New Mego Acquisitions? Got any?

[shaunaconda]

33333E3C-81C6-486A-AD63-DE7945DA13E7.jpg
I was crazy lucky to score an OG mad monster castle at a small vfw hall comics show.
I think I want to track down an apes treehouse table to complete it.

Nice…I’d love to have one!

[BudgetMego]

33333E3C-81C6-486A-AD63-DE7945DA13E7.jpg
I was crazy lucky to score an OG mad monster castle at a small vfw hall comics show.
I think I want to track down an apes treehouse table to complete it.

Very good. Never had the castle, but did have the tree house as a kid. Loved that thing. Tarzan would swing by on occasion.

[BudgetMego]

Neck plug. Damn spell correct.

[BudgetMego]

Nice!

Is the chief on a Type S body ?

No. A repro type 2. Wanted as close to the original. Good for me for display. Just had to put a little masking tape on the necklace to stop the bobble head action.

[justzeg18]

33333E3C-81C6-486A-AD63-DE7945DA13E7.jpg
I was crazy lucky to score an OG mad monster castle at a small vfw hall comics show.
I think I want to track down an apes treehouse table to complete it.

[Frenchy99]

Got the Chief, as well as Samurai. Doing the Chief with the individual parts from CTVT is alot better than paying 150 on Ebay for a carded one.

Nice!

Is the chief on a Type S body ?

[BudgetMego]

Got the Chief, as well as Samurai. Doing the Chief with the individual parts from CTVT is alot better than paying 150 on Ebay for a carded one.

[Frenchy99]

I just placed my order. I must be one of the least knowledgeable participants on this forum about Mego figures in general (and all related topics), so I am super appreciative of this informed advice!

In addition to Apache Chief, I bought several other things (actually 10+). I never would've known about this site/resource otherwise!



Dan

Happy to see you will be getting your Apache Chief after all !

Congrats !

[Dan2Dan]

I totally get where Tony Isabella was/is coming from. But , in fairness, I feel like there's another side to that 'story'.

The TV network/Hanna-Barbera were looking to add a black super hero to their cartoon in 1977. To me, it's kind of bizarre that the best/only option was Black Lightning, a character brand new to DC Comics itself in 1977. At that point, Marvel already had Black Panther, Falcon, and Power Man to choose from. So that's not a great look for DC Comics of that time. And, in addition to the character of Black Lightning being brand new in 1977, and not a classic character, his design was not at all similar to the Toth-designed classic DC heroes of the cartoon. On top of that, either H-B or DC Comics was then going to have to take on the added burden, in a work-for-hire era, of accounting for Tony Isabella's tiny $20 royalties. Candidly, if they really were $20 per episode as Isablla suggests, over time, after re-runs, the admin cost of accounting for his tiny roaylty, episode-by-episode, year-after-year, and cutting him these meager royalty checks, would be more than Isabella netted after taxes. So it probably was more efficient/better for H-B to create a new 'black' character, without all this contractual 'baggage.' That said, where DC/H-B then failed was creating a thinly-veiled copy of that character. THAT was, in my mind, a totally unnecessary betrayal of Isabella, and, from a business ethics standpoint, very questionable.

If, even then, I were to try to 'explain' H-B's behavior, I would note that I have read/heard many times that the TV networks in that era didn't greenlight new seasons of these Saturday morning cartoons until the last possible second. So maybe H-B had scripts and other stuff prepared for Black Lightning, and, at the 11th hour, H-B was told by the network to change the charcater. So the only way to do that under time pressure was to 'create' a thinly-veiled clone.

[PNGwynne]

Fascinating stuff from Blake-Isabella on Black Lightning/Vulcan. Thanks for the link; Von Eeden's interviews are worth reading, too.

We need some Black Lightning merch--Mego, Super Powers, come on!

[BudgetMego]

Read the Isabella blog. No honor among thieves or comic book execs. Hope he had a good deal on the CW series.

[BudgetMego]

Just trying to keep things interesting.

[Dan2Dan]

Hanna Barbera originally wanted Apache Chief's growing mantra to be Up Chuk... then they thought about it.

Seeing this just now spurred me to Google whether Black Vulcan, whose costume design I didn't really like as a child in the 70s (or understand his name), really was a replacement for DC's Black Lightning character because of some dispute (presumably over money) with Black Lightning's creator, Tony Isabella. And Lo and behold, in less time than it has take me to type these couple of sentences, my search turned up a blog post on exactly this topic by Tony Isabella himself. Here's the link for anyone reading this who might have a passing interest:

https://tonyisabella.blogspot.com/2025/03/black-vulcan-probably-likely-close-to.html

(By Tony Isabella's telling, this switch was made without his prior knowledge because neither Hanna-Barbera nor DC Comics wanted to pay him the $20 per episode royalty to which he would be contractually entitled as Black Lightning's creator.)

I am a huge fan of Alex Toth's artwork, including his design work for Hanna-Barbera. So I was a little surprised when this search also brought up Toth's original designs for Black Vulcan. I'd seen these designs before, but had forgotten about them. As a kid, I could not understand why this otherwise cool character with lightning powers would dress himself in what looked to me like a ballet leotard with long sleeves?!? This design was apparently by the great Alex Toth himself.

[Stormbreaker]

Hanna Barbera originally wanted Apache Chief's growing mantra to be Up Chuk... then they thought about it.

Spare us such pun-ishment.

[Dan2Dan]

I’m considering ordering an Apache Chief with the Type S body, those 8 inch repro bodies are a hit or miss. I’m not sure if they still sell those 18 inch figures? I think they should have made an 18 inch Apache Chief along with the 8 inch version, that might have made a good seller.

Totally. I take almost all my figures out of their packaging. Some of my FTC figures are great, and others are loose and floppy. In this same way, but even more extreme, some of the Mego-style DC figures produced by Mattel years ago that I own are floppy like a loose marionette, while a few others are totally fine. My primary, recurring issue with some of the modern Mego figures isn't loose-ness, but just that many of them simply won't stand on their own. (So I bought a bunch of inexpensive figure stands on AliExpress.)

I also totally agree about the 18 inch Apache Chief. As a child, I had the 12" Mego Hulk and 8" Mego Spider-Man and thought they went great together. Giganta would be great at 18" as well. But I can also imagine that the potential market for those 18" figures would be extremely limited. Oh well.