12" Spawn figures, more Giger, and more Dragons... In this, part two of our three part interview with McFarlane Toys’ president Larry Marder, we learn what’s in store for Conan, find out about a new direction for the Spawn comic and toys, and find out how the Dragons line came about…
Figures.com: What’s the future of the Spawn figure series? Will we see new figures based on the comic art, more “original” figures - such as the popular “Gunslinger” Spawn - or new original Spawn figures?
LM:The last couple of lines have been based first on the cover art and then on the interior art…I’m going to slightly reserve my answer on that based on the fact that Spawn is going through a change in the animation, and in the movie script that exists, and in the comic itself. Spawn #150 changes the story thrust quite a bit. Spawn is a comic character that has been around for 150 issues…there are a lot of ideas that have been thrown out there and laying foul…
Brian Hamberlin is the editor-in-chief on Spawn, David Hine is a very talented British writer, and Phillip Tan is a really great penciller; all (working) under the guidance of Todd, with Brian being the person who is really helping implement Todd’s vision. Todd’s more intimately involved with Spawn than he has been in a long time. He’s been very upfront about letting the field lay foul and (the story) is getting very cosmic. The story line is incredible and I am pitching Todd tomorrow about how we can have the toys fit the storyline better…
Figures.com: The new 12” Spawn figures that are coming out look great (see above pic for 12” Gunslinger Spawn). However, many fans were disappointed that the previously announced 12” Spawn V figure, which was many fans “ideal” Spawn is no longer being made. Can you tell us why it isn’t being made and if we’ll ever see a 12” Spawn V?
LM: I don’t think it was cancelled forever. I think it was on the schedule for a certain time and there was a technical problem. A mold was either broken, damaged, or they couldn’t find it. So it had to be yanked off of the schedule. We’ll have to go back and revisit it… To the best of my knowledge, it’s nothing more serious than that…
Figures.com: Numerous fans have asked if McFarlane Toys has ever considered making busts or high-quality statues from the world of Spawn?
LM: We talk about it all the time… I don’t know about busts, because the bust market seems saturated, but people do seem to like them, so if people really want to see them, they should go post on the Spawn.com forums and tell Jon Goff (the Spawn.com forum moderator).
High-quality (statues) are something we’ve always talked about doing. It all depends on the project, the price, and the time. We’ve started several (statues) before and they’ve always ended up toys…like boxed sets. Todd likes to make things look really expensive, but affordable.
Figures.com: On the topic of statues - many fans enjoyed the H.R. Giger boxed set. Is there a possibility of seeing more H.R. Giger statues?
LM: Yes. Yes there is. Absolutely. Giger is a property that everyone loves. He knows exactly what he wants and we want to do that. I think it is very interesting process to take highly realistic, but still extremely stylistic, paintings and extrude them into 3-D. We have learned a lot – and I mean a lot - in the process of trying to work on his imagery and make them 3-D. It is an area that we will continue to explore…
Figures.com: Fans have mentioned a desire to see a return to the Japanese Animation lines that were very popular with figures from such hits as Trigun and Akira. Does McFarlane Toys have anything planned in terms of anime figures?
LM: I don’t think we have anything in the pipeline right now. There’s not a reason why we haven’t done it. We’ve made a decision in the last few years on trying to find a balance between developing our own lines, like Dragons and Military, and having everything be licensed.
I think a lot of McFarlane fans are going to be surprised in the next year or two as we do more figure (like Dragons and Military) that we own; series where we can really push the plastic to the limit. It’s a tough balance and I think we felt it was time to go back and do something that we could do a little more coherently than McFarlane’s Monsters. The Monsters lines have internal cohesiveness, but not with each other.
My recollection is that Todd and I were at a party and trying to decide what we wanted to do with McFarlane’s Monsters next and we started talking about dragons. Out of that conversation we decided a dragons figure line could probably stand on its own. After that, it was about getting New Jersey (McFarlane Toys’ Design and Sculpting Dept.) involved and thinking as fast and as hard as they could. We’ll find ourselves (in the future) more on that route…
Figures.com: Are there more than the announced two series of Dragon figures?
LM: Oh, yeah. Dragons Series 3 is the coolest one yet! I think you’ll see at least two Dragon lines per year. We’re really hitting our stride with (Dragons)!
Figures.com: Fans are also asking about video game figures as well. Are there other video game licenses that McFarlane Toys would like to get their hands on?
LM: Right now, we’re more concentrating on other things, but between Terry Fitzgerald at McFarlane Entertainment and our licensing department doing their research, we’re talking to people all the time. But there is nothing (about video game figures) sitting on my desk.
Figures.com: McFarlane Toys’ creator-owned series, McFarlane’s Military, is amazing. As a former U.S. Marine, I appreciate the detail and realism. However, some fans are asking “Why now?” and wonder if this isn’t a form of ‘bandwagon patriotism’?
LM: It may look like that, but we started talking about military figures back in the Clinton-era. I look at it this way: except for maybe Movie Maniacs, we don’t really create (action figure) genres. The entire toy company started by taking the “superhero” part of the toy aisle and, using a term I quote all of the time, “McFarlanized” it. Same with sports. We saw that there was a certain type of fandom - a hard core collector - and we thought we could do better storytelling and realism and that is what we did with sports (figures). We “McFarlanized” it. We were looking at the military figures in the same way.
Honestly, I don’t think there is a single category of collectible or toy that we haven’t asked “Can we do something better here?” That’s how (the military figures) came along…
Figures.com: What are your future plans for the military figures?
LM: I think we are planning to continue to explore various branches of service, the different types and kinds of soldiering and storytelling…
Check out the third and final part of this interview here.
