
Follow us @aic_podcast on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube
Intro and other voices by Joe Azzari
https://www.instagram.com/voicesbyjoe/
Theme Music is "Game Boy Horror" by the Zombie Dandies
Proudly part of the Non-Productive Network
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Transcript
Introduction to Adventures in Collecting Podcast
00:00:03
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.
00:00:27
Speaker
Hello everybody and welcome back to Adventures in Collecting.
Eric Hosts Solo & McFarlane Toys Announcement
00:00:31
Speaker
Eric here, something a little bit different. Video! I'm without Dave. Dave is on vacation in Disney World enjoying his anniversary and me, I'm here talking with McFarland Toys, Todd McFarland, sorry Dave. So, McFarland Toys had a pretty big announcement revealed today, synced up with the timing of this special episode of Adventures in Collecting that is
00:00:56
Speaker
available in video form for the first time.
McFarlane's Licensing Deal with Marvel Explained
00:00:59
Speaker
So we have a brief chat here with Todd McFarlane about the new news, which is of course the licensing deal that they have announced with Marvel Comics. So as Todd, you'll hear from him in just a minute. This is something he's really passionate about, something he's very excited about. He's kind of out there trying to collect the Triforce in terms of franchises. He's got a
00:01:24
Speaker
He's got Marvel Comics, he's got DC Comics, and hey, maybe Marvel Comics will be his inroad to Star Wars and he can collect his Triforce. But that being said, you're about to hear a roughly 20 minute conversation between Todd and myself about the announcement as well as a little bit about the announcement from a week ago regarding UFC. So enjoy this special episode of Adventures in Collecting.
Todd McFarlane on Artistic Vision for Marvel Figures
00:01:54
Speaker
So Todd, how's it going? Welcome back to Adventures in Collecting. Sure. Thanks for having me again. Thanks for giving me the time. Oh, the pleasure is all mine, as always. So I know you have a very big announcement today. Tell me about your latest deal here with Marvel Comics. Yes. Finally, for the first time in 30 years of doing toys, Marvel and McFarlane, Eminem are going to join and hopefully give you a tasty morsel.
00:02:26
Speaker
Look, we like doing art as much as possible with the toys we've been doing for 30 years, but I've always been jealous.
00:02:36
Speaker
people and some of the brands that they've been able to get, I haven't been able to get myself. And the three that for decades I was always looking at were like Star Wars and DC and Marvel, right? To me, those are like sort of the triangle. And I used to go, man, if I could do a little bit of each one of those,
00:03:00
Speaker
I'd be happy. So we got, you know, a few years back, we got one of the pieces with the DC multiverse, but now knocking down like, you know,
00:03:11
Speaker
one of the other big giant sort of pillars, Marvel comic books. And in this case, it allows me, because it's not based on the movies and things like that, it allows me to not only make figures from the Marvel universe, but also do figures of artwork I also did, right? Which again may seem a little odd and are eccentric on my part.
00:03:42
Speaker
But as a creative person, you're always curious going, yeah, what would that look like if you turned it around and you did it? Because you only have to draw it on a 2D piece of paper. Yeah. So here we go. McFarlane gets to do McFarlane toys, gets to do McFarlane artwork, helped design by McFarlane himself, as well as everything else in the Marvel library.
Creative Challenges in 3D Figure Design
00:04:08
Speaker
So we get to go back all the way to
00:04:10
Speaker
Fantastic Four number one with Jack and Stan and everything that just came out yesterday. So we'll pick and choose different books, covers, characters, artists, moments, interior artwork, all the above.
00:04:29
Speaker
play with different price points and scale. Again, they're opposable figures. Again, to be clear, they're not articulated figures because Marvel, Disney has a big relationship with Hasbro, obviously, and so they want to protect that.
00:04:50
Speaker
I didn't want to carve out a niche over the years with them, even if I could, that forced me to do something that was kind of goofy. I mean, you've seen these things where it's like, oh, you get to do big head stuff or big feet stuff or whatever. I just go, no, I don't want to do it. I want to figure out a way to do cool figures.
00:05:17
Speaker
Finally figured it out, took a long time, but we finally figured it out.
00:05:22
Speaker
Well, the first two pieces that, uh, that we've seen, you know, the, the Spider-Man and the Captain America, um, not only is it cool to see, you know, your art brought into, you know, kind of the 3d space, but as a, as a long time collector, it actually immediately, the first thing I thought of was when you did those kind of 3d album covers, like thinking back to like the master puppets and you know, that kind of look, it almost looked like it fell kind of right in line with the format of those, which I thought was really neat.
00:05:47
Speaker
I was thinking about those the other day, coincidentally, of going, hey, I wonder if we actually did bring back that cover artwork with the embossing, if you will, whether people would like that. We may try some of that. I don't know if they'll let us do it or whatever else, but for right now, again, you got the figure
00:06:09
Speaker
and then sort of a backdrop and a diorama that they're sitting on and trying to create a little bit of a scene. Some of them are going to come with reprints of comic books.
Consumer Feedback's Role in Marvel Line
00:06:21
Speaker
In some cases, the comic book reprint will be specific to that actual image that we used one way or the other, but we're going to be
00:06:35
Speaker
We're gonna be playing with scale and price points and things like that because like out of the gate we try to make them all. Within scale but but.
00:06:47
Speaker
Because you know you don't get this sort of like stand them up and down whatever out the ones that are in crouches and guys like spider-man who's always constantly you know and some contorted shape right can come can come across as. Being a little bit smaller than somebody who standing straight up barking to the heavens so.
00:07:09
Speaker
There's a part of me that just goes, I don't know. We're playing to the completist. I don't know if we should do that. We should just give as much value in a box as possible and let everybody else deal with it on their own. We'll play around and we'll let the customers, the fans, basically tell us what they're enjoying and what they're not.
00:07:33
Speaker
So what has it been like for you, though, to now go back to some of those pieces that you did, looking at that Spider-Man, for instance, and start to kind of reimagine it outside of that 2D plane? Do you go back and look at the original art and try to kind of mess with it in your head? What's the process like? OK, so let me tell you the difficulties of translating my own artwork, first off, which is, I would argue, more of a problem
00:08:02
Speaker
on my artwork than for others, especially on Spider-Man.
00:08:07
Speaker
When I was drawing Spider-Man, I was doing him. I really didn't give a lot of care to anatomy. I just went, no, that's super cool. But if you ever tried to go into that position, you couldn't. It was one of the things that Sam Raimi found out when he did the first Spider-Man movie way back. I had some people worked on it and they had a bunch of my artwork there and he wanted to simulate it. Then he found out that it's like,
00:08:36
Speaker
couldn't get any of the stuntmen to do it. And then he was like, well, go get double jointed people. And he couldn't do it. And they're like, what about triple jointed? And then they went to even, I heard circus du Soleil in Vegas to get some of the contortionists. And it's still, and then they went, maybe we'll just have to do a computer generated, right? Because yes, because then you can sort of in motion, when you're sort of doing it, it sort of looks cool. And you don't really pay attention to it. What that means on the toy front is that
00:09:07
Speaker
Okay, if we now it looks really good at that one flat to the image But if we have to now make this a real body and we got to turn it around How are you figuring this out? Right? Uh, so I I put myself in a bit of a pickle on my sculptors and a bit of a pickle going How does it work? Like if his hips are there and his rib cage is there like this doesn't make any sense. So We'll we'll probably have to take a
00:09:34
Speaker
a little bit of artistic license, even on my own stuff, just to figure it out. But that's part of the fun of it, of just going, well, what does it look like from the side? What does it look like from the back? And what's interesting is that even if you take this figure, if you turn it like 30 degrees, it doesn't become recognizable that it's that.
00:09:59
Speaker
Right? Yeah. Yeah. Because you're just so used to seeing that unmoving at that angle. So you have to make a good toy that sort of will stand up on its own. But if you have it and you turn it right at the right angle, you should be able to put it like right there next to it and you go, there it is. Yeah. There's the one there. As soon as you move it here or here, it goes away. The illusion goes away.
00:10:29
Speaker
But if you get it right there, you go there, there it is. And so to me, when we were sculpting, I wanted to make sure that.
00:10:36
Speaker
when we got it to that A post, that that was as accurate as possible. And everything else we could bend because nobody has that other information in their heads, right? None of the fans can say, oh no, that side shot shouldn't look like that. Cause nobody's had that information. So we get this, get the front shot perfect. And then we'll, I'm sure everybody will be gracious for the rest of it.
00:11:03
Speaker
So you mentioned a couple of famous comic book covers that you were talking about going all the way back to Jack and Stan stuff, but do you have kind of a hit list of panels or covers that you're already thinking about that you want to try to tackle with this line? I do, but I want to make sure that I don't put my own personal bias into this too much. I think there's probably
00:11:35
Speaker
40 different spider-man poses that I could do of my own artwork because I put them in a lot of funky upside down swinging legs up arms back heads forward whatever like you did I did a lot of cool stuff uh and and so uh we're gonna have fun with that so you could actually technically get 10 McFarland spideys and they all look different um
00:11:58
Speaker
But the other ones where I get to pick my sort of the people that inspired me and or my contemporaries and or now the new generation of artists, I want to make sure that I'm paying sort of true sort of honor to the history of Marvel comic books.
00:12:21
Speaker
from FF number one that was the first book that started to today. And here's the thing, it's sort of like Star Wars or Star Trek. You can tell how old somebody is, but if you just ask them this one question, who's your captain?
00:12:39
Speaker
And so to me, there's a little bit of that in the back of my brain that I go, oh man, that cover and that character and that event were like, that really sort of seared me as a fan, right? So what were those moments 20 years prior to that when I was still an infant? And what are those ones 20 years post that?
00:13:08
Speaker
What are the equivalent of the new character coming that was like, oh man, I was there when Venom was created and Carnage was created.
00:13:20
Speaker
What's the modern version of that? I was there when, you know, the marriage of Sue and Reed Richard, what's the modern version of that? I was there with the gauntlet, Thanos and Finnegan gauntlet. Okay, what's the modern version of that? Because every generation has their equal that basically is their thunderbolt that basically goes, man, that was my favorite. And I want to make sure that we touch on all of it.
00:13:50
Speaker
And now, a word from our sponsors.
Sponsor Message: Chubsy Wubsy Toys
00:13:58
Speaker
This segment is brought to you by our friends at Chubsy Wubsy Toys. A traditional mom and pop toy store in Little Falls, New Jersey, Chubsy Wubsy Toys brings you the best new toys from the brands you love without the hassle of pounding the pavement searching for them at larger retail stores.
00:14:15
Speaker
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00:14:43
Speaker
Very cool. Yeah. And I mean, it's great to hear that you kind of have access to pretty much the entire library, because outside of the stuff that I think, you know, people think of you, you know, when they think of Marvel, you know, there's so much of that dark horror kind of, you know, gross and monstrous stuff, you know, in the library, too, that, you know, I definitely plays to the McFarland toys. Strong. Who knows? Someday we might do fang fang fool.
00:15:10
Speaker
Right so i don't know yeah there's there's there's i mean again we we find it with the dc multiverse the library so expensive because they're now. You know for marvel it's over sixty years old right yeah that's a lot to draw from. I'm and and it doesn't again it doesn't have to be event didn't have to even be covers i mean we're starting with some sort of popular cover but don't even have to be that it can it can just be to me at some point the best.
00:15:38
Speaker
Art and the best figures we can come up with and if that happened to have been on page six of a comic book So be it right our job is to come up with good art We'll make sure that we take that artwork and we put it on the box so people know what it is We're using as our inspiration, but I don't think We should necessarily limit ourselves down to it. So like I'll give you an example like You know we'll do
00:16:09
Speaker
the first appearance of Deadpool, right? Again, good cover, iconic cover, great drawn. Rob Liefeld did a good one. But Rob Liefeld did hundreds of drawings of Deadpool.
00:16:24
Speaker
I'm sure if I asked them, was that very first one you did? Was that like the coolest one you ever did? He might go, no, man, I did this one and this issue and this one and this issue and this one and this issue. And so, okay, I don't think we have to be limited to just go, we're only going to do the first appearance Deadpool by Rob Liefeld. There might be some other ones that are kind of cool. We don't have to be.
00:16:45
Speaker
It's stuck with just topic for our lands spiderman cover poses when there's so many that were on the inside right or whatever i get i'm making it up but we we've all done literally thousands of drawings and my job should be to call through some of the.
00:17:05
Speaker
They don't have to be important. Some of them can just be damn cool. We should make a figure of that. Who cares if it was a popular book or not. That's just cool. Let's make that.
00:17:18
Speaker
So, you know, as always, you're a busy
Expanding into UFC Figures and Popular Culture
00:17:21
Speaker
guy. I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention the fact that this is coming on the heels of another really big announcement that you had with the partnership with UFC. So not only will you be making stuff from Marvel Comics, but now you're branching into the ultimate fighting realm. How did you find yourself getting into the octagon there?
00:17:40
Speaker
Again, we try to license things that are popular out in pop culture. UFC, kudos to them, basically started this idea and it just gets continued to evolve and grow. We've had conversation with them off and on. I've actually had one or two of my employees actually go and work for them. I think in this case,
00:18:10
Speaker
maybe how part of it, somebody that used to work for me, somebody that we knew or whatever is at USC. And so they're like, hey, Todd, do you have any interest in doing some of these figures? And it's like, yeah, sure, cool, right?
00:18:27
Speaker
Yeah and again we don't you know sports figures it's not like we're new to this game so you just go okay who are the ones that people want to see that the fans want to see and then what kind of poses should we put them in and how accurate can we get all that and then.
00:18:44
Speaker
And then, you know, pour it out and hope that you do it justice so that the person themselves like it. And, and, and the fans think it was a worthwhile, worthy, uh, sort of replica of, uh, that human being that they admire so much. And, and like your other, uh, the other sports figures that you've done both in the past and you know, are doing today, uh, these are also going to be kind of pre-posed figures, the UFC ones.
00:19:15
Speaker
Man, are they? I'm trying to think. I think so. I think we're starting with the UFC. The easy term is like plastic statues. They look really cool. They come across as
00:19:34
Speaker
like statues that can cost 80 to 100 bucks, but you can get them out to the marketplace for 20 or 30 bucks, right? I mean, again, we did it for the football, baseball, basketball, hockey. They didn't have moving parts, right? And they were a huge success because people just wanted replicas of their favorite people to put up on their shelf and go, man, that's my favorite, right? I think, again, I've always said before, I think a lot of older toy collectors, you know,
00:20:03
Speaker
I know that we get poke fun at and people are they're mentally arrested and stuff because you get like, you know, the 40 year old virgin stuff like that and those kinds of things. I don't think it's true. I think people collect toys for the most part.
00:20:20
Speaker
To sort of show off their loyalty towards things right and we we we do it with t-shirts. We have logos and we put on hats that have logos. And i think toys are just another way of saying i like that brand. I like that thing and then you put them in your cubicle and you say okay cool here it is and somebody walked by and they go what.
00:20:45
Speaker
Is that a ted lasso figure man i didn't know you like to lasso yeah i like that last you see last night episode and then all of a sudden you have a conversation right that's all it is right i think people sort of are overthinking a lot of times why we just.
00:21:03
Speaker
Buy stuff we just were just endorsing it like if you like the boston red socks you buy a jersey and a hat and a pennant and it's all just got logos on it but you're going to like those red socks right i like watching that team and you just buy this other side product but it's all saying that you like that brand.
00:21:24
Speaker
It's amazing. Well, I can't wait to see the first two Marvel pieces look fantastic. Can't wait to see what you have cooking for UFC and of course what's coming down the line. And I know we're at time, so I just want to thank you again for chatting with me and looking forward to what's next.
Action Figures as Cultural Expressions
00:21:44
Speaker
Sure. Before we go, what's got you excited these days?
00:21:48
Speaker
Oh, man. Actually, speaking of gross things, I just picked up this from Four Horsemen Studios. Oh, yeah. The figure Obscura Mask of the Red Death. It literally comes with one of those badass accessories. It's got a grandfather clock that's bleeding. Oh, that's funny. It's just amazing. Like, who would have thought that, you know, all these years later, an Edgar Allan Poe story would be would make a great action figure. But here we are.
00:22:19
Speaker
Yeah. I think there's a misnomer when you say action figure, people sort of think like kitty stuff. And to me, action figure is like saying movie, right? And if you say, hey, I went to a movie, that can be something that is aimed at a five-year-old. And it could be something like a drama based on a true event that can be aimed at a 65-year-old, right? So they're both movies. The only difference is the content, right?
00:22:48
Speaker
So so to me comic books toys are kind of the same thing novel They're all the same thing that there's a format to them, but then it's like well What's the content and depending on the content? I'll tell you who I think the audience is yeah, right you do tell a tubby I'm guessing it's gonna be skewer young you do you know predator? I'm guessing it's gonna skew a little bit older right so But they're both action figures
00:23:18
Speaker
So, and this is the piece, I always tell people, look, I understand comic book, I'm a comic book guy. I understand I don't collect comic books. It's hard for me to imagine that you go into a comic book store, anybody, and you can't find one thing in there.
00:23:34
Speaker
Yeah, you might not like superheroes fine, but there are still hundreds of options of non superhero stuff So if you want romance you want comedy you want drama you want autobiographical stuff? I mean, there's like a whole slew of stuff here, right? You're just you're what you're thinking of when you say comic book You're thinking of Superman and Archie comics because that's what you read when you were a kid when you say action comics you say
00:24:02
Speaker
Oh, that was a toy because I had it when I was a kid. What you're not paying attention to is that all of these things have grown up. Yeah. Well, the other thing I got to shout out too is.
00:24:12
Speaker
Purple Gloves debut Batman. One hell of a figure, dude. I mean, I love the new cape, the wire, the purple gloves. This is just, I never thought I would have this. It's interesting because sometimes you do stuff that you go, it kind of doesn't look good or it looks wrong, but you go, but it's accurate. Yeah, no, this is great. It's just the right amount of like goofy for this debut look. Yeah, perfect. Nailed it.
Closing Remarks and Listener Engagement
00:24:41
Speaker
Thank you, dear listener, for hanging out with us today. Subscribe, rate, and review us wherever you listen, and then tell your friends to do it. Thanks also to Joe Azari, the golden voice behind our intro. Our music is Game Boy Horror by the Zombie Dandies. Find more about them both on our show notes.
00:24:58
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.
00:25:21
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.