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30 Years of McFarlane Toys with Todd McFarlane
602 Plays1 year ago
The Toddfather himself Todd McFarlane joins us to talk 30 years of McFarlane Toys! From Spawn and DC Multiverse to Super Powers, Sports, and more, join us as Todd answers a bunch of questions and dives into the 30th anniversary celebration.
Follow McFarlane Toys and Todd on Instagram @mcfarlane_toys_official and @toddmcfarlane
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Intro and other voices by Joe Azzari
https://www.instagram.com/voicesbyjoe/
Theme Music is "Game Boy Horror" by the Zombie Dandies
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Transcript
Introduction to Adventures in Collecting
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. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Adventures in Collecting.
00:00:34
Speaker
Hello everyone. Dave, um, we're back. This is your normal average everyday episode, right? Nothing. Uh, I'm yes in the sense that you're not going to bury the lead, but no in the sense of, you know, this is a special returning guest. Yeah. So, um, this, this week's guest, um, he probably doesn't need an introduction, but I'm going to try to give him one anyway.
Interview with Todd McFarlane: 30 Years of McFarlane Toys
00:01:03
Speaker
You may know him from his iconic contributions to the comic book world via his work at Marvel DC or of course image comics But today we are celebrating his work in the toy industry as it spans over three decades Joining us today to talk about the McFarland toys 30th anniversary celebration is the Todd father himself a
00:01:26
Speaker
Todd McFarlane. Welcome to Adventures in Collecting. Welcome back. Sure. Thanks for having me. I appreciate you guys making the time. Oh, and the pleasure is all ours, Todd. It's been a long time since we've chatted, going all the way back to, what was that, Toy Fair 2020? Toy Fair 2020. Yeah, right when the D.C. diverse line launched, so it's great to have you back on. Yeah, I think that was right before the pandemic, right?
00:01:52
Speaker
Yeah. Right before the pandemic hit. Because about a month later, they were using it for some of the people that were getting sick, I remember going, what? We were just there. Yeah, it was a triage station.
Todd's Personal Collecting Journey
00:02:08
Speaker
Yeah, the lost years. So anyways. Well, before we hop into the latest news and everything around McFarland Toys, as this is a podcast about collecting the first thing that we ask all of our guests,
00:02:21
Speaker
What are you currently collecting and what are some of your recent pickups? I caught a lot of Kellogg's 3D baseball cards. There's a whole bunch of sets. I'm just getting some of the easy ones now because I already put together the
00:02:43
Speaker
The hard sets, as a matter of fact, I own five of the top sets on mint condition PSA 10s. I've got the top at the registry on those ones. When I collect, I become a little bit of a psycho. I'm trying to think what else.
00:03:03
Speaker
I mean, I buy board games on a regular basis. I don't know if that's collected. It's just that when you get enough of them, it fills the shelf a lot because those are big boxes. So there's that, but I'm trying to think if there's anything that I sort of scope out on a regular basis. Not really. Unfortunately, at times too busy with my own stuff to sort of remind myself I still am an eight-year-old boy at heart.
00:03:33
Speaker
Hey, can't go wrong with trading cards and board games, though. I mean, there's no- Yeah, it all counts. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, what are you talking about? Yeah, geek is a pretty big word, fandom collector. It's a pretty big word. So this year, you are, of course, celebrating 30 years of McFarland toys. So let's turn back the clock. What made you initially start making your own toys three decades ago?
The Birth of McFarlane Toys
00:03:59
Speaker
I've said before really the simplest answer to that is I just didn't think they were super cool. At that point, I was pretty advanced in my run on Spider-Man at Marvel. I'm a collector. I've collected a lot of things.
00:04:22
Speaker
But on the toy side, it was always sort of a bit of a bummer that I wanted to, but then I'd look at them and I'd go, I can't buy that, right? Whether it was the sports stuff from like the Kenner starting lineup or whether it was even some of the superhero stuff because it didn't feel
00:04:43
Speaker
It didn't feel like it was a representation of what it was that I was collecting or reading or watching on TV or something like that, or going to the movies. It just felt like it was a generic product. And I got a little frustrated. So when they came and wanted to, at this point, image comics is now fully underway, which is a group of us that start our own
00:05:12
Speaker
which, besides Marvel and DC, we've been number three for 30 years. So I had a character I created called Spawn. It was the biggest selling book at that point, not independent, but the biggest selling book, period, in the comics industry.
00:05:30
Speaker
And so people came knocking on my door looking for the potential to exploit it and license product and one of them was toys. And I just, I had a sat down, a sit down with almost every one of them, but I didn't get a sense that they were in the same space that I was. And I felt, as I've said before, I felt that it was time to try and make a untraditional toy and sell it in untraditional places. But.
00:06:00
Speaker
I found that the big Fortune 500 companies aren't built for that. They've got their lane and they make a billion dollars at it and good for them. But I didn't think that spawn fit in that lane. So I had to go find my own and the only way to find it was just do it myself. I mean, if you want a problem solved at some point, you just take it upon yourself and solve it on your own.
00:06:30
Speaker
And you found yourself in a pretty unique position there, you know, with the IP being kind of your own, like, you know, you owned it and it was scorching hot. I mean, like, it really is kind of, you were, you were in the best position to, you know, kind of make the product you wanted to make. Cause you had people knocking on your door, right? Yeah. Anytime you, anytime you're the one that controls the intellectual property, what people refer to as IP.
00:06:58
Speaker
Anytime you're in control, that makes it way easier because you don't have to go get approvals, you don't have to go through all this apparatus. I mean, again, here we are 30 years later, I've got lots of license. There's layers I have to go through to get approvals and rightly so because they own it, right? Or if you're doing a likeness of an actor or whatever else, they get to sign off on their face.
00:07:19
Speaker
Okay, all that's fair. But the process goes way quicker if I'm just saying, hey, I want to make a toy of this thing. Oh, by the way, I own it. So I'm not going to do anything that I don't like. So I don't have to get it approved. We're just making what it is that I like. So my art notes along the way, while we're sculpting, are basically
00:07:43
Speaker
all combined with a pre-approved approval on them. And we were able to sort of turn the toys out pretty quickly. And I was pretty flexible with my own IP going, hey,
00:07:58
Speaker
I don't know. We can't just do spawn, the classic spawn. We did them here and there, but we've got to expand it. So we ended up doing like cyber spawn and Viking spawn and dark ages and ninja spawn. Like we just, we just had all these other iterations of him that we put out there that I thought would just make cool looking toys. Even if you didn't know what spawn was just to me, every toy, every action figure has to, at some point for the most part, if you want to be somewhat successful, pass an eye test.
00:08:28
Speaker
It just has to be cool looking. And if you don't have Spider-Man, Batman, Superman, one of the big brands, GI Joe Transform or something like that, then the toy, I think, has to just look good in a package sitting on a peg when you're walking by it on a shelf.
00:08:52
Speaker
You've been at this now, as we mentioned, for 30 years. What are some of the biggest things that have changed about the toy making process and the industry since you started McFarland Toys?
From Clay to Digital: The Evolution of Toy Making
00:09:05
Speaker
I would say probably up top of my head, two biggest changes are when we first broke in, when I started my company, we literally were sculpting with clay.
00:09:18
Speaker
I mean, it was good old fashioned, get clay and just keep working at it till you got the shape you want and you got the figure you want, right? And there is an advantage to that. Let me say there is an advantage that I still think that you can get better detail doing it that way in the long run than you can the other way, right?
00:09:43
Speaker
But now, the vast majority of companies, myself included, we sculpt digitally. Again, you try to replicate everything you can. From time to time, we'll output something from our 3D models, put a little bit of clay on it, and then dig in a little bit deeper just to get something that I, at times, feel like we can't get with the software.
00:10:12
Speaker
So that's sort of the biggest change of literally going from clay to digital, to computers, clay to computers. And then probably the other thing that's noticeable is that when I came into the industry, I didn't think there was a lot of sort of
00:10:36
Speaker
geeky, cool, fandom, collectible stuff. I mean, they're toys, but they weren't really aimed at collectors. It was just, here, if you want to buy the latest GI Joe or Transformer or Star Wars, go ahead. But for the most part, the public companies, the Fortune 500 companies, they're built
00:11:00
Speaker
and their audiences, you know, sort of moms and their six-year-old kids, right? And that's sort of how they build their toys. And it's a great model. They make lots of money. But I wanted to come in there and do something with a little more detail, a little more paint, maybe a little more costly so that you could do some stuff that was, again, not traditional. And once that was proven to be successful, you could succeed at it.
00:11:29
Speaker
Then there's been many companies that have come along that have taken the page from that playbook and even some of the big public companies have upped their game. So that now you go to Toy Fair, right? In 1994, when I was at my first Toy Fair, maybe there was four or five toys that I was jealous of that I go, man, I'd like to have that. Now you go to Toy Fair, you go to New York Comic Con, you know, San Diego Comic Con,
00:11:57
Speaker
There are hundreds of toys, if not thousand, that I look at going, man, if I only had room for that, I'd take that, I'd take that, I'd take that, I'd take that, right? I mean, I see more in one glass case of one of my competitors that I used to see in the entire hall when Toy Fair was going on when I first started. So that's the big change. I think there's just a lot better quality, cooler stuff out there by far, by far.
00:12:28
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you mentioned those early years and I mean, I can remember.
00:12:32
Speaker
Um, you know, my, my brother and I, there's a seven year difference, uh, in, in, in ages between us, but I can remember like originally not being allowed to go down certain aisles because, uh, you know, my mom was like, you can't have those disgusting, you know, all the, all the detail and the realism and everything. And now that's like, you know, that's in everything, but like some of those original movie maniacs and tortured souls and even some of the spawn figures, like, you know, the, just the detail in them.
00:13:00
Speaker
Crazy it still is even you know 30 years later, you know, like I'm sitting here, you know looking at you know My modern spawn figure sitting next to clown for you know, like that figure is still it rocks, you know, two decades Let's go back to your earlier comment. Here's here's the thing at some point at some point people Like I think misunderstand that when you do a product that you're not trying to get all 8 billion people on the planet
00:13:28
Speaker
Right. That's like, you're not even, that's not even the goal. The goal is to get enough so that you can do it tomorrow. Just enough. And if you can get more than enough, you actually make a profit. But if you can get enough, you can break even and you can keep doing it again.
00:13:45
Speaker
So to your comment earlier, okay. If I try and do something, I go, Oh man, I'm going to do like this wicked monster and your mom likes it. I've made a shitty monster. Your mom should be repulsed. And here's why, because she wasn't my target, right? This is the thing sometimes that over the years when I've gotten criticism by certain people that it's like, like, like, look at it. I understand it, mom.
00:14:14
Speaker
rabbi, bank teller, whatever. I understand it. But here's the thing. It's not that I did it wrong. I wasn't even fucking trying for you. Don't you get it? When you try and hit a bullseye, like on a dartboard or whatever else, you're going for a target in the middle and you don't care about anything else on that dartboard, right? So the target was, can I get people that are 15 and older
00:14:43
Speaker
Maybe even 12 and older just that are just like want some cool shit. And that's it. And that might not be the quilting bee moms that were, you know, going to church three times a day. I get it. I get it. If I was trying to get them
00:15:01
Speaker
I would have made a Tom Jones figure or something that would have appealed to them. I wasn't, I was trying to get the people who liked Aliens and Predator and those kinds of movie, went to action movies and like just sort of cool stuff, right? Nothing wrong with it. Nothing wrong with it. Good, good old fashioned fun. So. Yeah. I could go to Suncoast or Sam Goody and get like a VHS or a CD or cassette tape and like my kiss figure or, you know, like my Jason. Yeah.
00:15:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:32
Speaker
Right. And again, again, right. Freddy Krueger isn't for everybody, right? I get it. It's not for everybody. But I think at that point that there was enough people that would enjoy it. And, and we proved that to be true to the point that when I, when the contracts lapsed on a lot of the stuff that I had, aliens, predators, you know, a bunch of the movie maniacs, other companies picked it up and kept running with it to today. You could probably go pick up an aliens toy today. Right. So it's almost been going nonstop.
00:16:02
Speaker
All right, that's that's it this is like what no I should be making toys especially like if I'm making like gruesome toys that Horrify your mom and scare your sister. That's that's a toy. That's a cool toy Right. This is why moms don't like horror movies either doesn't mean the horror movies are bad. I
00:16:23
Speaker
just mean that mom wasn't the target audience for those either. It's okay. It's okay. Mom's got her things and you get your things and never the twine show me. What are you talking about? You want to be 25 years old saying, Hey, you know what? Let's all hang out and talk about our toys. Oh, first of all, let me just see if my mom's going to make it. Right. Come on. Right. This is just not how it works. Right. You leave the nest when you're 17 and 18 and you fly away. Most of us.
00:16:51
Speaker
and we go live on our own. And it's like, I still love you mom and dad, but I'm not gonna stay with you forever. Cause I've got my own music and I've got my own fashion and I've got my own taste of what I want to eat. And I've got my own thing and movies and everything is like, we all have a different palette for what we enjoy. And just because somebody else in the family doesn't, does not in and of itself make it wrong. So I've never, I've never been,
00:17:20
Speaker
Affended one way or another whether somebody doesn't like what i do with any of the toys what were the only time the hair stands up is when somebody tries to make the argument that it shouldn't exist because now you cross into a line of censorship. Which is i don't like it.
00:17:40
Speaker
Therefore, it should not exist. And I keep saying to people that I think that pretty much all art is like shopping at the grocery store, going down the vegetable aisle. I get it. You don't like all those vegetables. Then just put in your cart the ones you like and fucking walk by the rest. But we do it with food. I don't understand why we can't do it with art. But we just go, oh, man, I don't know why that guy uses those lyrics.
00:18:10
Speaker
And I think that's bad and whatever else. And I'm going to I got an opinion about it. Just don't consume it. Don't take it home. Don't consume it. Right. I never heard of anybody sort of saying they don't like broccoli and they walk by it. But not only they're not put in a cart, but then they go get me the manager.
00:18:28
Speaker
in your store. My children saw that broccoli, and I hear it's terrible. And I've heard my friends say it's terrible. Just what we do is we just don't buy it at the grocery store. So do the same at every other store. Just don't put it in your cart. Done. And if that uncle comes and brings it against your will, I don't want my kid playing Call of Duty, and he gives it to him at night,
00:18:54
Speaker
That's a you problem, right? You talk to the uncle of death, right? My job, I can't parent your kids. So if you don't want it, don't buy it. And if you do take it home, then I assume that you think your kids are capable of consuming it. Cool. Done. Oh, by the way, it's most of us is fine for ourselves. Done. Out. So, you know, getting to DC Universe or DC Multiverse.
Character Selection in Toy Lines
00:19:24
Speaker
We've seen the line grow over time to include characters outside the mainstream, including ones that I've been very happy to see like Red Tornado and Animal Man and cult classic movies like Batman and Robin. What leads to the decision of which characters to include in which wave or any wave?
00:19:44
Speaker
You know, it's interesting. That question gets asked a lot. It's not as scientific as you might think, right? I don't know that we have any better geek radar than anybody else, right? And so if I was to turn to YouTube and say, hey, you know what? We got to put out a line of whatever brand I give you, whatever license I give you.
00:20:07
Speaker
Give me your lineup. I need six figures, right? My guess is that you'll probably have four or five of the same ones I'd pick. And for sure the top four were probably going to be 100%. And the only time you sort of deviate a little bit when you get into what I call the B character. So we're all going to pick the A characters for sure. And then it's just about debating whether like, well, who should we put in the B bucket? So
00:20:33
Speaker
Sometimes we do it because there's a theme. Sometimes we do it because there's an event coming out or a movie or a video game or something like that. Sometimes we
00:20:45
Speaker
sort of just look at our data and see what people want, but really at its core, it's just like, what would be kind of cool out in the marketplace? What would be fun to look at that might get people to go, oh my God, they made that. Or somebody who doesn't know the character goes, wow, that's super good looking, right? Hey mom, you know, eight year old kid, hey mom, I want this one, it looks cool. All right, that's a buy. Both of those are valid reasons.
00:21:15
Speaker
Yeah, and I mean, like Dave mentioned, the Batman and Robin figures, that Mr. Freeze collect to build with.
00:21:23
Speaker
Just one of those things were like I came out of nowhere is crazy, but it's honest I'm looking at them right now. Yeah, and it's you know that movie has has aged very well It's like really kind of come into one its own You know what it is and it kind of you know the both of those Schumacher films honestly so like it was really cool to see you know a wave of those figures and you know and hopefully I
00:21:45
Speaker
Man forever to follow it so here so here's the thing even if the movie Didn't age even if people didn't like whatever else to get a good version of characters from any brand It has a value right you just cuz again I mean and here's it let me just say Here's a little bit of the frustration of making toys. It is a very inexact science, right?
00:22:16
Speaker
And just, it's a little bit like playing baseball or golf or something, but just when you made that one shot that you just go, man, you can't replicate it again, right? It just goes, you know, in baseball, the equivalent is I hit a home run and major leaguers do it. And then they'll go.
00:22:34
Speaker
45 at bats and they can't do it again. They're capable of doing it because they just showed you they did it. And even they, who are professionals, can't figure out how to replicate that swing and do it again. Toys are a little bit the same. So sometimes we get toys that have a little bit of a home run on them. That Arnold Schwarzenegger face was a home run, right? And then you go,
00:22:55
Speaker
Oh wow, just when you're all jacked, your next figure comes out with a celebrity face. And it doesn't look like, if you go like, we're using the same process. We're doing the exact same way of doing it. Why did this one come out so cool? And this other one didn't. Then the answer really is because you've got a assembly line with human beings that are painting these things. So there's human error.
00:23:25
Speaker
And the heads are only a half an inch. And so if you even take a deep breath and your stroke goes off a little bit or you over spray some or whatever, that gets multiplied by like 50 fold. It would be the difference of your eyebrow being in the middle of your forehead.
00:23:43
Speaker
right also they suppress the sneeze while they were doing it, right? Like that move, you move something at like literally a 20th of an inch on a half an inch head, that's the equivalent of almost two inches on your rear head. So it's sometimes they get it, sometimes they don't. So whatever that line was, it was doing the group of people that were doing the Arnold head, I should,
00:24:12
Speaker
bottle them and make them do everything because it was like, oh my gosh. So this is the torture of making toys. I've seen everything that I've ever wanted, a minimum of at least once. So I know it's all doable. I know it's all doable. Paint, wrinkles, sculpt, likenesses, realistic hair, weapons that have detail, everything, wrinkles, mud, I've seen it all at least some day.
00:24:41
Speaker
I'm going to do the Holy Grail, probably not, I'll die before. And I'll do the elusive perfect figure that I'll look at from head to toe and go, that's it. Time to retire. It's not getting any better than that. But generally with us neurotic artists, that's not how it goes. What we do is we chase the elusive perfection and then we get hit by a bus or just die.
00:25:07
Speaker
So, uh, and we never actually get it, but, uh, it was, it was a career path that none of us ever attained. Uh, but it's, it is, I could cobble 10 toys together and go there. There's, there's all the pieces. So sticking with DC, uh, superpowers has seen some, uh, some new designs join the classic designs from, from the original, uh, counter line.
00:25:30
Speaker
What informs the decision to stick to a classic design like, say, Superman, or add a new character like the Batman who laughs, or go with a completely different design for one of those original characters, like, say, Darkseid? You know, I keep saying it out loud. Sometimes people say, you know, hey, you're doing too many Batmans or do too much Superman or whatever else. And I disagree with that statement.
00:26:00
Speaker
Like, okay, so I'm going to put out a Batman in January and February. So are you telling me that nobody likes Batman in March? Like, it's like, what? So what if the person who liked Batman in March wasn't in the store in January and February? So now it's like, I miss him for three months. So I'm not saying you put out the exact same toy, but you have, you have to have representation of
00:26:29
Speaker
at least a little bit in each line of what I call the A-figures, right? I mean, we did it with sports, and the way we did it with sports was, because I'm a sports geek, I just categorized every single athlete, and they were either an A, B, or C. And then when we did our six figures, we would do two A's, two B's, and two C's. And why? Because you don't want to do all your A's, because again, you're going to burn through them. And then you're going to have nothing left but B's.
00:26:58
Speaker
Interestingly, when you do this sort of trying to wait stuff out, and we do it with superheroes too, and you do your A's, your B's, and your C's.
00:27:08
Speaker
historically, at least from the data at my company, is that the B's are the ones that are left behind the most. And the reason is because everybody likes the A's, right? You can't go wrong on the A's. Boom, like I could sell their Jeter all day long, right? Like Kobe Bryant all day long. Superman, Batman all day long. What gets left on, and then the C's, you would think it would be the C's.
00:27:34
Speaker
Right? But it's not the C's. And the reason is because we traditionally know that they're not that popular, so we make less of them. And then the stock boys and all the geeks and the internet lets everybody know which ones are the hard to find ones. So the A's go and then the hard to find ones go. And it's the B's in the middle that if there's anything left behind, those are usually the ones that are there, that you go gone. I would have thought that would have done better, but I've seen it happen over and over and over and over.
00:28:03
Speaker
But on the superpowers, you just do, I mean, you can only go to the WoW so many times because everybody's sort of seen the classic. So now, if you want to do a Batman, you can't do Bruce Wayne classic Batman. You have to now say, hey, maybe we've got to do the Red Hood or one of the other 25 iterations of Batman or Hush Batman or whatever, right? There's no shortage of Batman figures,
00:28:31
Speaker
So you can do technically a new toy, but it still fills the slot of your A-slot, which is Batman. And so you go, cool. You get to put out a figure that nobody's seen, especially in that factor form of a superpower. And it's in the category of all the people who collect Batmans.
00:28:56
Speaker
All right, good. And then sometimes you just pick because they just look good in plastic. They just have a cool outfit and uniform or whatever else. They just look like they would be good on a shelf. Mr. Miracle, not really the most popular character there is, but he, he, he looks like a toy. He looks like a fun toy on the shelf. And now a word from our sponsors.
00:29:25
Speaker
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00:29:41
Speaker
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00:30:07
Speaker
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00:30:32
Speaker
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00:30:53
Speaker
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Reviving and Introducing Characters in Superpowers Line
00:31:22
Speaker
Sticking with superpowers, it's really been delivering for the people who love that original Kenner line. Are there plans to produce any things that were shown back in the original line that were never produced, like the Tower of Darkness? Yeah, we've talked about all that.
00:31:41
Speaker
There I think there was even a, you know, besides that some prototypes of figures and stuff like that hard to find even the hard to find stuff or whatever just replicate some of that out there. So yes, we've got a couple people that are pretty fluent in the in all things.
00:31:58
Speaker
uh, uh, in that category. So, uh, and they're bugging me all the time. Come on, talk. When are we going to do this? When are we going to do this? So, uh, the, the, the, the, the piece I had to get over was, uh, for a guy who sort of made his sort of toy reputation by doing these like super big, highly detailed things to, I had to make them like intentionally simple.
00:32:28
Speaker
Right. Like I'm going back to retro and I was like, and I was like, man, I don't know if they're going to, I don't know if they're going to go for this ride. Cause people were like, man, McFarland, all he does super highly detailed, really detailed. When you mentioned it earlier, they're just a minute ago, uh, Eric and, uh, until now I'm going, Oh, but what about this? Uh, and, but luckily we came at a time when retro was, you know, kind of chic.
00:32:52
Speaker
And the collectors were like, oh, that's OK. It reminds me of my childhood. This is OK, Todd. Just make sure you get it right. If you're going to be sort of simple and blobby, make sure you get the blobby simpleness right. And so that's what we try to focus on. And oddly, we've had a couple where the complaint is that we might have been a little too detailed on it. It doesn't quite fit with some of the other ones, so sorry.
00:33:22
Speaker
So before we move away from DC, there have been some releases like the Superpowers Black Manta and the DC Multiverse Gold Label Nightfall Asriel that were extremely hard to come by. Are there plans to get those popular releases back out for say like a wider circulation?
00:33:42
Speaker
Well, you know what? We have this conversation a lot and there's a part of me that, I mean, there's a couple of reasons. Let's just talk about why they're hard and then follow up with your question. One of the reasons they're hard to get is because, again, they're not the most popular characters. So sometimes you weight them in a case as being maybe only one in a case or something like that. And then you then factor that
00:34:10
Speaker
it might've been the six or seven to eight series in the line and the sales overall are getting a little bit soft. So the retailers as a whole are just buying less. So now you're getting less across the board and then you only get one in the case of those. So the people that are paying attention that are still there, yes, boom, you find that these ones that if you had flooded the market, no, arguably they would have been what we call the pig cloggers.
00:34:41
Speaker
all of a sudden become the ones that are hard to collect, hard to find, right? Right now, on the comic book side, all the issues that nobody was buying for a couple of years, because they're like, eh, who cares about spawn, like all the ones that are going way up in value, because you can't find them, because they were in the 25 cent bin, you could have had them, but you walked away from it. So toys are the same.
00:35:07
Speaker
My thought overall is that if people come along and people support what I do and they buy some stuff and there's a secondary market, of which I don't get any of it, but I think to do what we're doing, there should be kind of a healthy, robust secondary market happening, at least on some
00:35:28
Speaker
of the brands and some of the figures. I'm not a public company. I don't have to maximize every single penny I can get. I think it's okay to just say, sorry, the people who got it.
00:35:45
Speaker
you know, got a little bit of a lotto ticket and we'll just let them do with that as they see fit. And I understand it's frustrating because it's like, man, it's 80 bucks. I don't want to pay 80 bucks. But the person who's got it that's 80 bucks is super happy, right? So I don't know. There's a balance and act there. We've done a few where we've gone back to market. We make sure that we try to
00:36:08
Speaker
do something different so that the person who got the hard to find one still can say, hey, I still got the one that was hard to find. This one's got blue goggles instead of the gray goggles or something like that. But for the most part, sometimes I just leave it alone and I just go, no.
00:36:30
Speaker
Hopefully they'll catch wind and they'll make sure that they go and get to the store on the next wave and go grab the hard to find stuff on the next wave themselves. So part of the 30th anniversary celebration sees you returning to figure form for the first time since your three inch 1998 Todd the Bum figure from the spawn movie. Oh, you mean a drawn figure. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh,
00:36:56
Speaker
What's it like making a figure of yourself and what's so special about the spawn, that specific spawn that you're packaged with?
00:37:06
Speaker
Well, look, if you got a healthy ego, and I do, right? So then there's nothing special about making a toy about yourself. Your only thing is like, why aren't we making more? So I don't know. Fair enough. I don't think two in 30 years is excessive, right? Not at all. Not at all. No, very special, actually. Right. And the first one was based on, because I made a little cameo in the Spawn movie, so it was based on
00:37:35
Speaker
me. I'm just I'm a movie figure, technically, I'm a movie maniac, I guess, in a weird way. So this one, and it wasn't even my idea. Somebody else goes, hey, Todd, let's do a figure of you. I'm like, what? But but as part of the 30th celebration, it's what you get there. It's a two pack. And and you get two figures, you get sort of me as an artist, and I and I think that like some of the accessories and things like
00:38:06
Speaker
a mic, because I go up on stage and I'm holding the mic, so you can put a mic in my hand. There's also a sketchbook, and the sketchbook interestingly has the drawing of the character, the other figure that you get in the pack, which is sort of fun, a little bit. Very cool. You can take the shoes off, because I walk around without shoes, and obviously you can take the shoes off and go, hey, there's a tot at the office.
00:38:33
Speaker
But it was that guy who created this character spawn. Now that's the other figure. Now it's sort of more fun to me than the Todd figure, whatever. But he's also wearing a shirt with a logo and I wear that same shirt with that same logo all the time too.
00:38:49
Speaker
But the spawn figure is based on something, and I just saw the packaging the other day, and they put, like, from a drawing from 1997, so I had to make a phone call, and I don't know if we're gonna be able to correct it, but it was like, no, no, no, guys, that's 1977, you're only off 20 years, right? Oh, my God. By 1997, I'm up to issue 50 of my spawn bucket image, and I've had a career, like, what are you talking about?
00:39:17
Speaker
That drawing is from when I was a 16 year old kid when I and if you look on the back of the packaging you actually see a page that I did when I was 16 and My original color palette on it was blue because it was in space and then I changed it to red and then he has like yellow eyes and he's even got like a trim around the eyes and stuff so it's it's still there's still you can look at it really easily and see
00:39:43
Speaker
10 different things that never made it to the final cut of the first spawn comic book, because it was my 16-year-old drawing. But somebody said, hey, wouldn't it be cool to actually make a figure of your original design of spawn, not the spawn number one that came out in 1992, but when you actually created them as a kit? And I thought,
00:40:06
Speaker
All right. Well, I mean, we've done plenty of variations. We'll see how that one goes. So that's what's coming up. That's the fun part. The figure is based on my original spawn drawing from when I was 16 years old and I invented it.
00:40:20
Speaker
So cool. That's awesome. That's super cool. And you know, speaking of spawn, you know, the, the spawn line of figures has been focusing on some of the newer characters from the books.
The Rarity and Re-release Balance in Figures
00:40:30
Speaker
Um, but it would be, you know, what, what, what are the chances you go back to revisit some of the classics like chapel, you're as in, uh, Jason, when, and, and maybe even a, uh, a new mega fig of, of Malbulja, you know, it's, it's been a while since those figures have been out and with the new.
00:40:47
Speaker
you know, technology, new articulation, you know, we'd love to see some of those classic figures. Yeah. Um, chapel chapel, I don't know. So I can't, I can't do him. So, so he's out. Jason, when I can do it, I'm always hesitant whenever, even if they're really prominent, I'm always hesitant about dudes in suits, right? Like, I mean, as much as I like commissioner Gordon, I know he plays a part. It's still an old man in a suit, right? Like,
00:41:16
Speaker
And I don't know, if I'm a kid, I'm still going, mom, they didn't have any Batmans, right? They didn't have any Robins, Jokers. I didn't take Batgirl, Penguins, right? Really like, come on, like the old man, the old man in the trench coat, that was who you brought me home on. So I always get hesitant because as I said earlier, I try to make everything pass the eye test.
00:41:43
Speaker
Sometimes those are better suited for when we do stuff direct to the consumer, that you know that you can make a limited run and you've got people who know what that character is about. Because if you put it out, and you've probably seen this yourself with your own eyes, you put those types of characters out on the shelf at math, they back up, right? Like every time they come out with any kind of meaningful line of
00:42:13
Speaker
of Spider-Man. J. Jonah Jameson, the editor of the Daily Bugle, right? He's always backed up because every kid just wants Spider-Man. They don't want the old man who runs the newspaper. But, you know, somebody thinks like, oh, we should do all the characters. No, you don't have to do them. So, Jason went maybe, but it'd probably be a collectible. Now, both of you are right. I'm trying to think if we've only done the one.
00:42:39
Speaker
It's been so long. I mean, the first one was the one that really sort of made my one of the marks early in the game where I made that big giant Melvulgia and I sold it at the same price. And that was it. That's when people started going, what is this guy crazy? He's going to give us this toy for $5.99. Like, oh my gosh. So, uh, but you know, to me it was just advertising. I just happened to put it in plastic for him.
00:43:08
Speaker
people people were like oh my gosh cool, but I don't think we've made and I could be wrong, but I don't think we've actually done like a remastered version of him because he's a badass so we should especially given that the spawn comic book issue 350 is just coming out next week and the whole
00:43:30
Speaker
Story is a climax of who takes over the throne and the throne was Abdicated way back in issue 100 wouldn't know those it was killed right so he sat on the throne and then he was killed by spawn So yeah, we need a we need a cool-looking Malibu. Yeah, maybe even yeah, we need we need to do a cool Okay, I'm putting that on my list
00:43:55
Speaker
Love it, love to hear it. Yeah. So yeah, I think it's time for us to head into some Q&A here, some fan Q&A. So before we have a guest on, we always post on social media that we have a guest on so that way our followers can submit questions.
00:44:17
Speaker
to get answered here on the podcast. Dave, remind our listeners, what should they be looking out for and how do they submit questions for the show?
00:44:28
Speaker
Yeah, so if you've got your Instagram, you can go to at AIC underscore podcast and you can follow us and then we'll have a story pop up that'll say like, hey, this is this is this week's guest. And this week we had Q&A, a fan Q&A for for Todd. And you can submit your question in that story.
00:44:51
Speaker
make sure to like, to know when we're going to have new ones, like and follow. And then this will show up on your favorite podcast source. So subscribe, subscribe on YouTube, subscribe on all your favorite podcast apps and such. And yeah, anytime you see we have a new episode, you'll get reminded.
00:45:14
Speaker
There you go. So, um, Dave, do you want to hit, uh, Todd with our first, uh, fan Q&A? Sure can. Um, of the many friends of the pod friend of the pod at super action stuff asks, are there any particular toy lines or companies that you admire or get excited about? Um, yeah, I, like I said, when I first started, there wasn't a lot that I was jealous of. Um, but now.
00:45:44
Speaker
I mean, I would argue there's more that I could probably put right off the top of my head. I think the quality, I mean, again, I try to sort of do as much quality at as low a price as possible. So, I mean, if you're paying 80, 90 bucks, it should be good, right, for a figure. So there's people that are in that realm.
00:46:06
Speaker
But there are a lot of them out there. And again, I'm sure they would say the same thing, that they've got ones that they think turned out way better than other ones. The only frustration I used to have, but now with the internet being where it was, because when I started, the internet wasn't sort of its thing yet. I used to walk out of toy fairs and even come, come in and go,
00:46:34
Speaker
where do I even get, I don't even know where to buy these things, right? Like if they're not in my comic shop and they're not at the local toy store, I don't even know where to get it, right? But now you can hunt most of them down and there's just an abundance of skill that's out there. Like once the internet opened up, two things happened. You were able to then find talent that could help sculpt and design these things on a global level, not just who lived in your city.
00:47:05
Speaker
And because it's digital, you're now doing it on a computer, you can sculpt and send the files digitally. So you can find a brilliant person in Scandinavia and they can work for you. So the game goes up artistically. I know that to be true. I think the amount of talent that is out there in comic books is at the highest level that it's ever been in my career because
00:47:31
Speaker
you're pulling again from the world. Sculpting is no different. And because of that, depending on the line, depending on the brand, depending on the pose, depending on the way they paint it, I'm constantly seeing stuff from many, many, many, many, many, many competitors that keep me on my toes. When we first started, we were sort of the lone wolf out there. So anything we did, even if it wasn't that good,
00:47:58
Speaker
We were still getting accolades for it. Now, there's so much good product out there, you better deliver. You better stand and deliver because there's a lot of options for people to spend their money on and action figures. The only thing that limits somebody like me or any of those other companies are that they might not have the biggest brands. But I'd say there's probably
00:48:27
Speaker
15 companies that if you gave them the Avengers tomorrow, they'd knock it out of the ballpark. So at just your Jay Hernandez asks, would you ever consider doing special fully articulated 112 scale DC figures?
Balancing Quality and Affordability in Toys
00:48:47
Speaker
Yeah, possibly. I mean, the the equation is always
00:48:56
Speaker
Like what's the price you've got to go out? Like the bigger you get it, the more things you do, the higher your price you sell. Even if you can sell it to the retailer, the price gets sort of up there. And once the price gets up there, you don't sell as much. So the quantity isn't there. So there's this balancing act, right? And so what ends up happening and rightfully so, because otherwise it would never exist. I mean, in the past it would never exist. Now you can go kind of direct to the consumer and you can say, Hey,
00:49:25
Speaker
I mean, this is basically what Kickstarter is, right? Hey, I can only make 500 of these. And I know that if you went bottom on the open market, it might be 50 bucks, but nobody's making it. So for me to only do 500, I got to cover all my research and development and all the costs. So I've got to charge you 120 bucks. And if you can find 500 people, which a lot of times they can.
00:49:51
Speaker
then you're good, you're golden. You made your money back, maybe hopefully made even a profit and you get these kind of cool toys that are out there, which allow you then to make toys. Now, when, when I first broke in, you sort of had to be in that five to $10 range. And now you can sell toys between five and $200, right? Depending, depending on what you're selling. And if people think there's a value at a hundred, 120,
00:50:20
Speaker
$140, they'll buy it. And so, yeah, it's just that whenever we do it, the price got to go up and I always twitch whenever I get sort of past $30, right? Even our 12-inch figures, I want $39.99, $49, maybe because I grew up kind of poor and I didn't have a lot of extra money. So I was like, oh, man.
00:50:47
Speaker
I wouldn't have been able to buy that. It would have been super cool, but I wouldn't have been able to afford it. I'm always trying to go, how do we do an $80 toy for $25? Can we get it anywhere close to that?
00:51:08
Speaker
And this is one kind of near and dear to Eric and I's heart. Cause I remember exactly when we saw this and where, um, is there any interest in revisiting the 1997 spawn film in modern figure four?
New Spawn Figures and Movie Interest
00:51:22
Speaker
Um, possibly, possibly. Um, my guess is that if something like that happened, it would be in conjunction with the new movie either
00:51:38
Speaker
coming down the pipeline and or already out. So people are then just like Batman all of a sudden you're looking. Yeah, yeah. So hey, we got our Michael Keaton Batman, we got our, you know, Pattison Batman, but what about all those guys in between stuff like that. So, you know, my guess is that if the movie sort of comes and does, you know, business, then there will be a newfound
00:52:03
Speaker
sort of demand for kind of all things retro spawn, and then that's the time to come out and play that hand. Awesome. All right, so our last question for Q&A comes from at Toyfars, another friend of the pod. He asks, I love the mini playsets back in the day, monsters, spawn, etc. Have there been any considerations for DC mini playsets?
00:52:34
Speaker
Um, yeah, actually I was just, yes. Uh, coincidentally yesterday we were having that conversation. Um, because, uh, once you do playsets used to be a thing, right? They were, they were still a thing when our company started. And, and then they found out that the big box items didn't quite sell as much. So they just said, Hey, we'd rather put more seven inch figures out there and, or,
00:53:04
Speaker
maybe 10 inch figures at 30 bucks, then a vehicle and or a playset. So those things sort of went to the wayside. And now if you want to do anything that's meaningful to a seven inch figure, the box gets really big and the cost gets really big and the retailers get nervous unless it's like Christmas time. So how do you solve the problem? The answer is you just scale everything down. And then can you do it
00:53:31
Speaker
You do figures that are smaller so that you can then do the play sets smaller.
Exploring Mini Playsets
00:53:37
Speaker
And then also from the customer's point of view, you don't need a big giant shelf and half a room to be able to set it all up. You could actually get it on half a bookshelf.
00:53:47
Speaker
and then maybe even go buy another one. The next series, it comes out and does it. So yes, I think there's a way to do it, but it might be playing with scale. And for me, done right, I don't mind, quote unquote, miniature, right? When stuff's small, done right, I think it looks cool.
00:54:08
Speaker
All right. So I was going to say the 66, the Batman 66 are a good example of that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I think he, you know, he was talking about those, the like the micro play sets, like the like, okay. I would say somewhere in between the two. Okay. Right. Cause you go, if you go too small, then like the micro machines and it's like, no, you know, it's like something, something that would be, that would, you know, maybe fit the page punchers or something like that. Right. Okay.
00:54:37
Speaker
All right, so with that, that takes us through the end of our Q&A. And Todd, before we let you go, we do have a final question that we ask all of our guests. Well, I know it. I already know it. Bob Gibson, third game in the World Series, 1962. Is it because I'm wearing a Mets hat? Is that where we got all the baseball references? I was going to ask if it was Corbin Carroll this year.
00:55:00
Speaker
this past year. Hey, how many days till pitchers and catchers report at this point? They're already down there. How many days before they play the first spring training game? I think the 24th is the first game. They're already down there. Perfect. We're out in Arizona. Yeah. That's where I'm at. So the final question that we ask all of our guests, Dave, would you like to fulfill your role as this podcast's James Lipton and ask Todd McFarlane our final question?
00:55:27
Speaker
Well, yes, I would. So the final question that we ask all of our guests, what is your favorite and or strangest piece in your collection? It can be one of each or it can be both. Well, probably my favorite is years ago, I inked over Jack Kirby, who was called Jack
00:55:56
Speaker
the King Kirby in the comic book industry. And so somebody asked me to ink over his artwork, and I did it. And then I erased the page, because it's what you do after you ink. You erase the page. And to this day, I still, when I think about it, was horrified that intellectually I was erasing Jack Kirby's pencils.
Todd's Favorite Collection Piece
00:56:20
Speaker
I kept those shavings in a plastic bag for a while.
00:56:26
Speaker
So then they said they liked the cover so much. They said, hey, you want to do another one? Jack wants to know if you want to do another one. And I was like, yeah, in one condition. I don't want to touch his pencils. I just forget it. Can I do it on what they call a vellum overlight? Can I just ink on a vellum overlight? We don't care. Just ink it. And I'm like, cool. I can't go through this again and erase his pencils a second time. So I did it on a vellum overlight. And I sent it off. And I just could get a good night's sleep that I wasn't touching
00:56:56
Speaker
original artwork because I was just Todd the Schmuck. But then a month goes by and all of a sudden, I get a phone call from Jack and he's like, hey, young whooper snapper, we're all kids to him. I just want to say thanks for doing a good job and whatever else. I've sent you a bit of a gift. Literally, three hours later, FedEx comes
00:57:19
Speaker
And I open up the box and I pull out and there's the vellum overlay and I'm like, oh cool, I get my inks back. And then I look in the box and there's another page and it's a page from Captain America, inked by Barry Windsor Smith, a treasury edition. I'm like, what are you just throwing in original artwork? And then there was a third piece and it was the original art that I had in ink. And on it, it said,
00:57:44
Speaker
Thanks for everything, Todd, your friend Jack Kirby, right? So for me, I was like, man, man, I got an original page of Jack Kirby art and he's signed it and he's got my name on it, like from a geek, like he's just like, oh man, best day ever, right? So, strange, I probably do, I probably do have a lot of odd
00:58:11
Speaker
strange stuff around me. Maybe it's not odd. I think it's cool. I've got a whole set of the 1971, because I said I collected 3D cards. And the 3D cards were these ones that would come in the cereal boxes. So they were in these little wrappers.
00:58:35
Speaker
I've collected an entire set that's still in the wrappers, that people have not opened since 1971. They're still unopened, right? And I go, who takes something like that and then saves it for 50 years and never opens it, right? Like, come on, man. Because collecting in the 70s isn't nearly as sophisticated as it is now that you know don't open it, right?
00:59:03
Speaker
And the only way you could put your set together, the 71 set, was the other sets you could send away box tops and some money and they'd give you a set. This is the only one that didn't allow that. So you had to literally tear these things open to put your sets together.
00:59:20
Speaker
put together, so people are like, why you got these things that are unopened? You can't even see them. It's like, yeah, if you hold them up to the light, you can see who it is. I don't make any sense to me, but I'm like, it's a weird thing to be proud of that you've got a whole set of cards that nobody can see, but you know in your heart, that's super awesome. That's like, Dave, you've got a box of a case of 1986 tops, upper deck, whatever. What was the kangaroo feature?
00:59:50
Speaker
Yeah, the Ken Griffey Jr. Upper Deck, yeah. But it's a whole case. It's the case of sets. So it's in a package, in a package, in a package. Yeah. But you know it's in there. I know it's in there.
01:00:04
Speaker
Well, there are many just like it. Well, Todd, thank you again so much for stopping by and hanging out with us today. We're super excited to see all the reveals for the 30th anniversary. Can't wait to see the figure form version of you and your original Spawn sketch.
01:00:23
Speaker
We'll put links in our description where you can follow Todd and McFarland Toys on social media. Yeah, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on today. Yeah, this was awesome. All right. Appreciate you guys having me. You as well. All right. Take care, Todd. Thank you.
01:00:42
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.
01:00:59
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.
01:01:22
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.