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2020 NY Toy Fair Recap Feat. Interviews with Todd McFarlane, Lego's Amy Corbett, and AEW's Kenny Omega and Adam Page!
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On this episode, the brothers Weinbrecht present their 2020 New York Toy Fair Recap! From Spinmaster to Funko and everything in between, Dave and Erik present interviews with Todd McFarlane on his new DC Multiverse and Spawn figures, Lego Brickmaster, designer, and judge on FOX's Master Builder, Amy Corbett, AEW superstars Kenny Omega and Adam Page, Arcade 1UP founder Scott Bachrach, and MORE! Dive and recap the 2020 New York Toy Fair with your favorite toy podcast!
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Intro by Joe Azzari
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Theme Music is "Game Boy Horror" by the Zombie Dandies
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi, Dave. Hi, Eric. Hey, Dave. Do we curse on this podcast? Yes, Eric. Yes, we do. Are you ready, kids?
Introduction to Adventures in Collecting
00:00:12
Speaker
Get your parents' permission, check your mailbox, and grab your shopping cart. It's time for the Adventures in Collecting podcast.
00:00:21
Speaker
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.
Focus on 2020 New York Toy Fair
00:00:34
Speaker
And we're back. Welcome to the next episode of Adventures in Collecting.
00:00:39
Speaker
We're here. Thank you for joining us. We have a really, really packed episode today, so we're gonna break our normal format and deliver you all of our awesome findings from the 2020 New York Toy Fair. Yeah, it's a clip show.
00:00:57
Speaker
He's been waiting all day to say that. The writers have material, so it's not like a clip show where it's like a best of. We actually just have clips of stuff to share with you, and it's awesome and fun. Lots of clips of stuff. Before I give you the rundown on what we're gonna feature on today's episode, I just wanna say a quick. We're gonna get into Guess That Toy. No, not today, not today. Dave is not gonna ruin my life today. We are going to talk about everything that I bought this week.
00:01:26
Speaker
No, Dave, we're not gonna do that this time. So it's a news-filled show. Yeah, it is all Toy Fair. And also thank you to everybody who's on board now from following us and following all the stuff that we showed you on Instagram. Yeah. So thank you. Welcome aboard. So on today's episode, Dave and I are gonna give you our
00:01:54
Speaker
our reaction to Toy Fair, our first toy fair and the things that we saw, some of the trends. And then, of course, some of the really cool interviews that we got while we were there.
Interviews with Toy Designers and Creators
00:02:03
Speaker
We're going to talk to Amy Corbett, who you might know from Lego's Lego Masters on Fox. She's one of the judges. She is an official brick master and designer with Lego. And she walked us through one of their new products, which is one that she designed.
00:02:19
Speaker
We also have an interview with Todd McFarlane, of course, of McFarlane Toys. We have Brian Liu, who is from Super 7, walking us through some of the new reaction figures that they're putting out. We have Kenny Omega and Adam Hangman Page from AEW. The current, as of taping, AEW Tag Team Champions.
00:02:40
Speaker
Yeah, and their reaction to holding their own action figures. Such a cool moment that we got to participate in. Also from Jazzwares, we have Danny Gershon and Mike DeCamp who head up the Fortnite line. One of the few things in Toy Fair that we could not take pictures of, but luckily we were able to get some really incredible audio with them and they're doing some really great things with Fortnite.
00:03:06
Speaker
We also have Scott Backrack, who is the founder of Arcade1Up. He talked to me a little bit about how that brand got started and how he's making these incredible arcade cabinets and really kind of zoning in on that nostalgia factor. So like I said, ton of stuff to get through.
00:03:27
Speaker
So
Highlights from the Toy Fair
00:03:28
Speaker
without further ado, let's let's let's hop in and start talking about Toy Fair. So, Dave, what's your what's your what was your reaction? What was your what was one of your favorite things from Toy Fair? Are we segueing to something or? We're going to give our reactions first. OK, Toy Fair was great.
00:03:48
Speaker
I really thought you were just gonna stop it great. It's true. Toy Fair was great. Toy Fair was great. Yeah, I would say one of the things actually you're not gonna hear about from us, you probably saw it on Instagram, and I guess maybe we'll throw it up on the YouTube channel as well, was the
00:04:11
Speaker
discussion with Eric from boss fight studios where we saw the legends of lucha libre line for the first time actually physically saw it as opposed to just something that was a pre-order those are going to be fantastic figures very detailed a lot of articulation a lot of cool accessories a lot of
00:04:32
Speaker
cool stuff coming down the road with that. We saw the Lady Maravilla and Conan, which are gonna be the series two of the premium line. We saw the Fanaticos, which are gonna be the series one of more of like a, I don't wanna say a basic line, but that's in comparison to the basics from Mattel for the WWE, but really more of a less high end figure line for those, which is gonna be fantastic.
00:05:01
Speaker
That I think was something that I was very excited to see that I saw and very excited to own at some point. Yeah. What a time to be alive for, for wrestling collectors. And you know what, Dave, that's a perfect segue. So let's, let's go right from boss fight studios, uh, straight into the
In-depth Look at AEW Figures
00:05:21
Speaker
jazzwares booth. And let's hear from, uh, from Kenny Omega and Adam hangman page themselves.
00:05:28
Speaker
So we're here with Kenny Omega and we're looking at the new AEW line from Jazzwares and we'd just love to hear what you think about them. I think they're absolutely incredible and you know you judge yourself, usually you're the toughest critic on yourself and we always hope that your figure's gonna look
00:05:48
Speaker
either representative of what you actually look like or hopefully better than what you look like. And in my case, I probably look a little better than what I do in real life. You know, at least I look at least 10 years younger, which is great. So I'm super happy with it. I love the fact that I come with my ring coat, that my designer name is on my tights, my curly hair is intact. Even like the little thing like the,
00:06:16
Speaker
The one thing that you could have forgotten and no one would have realized is that I actually had a gauntlet as well to go with my ring coat. Yeah. They didn't forget. They knew it was there. So, um, yeah, it's just, I'm, I'm just blown away by the points of articulation and, uh, the attention to detail in general. Yeah. It must be surreal just to, just to see it in person. It is. No, it absolutely is. And now that I'm actually here at the booth, um,
00:06:42
Speaker
I can not only just think of my own, but I think of everyone's and they all in their own way, shape, form and fashion just have their very personal traits that were represented just to a T. Like the Young Bucks' Elvis ropes, Jericho's tattoos, Cody's got the dream tattoo on his chest, things like that. Other companies
00:07:08
Speaker
may have just left that out struck it from the record you know what i mean but yeah but every detail i mean as you know and our fans are passionate they realize that these things
00:07:19
Speaker
were there, are there, and they want to see them represented. Cody, you know, look at this figure here. It could have been easy for Cody to have both hands taped. It could have been easy for Cody to not have his weight belt, but he always has his weight belt. You know what I mean? Yeah. And it would have been probably more cost effective to not have these little accessories to go with it.
00:07:42
Speaker
But here we are, everything intact, everything as it was represented on the show. And I couldn't be more proud to work with guys that are as passionate about making these figures true to life as we were performing on the day of. Well, they look incredible. Thank you so much. I know you're a busy guy. I don't want to keep you too long.
00:08:03
Speaker
Thank you so much for your input and we love watching you and we can't wait to get our hands on these. Me too. Yeah, it makes two of us. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Great stuff.
00:08:14
Speaker
So we're here with Adam Page, Hangman. What's up? Tell us a little bit about what you're holding in your hands right now. I'm holding myself. It is a smaller scale version of me, scantily clad in my wrestling attire, and it's badass. Looks great. Thanks, man. It looks fantastic. What is it like to have your likeness forever in plastic?
00:08:39
Speaker
You know, I guess like you kind of know it's going to happen. It's going to be a thing and you wonder like, will they get it right? Like, will it look like me? And you don't really expect it to look like you because if anybody knows what I look like, it's me. So I'm thinking like, oh, they won't be able to get me. But they got me. They got me right. So it's pretty cool. It's really good. And I'm looking at like, even like as I hold it now, I'm noticing details that I didn't necessarily notice before, like all the
00:09:04
Speaker
like intricate work on the bandana, like the boots themselves have gotten shot with a nerve gun by Kenny over here. Yeah, it's great. What's great is that the figures are articulated, they pose well, they look great in the ring. Do you collect any wrestling action figures? No, I don't.
00:09:31
Speaker
I can't say that I do, but now that all my friends and I have a really... Oh, he hit a Pokemon. We're currently getting shot by Kenny Omega. He's hitting Pokemon.
00:09:49
Speaker
Kenny is shooting a Nerf gun. He just knocked over some Pokemon displays. But yeah, now that my friends and stuff have them, I might have to get one of each at least. That's awesome. Is there anything in particular you're looking forward to in the future for the line? You know, any alternate? I'm regularly getting shot. We're getting nailed over here. Double barrel. I'll just turn my mic.
00:10:12
Speaker
I'll just turn my back. It couldn't hurt, right?
Spotlight on Jazzwares' Toy Lines
00:10:16
Speaker
Yeah, just give me beer. Give me beer. Yes, I did get hit with darts during that. I absolutely did get hit with darts as Kenny Omega started firing Nerf darts at Adam. Yeah, that seemed like it was a good time.
00:10:39
Speaker
That's gonna be an awesome line. I'm really looking forward to it. Like you were saying, what a time to be alive and be a wrestling figure collector. Those AEW figures look incredible. The scans for the faces are awesome. Very much looking forward to getting my hands on them.
00:10:59
Speaker
Yeah, and so something else, we'll stay in the Jazzwares booth for now, figuratively. Something else I couldn't take photos of that looked incredible were Jazzwares UFC line. So they had a whole line of UFC figures that we could not photograph. There was nobody really there to speak on them, other than the fact that they're coming and, you know, the same level of detail that's in the AEW figures.
00:11:27
Speaker
Same level of detail. The likenesses looked great. Admittedly not a huge UFC follower, but I recognized Conor McGregor's figure was there. There's some good looking stuff.
00:11:44
Speaker
Next to that in the booth, we were allowed to go into the secret Fortnite room that they had and speak with Danny Gershon and Mike DeCamp who head up the Fortnite line. So without anything else, let's hear it straight from them.
00:12:03
Speaker
I'm Danny Gershon and I'm the brand director on Fortnite for Jazzwares. I'm Mike DeCamp and I'm a senior business development manager at Jazzwares. But together we're pretty much the mom and dad of the line here. We handle all the ideation and everything kind of stem to stern.
00:12:24
Speaker
So Jazzwares, we cut our teeth in video game action figures to your question earlier. Our very first license in toys was Pokemon and then Mortal Kombat and Capcom. We found our niche in there. So Fortnite's kind of like the culmination of all those different things. When we decided to go all in and actually pitch for it, we really leaned in on everything that we've done kind of collectively to get the deal in the end.
00:12:53
Speaker
And we're really trying to push the envelope with stuff that we've always wanted to do, now that we have this as a platform to kind of speak our individuality. Yeah, and I feel like Fortnite, as somebody, admittedly, who plays the game, with the constant updates to costumes and the item shop and everything, it lends itself very well to toys, right? Because you have version after version after version of different characters and everything.
00:13:18
Speaker
Are there any challenges with keeping up with that, or how does that work on the creative end? So we, of course, have schedules and timelines, but one of the things that we're known for in the industry is just being very nimble and quick to manufacture. So we do our best to keep up with Fortnite. Obviously, they don't have the timeline lead time that we do, but we try to make adjustments and make sure that we're capturing what's cool and new and exciting and game as quickly as we can in the line.
00:13:47
Speaker
Just like the characters in the game, you have to unlock additional versions of those costumes. Do you guys have a chase variant for them? How does that work? Yeah, we always try to have something for the hardcore fans in there. Again, we're working very collaboratively with Epic Games. We've been able to have some Easter eggs, even into the line. So some stuff that hits the shelf, the only time you see it is on the toy. So for the superfans, there's a lot of chase to have for them.
00:14:16
Speaker
The loot boxes were like something that we wanted to do and were part of the pitch and I've tried to do a few times along with jazzwares because
00:14:25
Speaker
accessories packs are kind of built into the history. It's the game. Yeah. And this game is, some of the weapons in the game are as famous as the characters we all play as. For sure. The opportunity to do it and then when it worked was like just the ultimate validation. So what we're doing now is something that is unique to the game mechanics, something that you'll recognize instantaneously, but it's also economical. So we're actually able to bring our prices down on those items.
00:14:54
Speaker
which is something that you don't necessarily see year two in a successful line. But you'll see a lot more friendly and approachable pricing all throughout what we've done, because we're learning and we're trying to perform even better for the fans. And these will be true blind boxes. You don't know what you're going to get until you get it, or is it just neat packaging? We have a gray area that we operate in there, and that comes directly from Epic up top. Is it nothing that's truly blind? So even in our loot chests, everything is listed as a contents item.
00:15:24
Speaker
But mom and dad can always peel that portion of the label off and then you still have an experience for the kids. The vehicles that you mentioned, Fortnite fans are just super sophisticated kids. They're gamers, they're older, they have more demand on what it is that we're up to. So you see a lot of RC, you see the drones that actually carry the four-inch figures.
00:15:50
Speaker
It's not a hollow figure, that's a real figure he's articulated and it will carry any of the other figures in the line as well. It has obstacle avoidance and all the cool stuff that you need from a great toy drone.
00:16:03
Speaker
The first one, we did have the OG Skulltrooper, who we all know. There's no chance I'll ever own that outfit, so the only way I get to experience that is through some toy play and stuff. So coming soon, you'll see a leveling up of what we did with the ATK and something that's quirky and fun, but yet to be named.
00:16:25
Speaker
And we'll spill the beans. You'll have some exciting figures packed in with those, too. We're not paying attention. You can spill the beans. It's fine. Well, everybody knows about the Battle Bus already, so there are some images that were released today. This is really exciting for us and for Fortnite because it is the most iconic bit of the game.
00:16:48
Speaker
They were extremely demanding but also collaborative with us on the process and getting this to where it is today. And it's a full functioning playset. It lights up, there's music that plays from the game, there's disco ball inside the bus, and most of all it includes recruit jonesy. So we find that when you have the right character mix with the item, it's that magic.
00:17:12
Speaker
It's the Sky Striker, it's all these things that we remember from the past, you know, the Millennium Falcon, well, these two guys, I mean, I think they're the ultimate combo. For sure. And they let us make it rolling, so even though there are boots on the wheels, it is a rolling bus. Like, this is a fun one. The Expedition Outpost, for instance.
00:17:30
Speaker
There's an Easter egg within here that we haven't really gotten to show too many people firsthand, but we have to include the stinky zipline for the zipline feature because that's what choking hazards in our age grade allow. But if you remove that, there's actually a hole in the mount.
00:17:46
Speaker
where you can use any length of string. Oh, look at that. And the zip line, it's on rollers, so it's really smooth. So it actually works. So yeah, it works really good. I had it from basically my room to the hotel lobby. That's amazing. That's awesome. We have two here, so I was running up and down the stairs a lot. I hope you got video of that for when you're allowed to show it.
00:18:08
Speaker
Even down there might be a lot of qualifiers. I live in this cursed world of all the stuff I can never talk about. Like the most eluded tube ever paying off Instagram in the world. There's pictures of my shoe and I'm standing next to something really cool guys.
00:18:27
Speaker
Promise. Yeah, totally promise. Slowly but surely it's out there. Amazon spilled the beans for us on a few items, so it really wanted to look up in a way that I didn't tell you directly. There's some stuff out there listed.
00:18:44
Speaker
retailers, people data mining the site for stuff that they are programmed in, what are you going to do? It's the nature of the game, it really is, and it's so cool to see the fans get behind it. It's the target number they keep talking about. DCPI? DCPI, yeah. When people start chatting DCPI numbers, I'm like, oh wow, we are on something special. Getting them to pull it out from the back before it even hits the shelves.
00:19:08
Speaker
Yep, I can't tell you how many times, especially being a toy podcast and following other like toy bloggers and stuff, how many times it's like a picture of one of those price scanners at Target with no picture, but it says like, you know, Fortnite, you know, 3.75 inch, you know, Expedition Outpost. And it's like, and they're like, look, it's coming soon. Here's the DPCI number. And then you can go to Bricsy and figure out which stores have it in stock and start like it's, it's really wild. It's really awesome. It's given us such
00:19:39
Speaker
Real-time feedback, you know, because I'm hyper aware of the things that are going on just like keeps me up at night So like to that point like in the six inch, this is cool like this another thing that hasn't really been focused
00:19:53
Speaker
The Ragnarok max level, it's the first time we're doing interchangeable hands. So our number one criticism from the fan base, the Legends collectors, is like they want C grips, they want multiple hand styles, so you'll see that kind of filter its way into the rest of the development. Awesome.
00:20:10
Speaker
Yeah, it's the little things that keep us unique, they're like the interchanging faces and the articulation in the fingers and stuff. We're launching a new feature, 6-inch weapon line, so kind of how we have weapon packs with the 4-inch figures, shooting features in each of the packs, the shotgun, I've said too much. Very cool.
00:20:34
Speaker
Do you want me to edit that out? No, it's fine. You sure? Yeah. I can do it. It's not live. We're not posting anything yet. I think I grammed a picture of the Grappler once. It doesn't matter. It's out international. That's it. Then there you go. You're safe. All right. Legendary loadout. Hashtag Pashka.
00:20:51
Speaker
Well listen, thank you again so much for giving us a tour of all of this incredible stuff. I mean, you're bringing an awesome game to life and putting it in additional hands in a way that the game can't, so thank you. It's incredible. They've made it so easy for us. Thanks to Epic. So that was great to hear from Danny and Mike about Fortnite, something that I'm...
Super 7's Reaction Figures Unveiled
00:21:13
Speaker
Full disclosure, not inherently familiar with, but such a popular game. Just out there, it's something that everybody's playing with and the figures are fantastic just from what we've seen out thus far.
00:21:25
Speaker
The figures do look incredible. It's definitely a line to look out for. Jazzwares has a lot. They have a lot coming. Something else that we didn't really mention with them that they had kind of on display is the relaunch of micromachines as well. So, Jazzwares has a ton coming in the pipeline. Outside of wrestling figures, something that I think is really kind of...
00:21:53
Speaker
Yeah, I guess you could say a driver in popularity of toys is nostalgia, right? And there aren't a whole lot of people that do that better than Super 7.
00:22:02
Speaker
Yeah, and even a you know inside wrestling figures too. They're doing the new Japan line, but That's true. Yeah, they have yeah, they have they have some of those those new Japan figures, but not escape at Eric wrestling is They have some man super seven They just have so many different lines going on between the even within the or excuse me not lines They have so many different properties going on within that reaction line. I mean you have
00:22:26
Speaker
in the sports category, you have the sports mascots, you have baseball, you have baseball legends, you have basketball players. We saw prototypes for the US Women's National Team figures. Which is gonna be awesome. I'm very much looking forward to that. And then like in the case next to it, they had Beavis and Butthead, the Ninja Turtles, Andre the Giant, Halloween 2, Back to the Future, Nightmare Before Christmas is coming back.
00:22:51
Speaker
Yeah, their first that's their first contract with Disney, their first project officially with Disney, which they're really excited about. But on the other side of the case, so double sided glass case, we spoke with Brian Liu at Super Seven, who is really knowledgeable and really excited about the the music line of reaction figures, especially the the hard rock and metal ones. So let's hear from Brian.
00:23:18
Speaker
I'm Brian Liu. I work at Super 7. I look after all the online and web store, social media stuff. So here we are at Toy Fair. Awesome. Well, thank you for joining us for a little bit here. So Super 7, the reaction line, you guys are producing incredible stuff across not only different IPs but
00:23:39
Speaker
different genres, sports, cartoons, everything. So just tell us a little bit about the process. How does that come to life? So reaction, we started reaction in the early 2000s. Originally, we were partnered with Funko because Super 7 was a small company and Funko helped us with manufacturing and distribution. But 2016,
00:24:01
Speaker
our agreement ended with them. So we brought the Reaction brand back in house because Reaction has always been the Super 7 trademark and all that. So we launched it with Alien, the first Alien Reaction figures. And now we're doing sports, we're doing music, we're doing movies, we're doing television, a lot of pop culture. So we're kind of covering all the bases right now.
00:24:26
Speaker
But as far as Toy Fair goes, our big reveal has been under sports, our super sports brands, NBA. So the NBA figures were showing for the first time. They haven't been shown to the public yet. So it's a cool line. It's like current players and all of them will be in scale. So if a player's taller, he'll be the taller figure. If he's a little shorter, he'll be shorter. So the NBA players will be in scale to each other. And then we have,
00:24:53
Speaker
Major League Baseball, we're launching with a lot of modern players, and then also with the team mascots, like Mr. Metz, San Diego Chicken. So those are coming out just in time for the season to start. And then we have classic baseball. So sports is kind of our biggest new
00:25:12
Speaker
IP it's kind of like kind of unexpected because you know and Until this we've just been kind of doing like you know the sci-fi or well Sports figures they have a long history right? Yeah, the starting lineup figure so and these remind me a lot of those figures you know the likeness is obviously much better than they were you know back in the 80s with the starting line of figures, but I
00:25:36
Speaker
I think there's still a market for that. I'm looking at the soccer ones right now. Women's soccer, hoping to get those out in time for the Olympics.
00:25:46
Speaker
That's the thing with Super 7, we only do what we're fans of anyway. Our company, Manifesto, includes no one made what we wanted, so we made it ourselves. That's sort of our touchstone, if projects come our way. Now, we're at a point where a lot of rights owners are coming to us.
00:26:10
Speaker
We're in a fortunate position where a lot of rights owners are coming to us wanting to work with us, so if we were a smaller company or a newer company, we'd have to be chasing the IP. We're in a fortunate position where people like what we're doing, and they want to work with us. So tell me a little bit about, I know that show Master Casters just came out, features one of the guys' killer bootlegs, and he has the Phantom Star Killer toy with you guys. How did that happen?
00:26:37
Speaker
Well, he's a friend of our owner, like, you know, Brian Flynn's our owner, and they're longtime friends, and, you know, we love that stuff, like, like, kit bashing and all that, that's like, that's like, kind of Super 7's roots when we were fans, so, you know, stuff like that, we, we love it, and then something like that, you know, where, you know, killer bootlegs, they have their own characters, so why wouldn't we help? You know, they, they do their, their versions of their characters, but then,
00:27:03
Speaker
You know, if we do it, it can get to a wider audience and kind of draw attention to their art. I mean, you know, what they do is art.
00:27:11
Speaker
And it's cool, and it's unique. We don't look at that stuff as competition or there's nothing like that. We're all part of the same community in a lot of ways, and Killer Book leaks came from where Super 7 started. And it's just fun. I mean, that's the bottom line. It's just fun. Well, we're always excited to see what you guys are up to next, and can't wait to see what you do in the future. So thank you so much. Yeah, thanks. Appreciate it.
00:27:41
Speaker
Thank you, Brian. Those sound awesome. Yes, they look incredible. I was a big fan, even though it was just a card. They didn't have the official figure out there yet. There's a Papa figure coming from Ghost that comes with the saxophone. Very, very, very excited about that. Yeah, and they've done Papa Emeritus 2, which is cool.
00:28:05
Speaker
So just to kind of give you an idea, if you've never been to Toy Fair before or not seen a whole lot of pictures of the scope of it, Toy Fair is kind of set up in the Javits Center, which is where New York Comic Con is, and it's set up on three floors. So the top, uppermost floor was Mattel, celebrating 75 years of toy innovation. That was a special invite-only event, much like Hasbro's off-site satellite event.
00:28:31
Speaker
But very cool Mattel stuff coming out again. One of the things they showed was the return of WWE Legends and Decade of Domination line, which are really cool. They had, there's just a bunch coming out that they have that looks really cool.
00:28:49
Speaker
Um, on the middle floor was a lot of like the big brands that had huge booths to display. So your spin masters, your, um, jazzwares, Jack specific, um, Melissa and Doug playmates, uh, play mobile, all of those brands had their, their super big booths on that, that kind of main floor.
00:29:11
Speaker
Super 7, Storm. Well, they were downstairs. So Super 7, Storm Collectibles, Boss Fight Studios. They were kind of in this like action figure alley that they had set up that was fronted. The biggest booth down there was Funko. So the Funko pop booth and the DC Direct, DC Collectibles, part of the announcement at Toy Fair, they changed their name from DC Collectibles back to DC Direct.
00:29:39
Speaker
Also cool stuff coming out from Funko too. U.S. Women's National Team. A whole bunch of... They had all the Mandalorian stuff on display. Yeah, the Mandalorian stuff. We got to see the Child. Yes, excuse me, the Child. We got to see... The Jack Nicholson Joker from the 89 Batman was out. This coming round of baseball.
00:30:05
Speaker
MLB figures. Yep. Tons of those. The new office stuff. So that's cool. Yeah. Funko, much, much like Super Seven. They have their hands in so many different IPs. You know, it's always interesting to see what they're doing. But we're going to take a trip back upstairs and we're going to visit Lego. So Lego, one of the obviously one of the biggest toy brands out there.
00:30:29
Speaker
They had an incredible booth filled with wonder. I will literally say filled with wonder. And we had a a very fortuitous run in with with Amy Corbett from from Lego Masters.
Exploring New Lines: Lego Dots and Spin Master Toys
00:30:47
Speaker
And she's going to walk us through her new line that she helped design called Lego Dots.
00:30:54
Speaker
But it's basically moving Lego into an arts and crafts space and it's moving from the 3D building to 2D. So we give lots of different creative canvases and it's all about creating 2D patterns and expressing yourself, your personality, how you feel, your personal style. We want kids to experiment with it, try out different things.
00:31:16
Speaker
So we have lots of different canvases that you can dot with our little pieces, our little tiles that we also are calling dots. We have our new bracelets.
00:31:27
Speaker
and we also have more functional items like these little photo cubes so you can put a little Polaroid or a photo in the back. Awesome. Show off your friendship moments. We have a pineapple pencil holder so you can put your pencils inside or store things but it's also you can just make really cute expressions and be a bit silly with this one and then we have this jewelry stand as well.
00:31:50
Speaker
can make really beautiful and hang all your jewelry or keep your bracelets safe there and we also have you know because it's arts and crafts it's about customization we also have extra pieces you can buy and these pieces these packs come with surprise pieces inside so you get different pieces in different packs.
00:32:07
Speaker
And I noticed some very unique shapes in terms of like the, you know, just the offering. How did you come up with the types of shapes? Do you know what is very amazing about dots is actually we haven't made a lot of new shapes. These are the Lego pieces we already had. We're just using them in a very new and different way. So the only new pieces we have are the bracelets.
00:32:30
Speaker
These little sparkling diamonds that you can see here and the heart's made a bigger size of heart for the cloud on the jewellery holder. So actually it's Lego pieces we've had for many years. Oh wow. It's just that we're reimagining them and the way we have the patterns and the colours just makes it feel very different. So it means that all of our pieces just work with the Lego system.
00:32:52
Speaker
And in terms of getting into Lego design, what attracted you to it originally? How did you get involved with Legos? So I studied product design engineering in university. And whenever I made things for kids, I was the happiest and I was the best at doing that compared to making other kinds of designs. So I said, cool, toys is what I want to do. And we're better than Lego. And I've been there seven years now. Awesome. And I love it.
00:33:20
Speaker
Well, the work is incredible. I have a daughter at home, my wife and I, and my daughter, we love watching the show. She's four years old, so she was thrilled to see that there was a woman on the show who was a judge and had control of stuff. It's incredible. We love watching her play with Legos. We play together. It was one of the first real toy things that we did together. Thank you. Thank you for what you do. I love that it brings families together and can inspire people to be creative as well.
00:33:49
Speaker
And we're two different types of builders, too. My wife is like, throw the instructions out, build whatever you want. And I'm like, no, we're the instructions. I need to build it exactly. Ah, that's cool. Well, that is one of the cool things about DOTS, actually, is that the kids told us they want to be inspired. I don't want instructions, so we have a completely new type of instructions that's like a poster format that on one side shows you the build, and the other side just has inspiration. So you can just take the ideas from that. There's no right and wrong.
00:34:15
Speaker
And what excites you most about legs? What's the thing that keeps you coming back to them? I think that we can keep reinventing it. You know, it's been around for over 60 years, but we can keep bringing newness and making it relevant for today's kids and nothing that's really exciting. Awesome. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. No problem. Thank you. It was nice to chat with you. Thank you.
00:34:37
Speaker
So that's really cool. That sounds like a lot of fun. Like the whole idea of you're basically kind of like designing almost like a crafting type of scenario, which seems like it's going to be really cool. Yeah, she she is. She's so awesome and she's so you can tell.
00:34:59
Speaker
that she's just so super excited about what she's doing and the fact that she's putting these tools in the hands of children to create these new and wild things with Lego. She's just so excited about what she's doing and it's infectious.
00:35:15
Speaker
That's one thing that you notice there is that there is a lot of love and care being put into everything that you see out there. Everybody who's designing, everybody who's involved has so much passion for what they're doing. And that's definitely something you can see. Yeah.
00:35:34
Speaker
So Lego is, you know, a building block. So, you know, we've been bouncing back and forth between action figures and, and, and wrestling and, um, and now building blocks, but another big facet of the toy, uh, the toy world or games. And, you know, we, we spent quite a substantial amount of time in spin master games and, and we met our new friends from, um, from big potato games. I'm actually looking at our, at our stuffed potato right here.
00:36:02
Speaker
Yeah, if you saw on Instagram, I get to play around of the blockbuster game, which was a lot of fun. Yeah, super fun. Um, I couldn't believe how many of them were under that Spin Master brand. I mean, that was the one thing I think I took away most from the Spin Master presentation was just, I could not believe how many different brands were under that, that kind of umbrella. A lot of really cool stuff.
00:36:24
Speaker
Yeah. So, I mean, let's hang out in the Spin Master booth for a while. We don't have any audio from that experience, but we got to see the future waves of the new Batman figures that are coming from Spin Master. Of which, keep your eyes peeled because on the YouTube channel and on the Instagram, there will be a unboxing of a Batman figure.
00:36:48
Speaker
Yes, we were graciously given samples of the new line of Batman toys. We each got a Batman to walk away with, which was awesome. Thank you again for that, by the way, Spin Master. One of the big themes of the entire show was running through that Spin Master booth, which was blind boxing and the kind of art of the unboxing.
00:37:13
Speaker
we saw some really kind of revolutionary ways how they're trying to make that more and more interesting for kids and also more fair for the parents that are buying the toys. We saw dissolvable clouds. Dave made a toy, a purple squishy toy.
00:37:32
Speaker
Yeah, that was fun. We saw a bit, what was the thing we stuck our hands in, Orbeez? Orbeez. Yeah, Spin Master now has the license for Orbeez, and they're taking Orbeez, which if you don't know what those are, they're these kind of like jelly balls. They have a really weird sensation when you- Well, they're water activated. Yes.
00:37:56
Speaker
But they're turning them into kind of like a home spa thing for kids. Like they have this this waterfall thing that you put your feet in and there's like a waterfall of Orbeez on your feet and they have that next to like the do your own nails and do your own hair. So kind of like implementing the importance of self care at an early age. Yeah. Which is good. Yeah. It's a good thing.
00:38:17
Speaker
But after they, oh and another thing that Spin Master is doing is their interactive toys. So those ninja bots.
00:38:27
Speaker
Oh the ninja bots were awesome. Oh my god. I'm looking forward to that. I honestly like as much as I'm you know an easy an easy mark for you know the Marvel Legends and Star Wars stuff because that's what I collect. I could not look away from those ninja bots. They were like little robots that fight each other and have like weird weapons and it's it was off the wall it was awesome.
00:38:52
Speaker
Yeah, it's we posted about it on our Instagram, the video of them fighting. Go back and check that out. It was great. There's and they are so funny. Like just when they start fighting, if you don't immediately smile or chuckle, like I I honestly feel bad for you. I come come get a hug. It's like the next generation of rock and sock and robots. Yes. With a little bit of if you remember that that well, actually, I think it's still on TV battle bots.
00:39:18
Speaker
Yeah, it's got a little BattleBots vibe to it. But they have like wacky weapons like the one had like a spatula and or like a boot on a rope. Yeah, boot on a stick. It was fun. They also have a ton of new RC stuff. They have this indoor RC truck that moves way faster than you'd think it would be able to, but it weighs nothing. So the idea is that it's got these big foam soft wheels and it can kind of go anywhere in your house and not break anything.
00:39:43
Speaker
Um, and then they had the, the, the Megalodon, which was the, the, uh, uh, monster jam, uh, go in water. The wheels actually have like fins on them. So when it hits the water, it, uh, it goes through the water. So they had Paw Patrol. Yeah. All the Paw Patrol stuff, the how to train your dragon. We saw that prototype toothless fly that can fly. Yeah, that was cool.
00:40:08
Speaker
Um, based off of their owlies, I believe they said it was and the Hatchimals, tons of Hatchimals. Um, thank you. Thank you. Big time to spin master. Um, but outside of spin master with spin master games and like Dave said, we got a chance. He got a chance to play the blockbuster game.
00:40:25
Speaker
But speaking of games, video games, there wasn't a whole lot in the way of video games at Toy Fair because that's kind of a different category. But I feel like there's this special brand that's kind of bridging the gap between the two. And that's that's arcade one up. So you've probably if you've been through Walmart, you've probably seen the Turtles in Time cabinet, or maybe even the Mortal Kombat cabinet.
00:40:47
Speaker
They were there announcing and showing off their brand new NBA Jam cabinet, which is the first one that has wireless play. So if you have one and you have a friend that has one or even just connect to the network, you can play Complete Strangers on it. But they actually have online play through the NBA Jam cabinets.
00:41:07
Speaker
Personally, I was attracted to the sit-down old-school Star Wars cabinet. That's what made me walk over there. But I happened to bump into the founder of Arcade 1UP, Scott Bacharach, and talk to him a little bit about what he does.
00:41:24
Speaker
So our company has the DNA of a toy company for the last 30 years. So most of the management here has been in the toy business for many, many years. And as we started to look at the toy business kind of a changing business in early 2014 and 15, we decided to get in and look at other industries and we started looking at the gaming business.
00:41:46
Speaker
And then we just realized that in the gaming industry, what we do really well actually in the toy standpoint is take other people's content and deliver it into other widgets. And so we kind of looked at that model and rather than trying to develop games ourselves, we said, let's look at old classic games and how we can apply those to other things. And then from there, it was really easy. I went to a store, I picked up a little toy that was a $25 toy, a Pac-Man, played it cool.
00:42:11
Speaker
I plugged in another one that I saw at Urban Outfitters that was 100 bucks, different experience. And I was like, wait a second, there's nothing between $100 and $3,000, which is a full-size machine. And that was kind of the impetus of an idea. And so based on that, we kind of looked at that and said if we could ever make an arcade machine that A, could be portable, B, could be sub $500, and C, could play very close to the real game, we got a home run. And that was in June of 2017. Oh, wow.
00:42:40
Speaker
Yeah, because it feels like now I'm looking around and we have Marvel superheroes, Mortal Kombat 2, Star Wars, Turtles in Time.
Arcade 1UP's Home Arcade Mission
00:42:47
Speaker
You have all these classic IPs from even my generation. I remember putting my quarter up on the edge of the screen and waiting to play next. How did you go about obtaining the licenses for these? That's what we do. We work with some really great content holders. We have partnerships with all of the major brands that you just mentioned, from Bandai to the Amco to Konami. It's all in between.
00:43:09
Speaker
Do you have a personal favorite? What's one that you love playing?
00:43:14
Speaker
Pac-Man, Galaga, Asteroids. I'm 51. So how old are you? I'm 32. So your game is Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and Turtles. Yep. Right? Yep. And that's what's really cool. I'm 51. Mine's Pac-Man, Galaga, Asteroids, Centipede, whatever. And what's cool is this is very much like the music business and television business, meaning that it's a good piece of content that lasts for a long period of time. And so what I like may be different than what you like, but what brings us together is we all have a love for arcades.
00:43:39
Speaker
Yeah. And it's such a tactile thing. You know, people are glued to their phones, right? You know, they're playing these little like, you know, bejeweled and type games to actually have a joystick and buttons and feel that response. Well, you know what it is? It's to me, it takes me back to a time when I played arcade machines.
00:43:58
Speaker
From my son that's 19 that grew up on Nintendo but didn't really realize that Donkey Kong came out of Mario Bros. He all of a sudden gets to play it in a video game the way it was meant to be played. And my little guy that's five years old, we have a Turtles machine at home and he plays, he would have never had the opportunity to play that in a real arcade. Because I don't take him to Dave and Busters. It's not common the way it used to be when I was a kid, so he gets that experience at home.
00:44:23
Speaker
Incredible. Well, thank you so much for bringing this back to everybody. I really appreciate it. Are you kidding? Thanks a lot. It's my pleasure. Take care. Very nice to meet you.
00:44:30
Speaker
Thank you Scott. That's, arcade one ups are cool. Like they're, you know, you've always wanted when you were a kid to bring that arcade experience home and now you can get these cabinets at home. That's great. And it's obvious that he gives a shit about what he does. Like those cabinets are all labors of love. Like he picks the IPs that make sense. He partners with the right brands. He gets the right games. It's awesome.
00:44:57
Speaker
So the other thing that was really neat about that arcade one-up booth was they had a giant, I mean the thing had to be like 20 feet tall. It was a giant playable NBA champ cabinet. Like the buttons were the size of my fists. It was wild.
00:45:20
Speaker
But yeah, the joystick was like was like an arm. So we briefly mentioned it before, but Mattel and Hasbro within Toy Fair had their own kind of private events. So Mattel was inside the Javits Center, but Hasbro had their Hasbro Toy Fair.
00:45:39
Speaker
off-site at the Time Center in New York. While we were unable to get into either of those events, they both had some really cool things to show off. Dave, you want to talk a little bit about what's coming from Mattel?
00:45:53
Speaker
Yeah, they showed off the the newer Releases of the elites and basics the reckon ambulance They had the which is cool. It's like a destructible Ambulance. Oh, yeah, that looked awesome and it like folds out into like a little bit of a playset sort of thing No, it's just an ambulance
00:46:14
Speaker
Oh, oh, you know what? I was probably just comes up like a gurney. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I was looking at. But then they had the series seven of legends, which has been kind of gone for a while. Bobby Heenan. Bobby Heenan in a weasel suit. You got Razor Ramon. You got
00:46:34
Speaker
You have Sting, you have Crow Sting, like the initial Crow Sting, which is awesome. You have the Decade of Domination, so you have Word Life John Cena, original Natalia with the Divas title, a whole bunch of different things like that too.
00:46:53
Speaker
Just some great stuff coming from them. We saw the Ultimate John Cena and the Ultimate Becky Lynch get announced as Series 5 of the Ultimates. You know what? It's really funny. All those pictures, I could only see Becky Lynch. The other picture, I couldn't see anything. Very good.
00:47:10
Speaker
They do it right. Yeah, you did And then of course Becky Lynch winning from WrestleMania this past year and then John Cena from his Royal Rumble return So those are great and then you had the Marvel Legends stuff from from Hasbro. Yeah, so Hasbro they really kind of took out the they I mean they took out the big guns for their their event they had a
00:47:36
Speaker
A ton of marvel legends announcements including on the long rumored much anticipated fox verse coming to the marvel legends line so we're getting two huge ackman wolverines we're getting on both sets of of
00:47:55
Speaker
Professor X and Magneto in a two-pack with swappable heads. We're getting Deadpool 2 looks from Deadpool, Domino, Negasonic Teenage Warhead, and Cable. And they look fantastic. They said during the presentation that there are more surprises to come.
00:48:17
Speaker
with the Foxverse stuff, so I'm really hoping for some more from Deadpool personally. I would love a Colossus and a Russell and of course Juggernaut would be awesome.
00:48:31
Speaker
But they also had a ton of announcements for the rest of the Marvel Legends line. There's a whole Age of Apocalypse line coming with a build a figure sugar man, which is just ridiculous They're also doing an X-Men Deadpool wave that has like black Tom in it and Sunspot It's just there is a ton a ton of stuff coming from them But for me actually the biggest thing that was announced from Marvel is
00:49:01
Speaker
was the was the Spider-Man, the animated series figures. I cannot wait for that Spider-Man and the Mary Jane figure. They both look incredible. Rumor is that there's also Green Goblin that's going to be in that set, so should be awesome. And also, of course, the big news from Hasbro was Ghostbusters, tons of stuff for Ghostbusters, that whole plasma series of six inch figures with the build a figure terror dog.
00:49:31
Speaker
The Walmart exclusive re-release of the real Ghostbusters animated line Then they also have like an in-between line where there's You know, they're they're characterized versions of the Ghostbusters from the original film. Yeah, they
00:49:49
Speaker
They remind me of Galaxy of Adventure a little bit. Yeah, yeah. Cartoony versions of them, you know, the likenesses are there, but it's that, you know, that cartoon version. They had a bunch of announcements for Transformers, including a Netflix series.
00:50:05
Speaker
There was more coming for the Star Wars black series the vintage collection the relaunch of the retro collection line Which was wildly popular and a target exclusive last year This year it'll be a Walmart exclusive for the the Empire Strikes Back toys Yeah between Hasbro Marvel alone. They could have had their Hasbro and Mattel alone. They could have had their own show for sure
00:50:28
Speaker
But speaking of comic books and comic book characters, I can't think of a better segue to get us over to the McFarland booth, which for me honestly was my personal highlight of the event. Yeah, it was really cool. You know, the DC stuff with the Arkham Asylum figures and the Wonder Woman 84 figures that they had out were really cool.
00:50:55
Speaker
We got to see the new spawn, the Mortal Kombat spawn. We got to see the cyberpunk video game stuff with Kano Reeves. We also got to see the mock-up for their new Kickstarter campaign that they're gonna launch. Which we will hear about. Yeah. Why? Take it away, Todd McFarlane.
00:51:16
Speaker
McFarland Hoys has been a big part of both of our lives growing up. Oh, thank you. The original line of Spawn toys and the Spawn media, the comics, the cartoons, the film. We actually got trapped on a vacation one time in Las Vegas where our parents went to the casino. They gave us money for the movies and we went to go see Spawn.
00:51:33
Speaker
Oh wow, way, way back, way back. So we've been McFarland fans for a long time and we're also New Jersey natives. So that's where we're based out of. So it's an honor to get to speak to you. Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for coming out to the showroom here today. We love what you're doing with the DC line. And I know that's kind of like the big talk for everybody right now. So we're hoping you could just tell us a little bit more how that happened.
Todd McFarlane's DC Collectibles and Kickstarter
00:51:57
Speaker
How did you get the DC license? How did that work out? Well, I mean, just
00:52:04
Speaker
Step back a moment from my perspective. Every year I come into this toy fair, I've been coming for 25 years. And especially the last, I'd say the last 10 years.
00:52:15
Speaker
I feel like an orphan. And I go, I think every boost in this building has a piece of either Marvel, DC, or Star Wars, except for me. I think every other human being in this building, except for me, I feel left out a little bit. And I'd always made this joke that I go, I think every single big,
00:52:41
Speaker
license should have when before you sign it master toy license with anybody there should be like one paragraph that just says oh one by the way you you you're the master toy license but point number 27 McFarland toys gets to make one figure right i just would because then i go come on let me just make one let me just make one of these things um and so i had my my wishes there
00:53:07
Speaker
All of a sudden, you know, we've constantly been sort of knocking on everybody's door, just checking, just checking. Are you happy with the people you're doing it with? Is there any opportunities? Are you happy? Are there any opportunities?
00:53:18
Speaker
And sometimes you just need to be patient. In this case, took 25 years of patience, but Warner Brothers, you know, that owns DC, DC Multiverse, the contract was running out with Mattel and they decided to go in a different direction. Don't know why, but, you know, they started going in a different direction and then within the confines of that direction.
00:53:41
Speaker
Macau had a pretty big broad contract that was for both mass and collectibles, if you will. And they decided that when that contract ran out, they were going to bring on some new people but not give it all to one person. Yeah, they're going to split it up.
00:54:00
Speaker
they're going to split it up. So they picked Spin Master to do the math part of it. And then we were in the running and ended up getting the license, obviously, for the collectible part of it. Which is good, because I think you've got two different brains working at two different goals. And what the goal should be, I think, is we'll move forward. And I think everybody is sort of in the same game plan as it
00:54:25
Speaker
there shouldn't be a lot of overlap of product and looks, right? And so, because I think Spin Match is going to do a great job at delivering the classic stuff, right? The stuff that you know is always going to be there, that has to be on the shelf. And then I come in and then I
00:54:48
Speaker
My job, I think, is to do stuff that is a little more surprising, is a little more sort of
00:54:59
Speaker
innovative, if you will, and again, collectors go, I've never seen that figure. I've never seen that figure before. Including Superman Unchained in your first wave, that was quite a bold move, doing those things. Right. That was great. Right. So let's ask about that piece. And here's why I did it. Every time I look at stuff, I just put my 10-year-old Todd hat on. And I just go, OK, Todd, you're 10.
00:55:28
Speaker
And so when I'm looking, look at the license I have is for TV, movies, video games, comic books, and animation since the dawn of the DC universe. So it's basically anything you can think of, I have access to. An ocean of content. Oh my, we're never gonna make it all. So what that means is that there's this deep, deep, rich pool of visuals that
00:55:59
Speaker
to me you don't have to even know that that armor suit exists and oh by the way when we started sculpting it it had only been in one book on one page in four panels right so so like think about it four panels
00:56:14
Speaker
Did I pick it because it was the most popular character going? No. Did I pick it because he was on the cover of all the books? No. Did I pick it because he was part of a big crossover? No. I only picked it for one reason. Because it looks like a toy. It looks like a toy and it's got a big giant S. Don't underestimate the S. That stands for something.
00:56:36
Speaker
billions of people. So to me I'm going, look I can do the classic stuff and I can do the animation stuff because I think there's a whole other section that we can talk about the animation. But if I put this toy out there and I tweak it and you know again because you had slim boots so I made the boots a little thicker and I go and I make them so it looks bulky in the package.
00:56:58
Speaker
and it just feels good and heavy, and you just go, what? Look at how much plastic that Todd's giving us for 20 bucks. Oh my gosh, compared to what other people are giving us for 20 bucks. And it's Superman, and I've never seen Superman, and I've got a Superman collection, but I don't have that Superman. Boom, and so now I can sell it to you guys, who are geeks, and you're older, and you shave, and you got hair on your ass, so you're mature.
00:57:26
Speaker
The 10-year-old version of you would still like that toy. Because you would go, mom, if I've got to have one Superman, can I get that one? Because that's the badass Superman, right? And the same with the Hellbat suit. It's the same thing. All you need to do is put the pointy ears and you put the big bat and you go, I can expand my Batman collection with that guy who looks like he'll run you over.
00:57:52
Speaker
and he's got the articulated giant wings I mean what are you talking about I couldn't like I have to people going oh my god you articulate the wings I have no choice because my box isn't big enough yeah I have to fold them so so they're going oh you fold you articulate them I had no choice but if you want to give me brownie points for doing what I had to do I'll take it and show
00:58:13
Speaker
If you do like detailed quality product on a brand and give people lots of plastic at a fair price, it will sell every, my 30 years say, it will sell every single time. I can do the most obscure character.
00:58:31
Speaker
But as long as it's the biggest obscure character and you put lots of plastic, I've never, if you guys collect at spawn, you know I did these guys all the time and you probably went, don't know who that guy is, but shit, did you feel this? I mean, it's just twice the plastic for the same price. It's like candy. I'm going to get twice as much sugar for the same price. I'm in, I'm in. So what happens if it actually has like logos on it that matter? It's good.
00:58:58
Speaker
So then with stuff like animation, I think we can do the same thing. Yeah. Look, we've all seen the animation look that we all see on TV and it's cool and it's been done for 10 years. I even just did some and they're really cool. What I would love to do is to take, like, what would, for lack of a better example, what would the Superman Unleashed armor and anime look like?
00:59:27
Speaker
What would the Batman who laughs in anime look like? What would one of the medals Batman in anime look like? What would one of the deceased Wonder Woman in anime look like? I was going to ask you, were you going to do any kind of like play in that space? I don't know. So here's what I do know.
00:59:51
Speaker
I'm a pest, right? I can tell you, I had a brother, you're younger, brother, you're older. And if there's one thing I'm good at, is just be in the pest, right? I may actually be a professional at that. I could probably almost get paid for it. I mean, you created spawn, you must be. So what you do is, when you do it, you just ask every day.
01:00:11
Speaker
and be willing to take about 800 no's before you hopefully just wear them out and they finally say, they never say yes, what they say is fine, right? Right, you know, come on, you got a mom, you know, fine is a, fine's a yes, right? Fine, go ahead, and you're going, I'll take that as a giant yes, right? So, I, two things are gonna happen, I'm hoping.
01:00:38
Speaker
Right now the sales data is saying that those surprising figures, the ones that people go, oh my god, I've never seen that before. Those are my best sellers right now. I don't think it's an accident. I don't think it's an accident. What I think
01:00:54
Speaker
we're all going to understand everybody involved in this product all the way from Warner Brothers to myself to my sculptors is that the more surprises we can give and deliver the better we will do and oh by the way it will differentiate what we're doing from what Spin Master is doing so now when you come and you look at the statement instead of it having a little bit of crossover you just have this big dc multiverse sort of setup and you go if i want classic
01:01:24
Speaker
Thin Master is delivering it and if I want a little surprising odd, McFarland is delivering it and you just let the consumers buy it and do whatever they want to do and if I can convince all of us to get to that point.
01:01:41
Speaker
Do you know how deep the pool is of DC? It's been around for 70 years. There's stuff that is hidden that would look great in plastic up on a shelf.
01:01:55
Speaker
Yeah. Nobody's made yet. Yeah. It doesn't have to be new. It didn't even have to be relevant. It just has to be like, oh my god, nobody's like, you think people are buying those two armor ones because they, they bought the comic book of it. Of course not. I had to look it up. Right. I saw it and I was like, this thing is
01:02:12
Speaker
Cool, what is it from? What is it from, right? And then people went, it exists? I was going to buy it anyways. Who cares whether it exists or not? I was going to buy it. You'd think if that exact suit didn't exist, I would have lost one sale, not one, right? They're buying it for another reason. And so to me, if that's true,
01:02:34
Speaker
then what happens if you let me invent suits, right? So speaking of surprises and delivering that surprise, people have been waiting, myself included, have been waiting a very long time for a new spawn figure, especially super articulated. I got to hold it in there and I was like, I can't wait to bring you home with me.
01:02:51
Speaker
But how you delivered this new spawn coming from Mortal Kombat, like out of left field, surprising everybody. Tell us a little bit about how that worked out.
01:03:09
Speaker
I think other than G.I. Transformers, it was the longest-running consecutive series for a while, right? And we were mesmerized going, what's driving it? Because there's nothing really on TV or movies. It just keeps going.
01:03:25
Speaker
But I think that you need a little bit of relevance as to why you're doing it. So when we had the conversation and we've gone into Mortal Kombat, which when you pull out the microscope and get way back, that's also under the Warner Brothers umbrella.
01:03:47
Speaker
You go it's okay. He's gonna come out in the game. I was gonna bring out his phone anyways This is basically a two-for-one, right? You're gonna get people there by because
01:03:58
Speaker
It's a character that's in Mortal Kombat, and it's a popular brand, which they should. And then you can buy people go, I never played Mortal Kombat, but I know Spawn, right? So I should have a double hit at that character coming out. He'll be coming out just when the DLC is being dropped. They got to go to Chicago for the big convention that they're doing, and we're going to finally show him moving on screen to some people. I've seen it all. It's super cool.
01:04:28
Speaker
I've been talking about doing some crowdfunding stuff. And so we're going to be doing what I call masterwork. We talked about it last year. And instead of talking about the theory of it, we're going to implement it. So the first one is going to be the spawn.
01:04:45
Speaker
that page for Kickstarter will go up in about a month. But under the umbrella, which is Masterwork, I can do the digitally remastered with the Kickstarters going back to the original spawn from day one that put me on the map and doing
01:05:01
Speaker
the cooler version of it what i should have done if i only knew better although we'll do the retro packaging and all this stuff and i'm going to re-ink it so it'd be like sort of you know retro chic kind of cool and then if you like it i can do the whole series because there were six of them i can redo all these characters you mean when we like it yeah
01:05:20
Speaker
But it also will allow me to do the seventh figure, if you bought six, I'll do the seventh figure of Tortured Soul, and the seventh figure of The Dragon, MacFarlane Dragon, the seventh figure of you bought six, I'll do the seventh figure of Movie Maniacs, or the seventh figure of Twisted Oz, or whatever it is that I had done that put me on the map those first five, 10 years, I'm gonna go back, and I'm gonna go, thank you for your patience,
01:05:46
Speaker
It only took me 20 plus years, but I'm going to, if you still have your collection, I'm going to give you another one that will go seamlessly into those other six because I'm going to match the packaging and the style of it. And it's going to go in, not the spawn that I'm doing where I'm doing a digitally remastered. I can do better, but like some of the stuff that came out a little bit later, like the dragons, I'm quite proud of those. Even today they hold up. Yeah. Right. I'm just going to add another dragon to it. Right. So now you're going, Oh my God. So you're saying it might be.
01:06:17
Speaker
I'm just I'm just gonna go back and all those people that jumped in McFarland for different reasons are gonna go finally he's back doing all that crazy stuff that basically got us you know sort of hope to start with because the stores that you should
01:06:33
Speaker
You should support that. They don't exist anymore. No. You guys know where you shop. Maybe Babbages, Tower Record, Hot Topics. There were these six or seven stores. But even Toys R Us. Back when Toys R Us was around, you had a whole section in Toys R Us.
01:06:51
Speaker
They would all go, if Walmart and Target and Toys R Us aren't carrying it, we will take it. So whatever they won't take, we will take. So I'd come up with crazy stuff and they would buy it, right? And it was some of the, I think some of the best stuff we ever produced. Because again, it didn't have to go through a mill of 100 approval. So.
01:07:11
Speaker
Like, literally, it's gonna start, right? We're literally gonna light the match, and the first one is gonna be that first one Kickstarter, but that's just the beginning of Masterworks, the Farland Masterworks. Well, even those lines that you mentioned, the movie maniacs and all that, it still holds up. You can still look at those today and think that they were made today. Yeah, my Michael Myers, my Jason Freddie are permanent displays in my living room. Like, they have not moved in...
01:07:37
Speaker
And since I moved in, I've been there for 10 years and they were in my room growing up before that. We live in a new world where you can now get the rest of the consumer. That wasn't possible before, you can now do it. And so there are figures out there that I know will sell that I understand that the business model isn't built.
01:07:53
Speaker
I get it, that why a Walmart or Target can't buy a one-off and put it on one peg, it just doesn't make sense. It's going to get lost anyway, I've done this before. Even when we would do the one-offs, like the musicians and stuff like that, we'd do it, Jimi Hendrix, but it'd only be one.
01:08:12
Speaker
So the easy one now is you just go, hey, we can now do it through the internet and just get it from me to you and let's see how it goes. It's just going to be a good value. And I'm going to stack some. So those will be some of the different levels of things we'll be able to do.
01:08:28
Speaker
Well, listen, thank you for bringing DC toys back to life and putting some charge in that. And of course, again, thank you for Spawn. I cannot wait to get that toy, to do the unboxing, to show the world. I mean, I got to hold it in the box in the other room, and I was shaking. It's awesome. I'm so excited. They're all fantastic. No, no, no. Could people have been asking, like, Tom, what are you going to do? I have really articulated Spawn. And I'm going, a little bit of patience coming. So here it is. It's here. Cannot wait. All right. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming out.
01:08:59
Speaker
So thank you, Todd. That was really cool to be able to get to sit down and have a few words with not only a comic book legend, but a action figure legend as well. Yeah, it was so incredible just to just to get some time with him. And thank you to the rest of the people at MacFarlane.
01:09:19
Speaker
The way that toy fair works, it's very schedule oriented. Um, you need to have an appointment. You need to make sure that you're ahead of things. And we, we did our best kind of like bumbling through this the first time, trying to figure it out as we went along and they made room for us very, very quickly, very professionally to, to get a couple words in with Todd. So thank you to the entire McFarland team for, for making that happen. Let's put a, put a bow on it, Dave. How, how would you recap your toy fair experience overall?
01:09:50
Speaker
It was great. I knew that was going to happen. He was just going to go right back to it. Come on, give me something more than that. It was a lot of fun. It's a lot. There's a lot going on. There's a lot. It's overwhelming in a way, but it's kind of overwhelming in a fun way in the sense that you get to see a lot of the planning and the process come to life. It's not like Comic Con.
01:10:19
Speaker
No, it's not. It's relaxed, it's chill, but it's a lot. Yeah, I honestly was worried going into it that it was going to be like a Comic-Con experience. Having covered that, both of us have with press credentials. It's wild. It is wild. You need sensory overload. You need time to go escape in the press room and debrief yourself.
01:10:47
Speaker
Whereas this, if you wanted to sit down, almost every single booth had open seats at any given time. If you needed to sit down and post something, collect your thoughts, write up notes, there was always an option to do that. It was a very professional event. I can't believe that six months into our podcast, we were able to go to Toy Fair and talk to some of these leaders in the industry. I'm still pinching myself.
01:11:16
Speaker
that it happened. But with that, we're super excited to see what the rest of these companies do in the rest of the year. And in the future. Yeah, in the future. Thank you again to LEGO, to McFarland, to Super 7, to Jazzwares, to AEW, to Arcade 1UP, and to Boss Fight Studios, Spin Master, Playmates.
01:11:40
Speaker
All the cool companies that took us took the time to let us DC direct. Oh, yeah, DC direct diamond select diamond select We got to spend time in Funko NECA all these different places we really There's so much going on that it's easy to forget Everybody so but thank you to everybody at toy fair that we interacted with
01:12:04
Speaker
As always, we'll be reporting, going back to normal business as usual. Oh, thank you to friends of the show, Matt Cardona and Brian Myers. Oh, yeah. Smart Mark Sterling for saying hello. For saying hello, bumping into them outside of Mattel.
01:12:23
Speaker
We have some really cool things coming in March. We have our live show, which, of course, if you haven't heard about that and haven't gotten your passes yet, head on over to zapcon.com to get your badges and come hang out with us on March 28. There's gonna be a lot of cool people there. It's my birthday. Come. Yes, it is your birthday. If you come, you get to sing happy birthday to him.
01:12:49
Speaker
Yeah, we're probably going to do that. It's going to happen. And I and I can actually officially announce it now. Our our our episode at ZapCon will be interviewing renowned sculptor. He does a lot of the sculpts that you know and love for Diamond Select Jean St. Jean. So we'll be having a live interview with Jean at ZapCon. So we hope to see you there. Yes.
01:13:16
Speaker
And with that, we'll see you next time. See you in a couple weeks, everybody. 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.
01:13:41
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.
01:14:05
Speaker
This has been a non-productive media presentation. Executive producer, Franca Blaui. 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.