MINT CONDITION
FANS MAKING FIGURES Thanks to the internet, it's easier than ever to make your own collectibles. by Daniel Pickett, editor-in-chief, Action Figure Insider
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e are currently in a golden age of toy making and collecting where not only is the technology of digital sculpting and rapid prototyping available in affordable home versions, but the internet also gives hopeful toymakers a global connectivity they can use to reach license holders and leverage overseas factories for toy production. Add in the proliferation of crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter and Patreon, and you suddenly have the fan equivalent of venture capital to help back products that, even a few years ago, would have been thought of as impossible to produce. If you have a love of toys, a drive to succeed, and an entrepreneurial spirit, then all of that can add up to the fact that fans are able to make figures for themselves. New, smaller, independent toy companies are popping up each month, and we have now seen at least two waves of these companies succeed and inspire new, hopeful toymakers into the market. There has been a significant shift from the toymakers of the ‘70s and ‘80s. Many of those toy forefathers were engineers and designers who thought they would end up designing cars or industrial products and happened to find their way into toy design and manufacturing. But today’s toy companies are filled with the kids who grew up with the amazing toys of the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s, and now want to see improved versions of their favorites, or make products based on iconic movies, TV shows, comic books, and video games. No longer are the large and mid-sized toy companies the gatekeepers of what products get made. Because of all of these new tools, toy fans are forming their own independent toy companies and making some very impressive lines. These are not the small, “art toy” makers, doing homecastings and small runs of figures out of their garage. These are actual factory-made figures featuring both licensed properties and original intellectual properties (IP). In this feature, we have a conversation with the newest class of fans who have successfully launched new lines of action figures, talking about how to turn an idea
into fully realized plastic, the biggest pitfalls and snags in this process, and if passion is enough to succeed. STAND ON THE BACKS OF THE GIANTS WHO CAME BEFORE There is already a “first class alumni” of established toy companies that started out as fans wanting to make toys. Companies such as The Four Horsemen Design Studio, Onell Design, Spy Monkey Creations, and Boss Fight Studio are all great examples of early pioneers that proved it could be done, and that the fans would show up and support with their wallets. These toymakers inspired the next generation and have supported and advised the maker community to help get more cool products made. For some of these up-and-coming toymakers, the moment when they realized they could make toys themselves came very early in life. “It came very young for me, maybe [age] 5 or 6, when I used some bakeable clay to mold a Mega Man figure,” says Jesse DeStasio of Toy Pizza and Knights of the Slice, creator of the “Figure of the Month” club. Although it would take him three more decades to take the chance and do this on a professional scale, he says, “It was like a doorway opening, making it possible to give life to the characters I wanted to see as toys.” For David Silva, founder of Creative Beast Studio and the Beasts of the Mesozoic action figure line, he looked to those who came before him. “I suppose the first signs of this being a possibility happened when I saw the Four Horsemen’s success with their Gothitropolis Raven Kickstarter back in 2013,” he says. “After that, I noticed that action figures were being crowdfunded each year by small companies, and again with the Horsemen’s Mythic Legions a couple years later. It was around that time, [in] 2015, that I experienced another failed attempt at bringing dinosaur action figures to market with an established toy company … so I decided that if it was going to get done, I’d have to do it on my own.” Ryan Magnon of Panda Mony Brand Toys, which just launched
its successful line of 6-inch Alter Nation figures, always had an unrelenting passion to start a business and work with talented people to bring new ideas to life for characters and stories. He said he could always come up with dozens of ideas for stories a day, but he needed a way to get them out into the world. “While toys was a riskier industry because it required a higher upfront cost, it was significantly less saturated than content creation outlets such as comics, games, and animation,” Magnon says of his entry into the toy world. “We mitigated the extra risk by testing our concepts with kids to see what appealed to them. That way, even if we’re putting a lot of extra investment into a project, at least it’s not a total shot in the dark or a personal passion project. We wanted to make sure it resonated with kids. We had no delusions that it was going to be easy, and I was totally inexperienced in manufacturing, but we expected a bold move to pay off bigger than a safe play.” Inexperience is often enough of a hurdle to keep most people from embarking on an entrepreneurial venture, but these plastic pioneers saw far because they stood on the backs of giants and sourced those who came before them for advice on how to get started. “Before I did my first Kickstarter campaign, I spoke with Jim Preziosi (Four Horsemen) and Fred Aczon and Dave
Flash Gordon Action Figure from Boss Fight Studio
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