Iron Man got a nose in the comics because of MEGO

[jwyblejr]

Actually the simplest explanation is that Superman, Batman, Robin, and
Aquaman were DC's big four since the Superman/Batman hour of the
late sixties. The only one missing was Superboy.

As for the timing - people in the advertising and licensing business
always know about upcoming projects because advertisers have
to be lined up to advertise on the show, although Saturday morning
commercials were produced by the usual suspects of toy companies,
candy makers, and retailers. The actual show being aired was much
less important.

Maybe Marty was completely unaware that Superfriends was coming
to ABC in fall '73. Ten years later, Hasbro would make sure that 30
minute commercials for GI Joe ran 5 days a week.

It's possible. I would say work on Superfriends started around '71/'72. They've got to do scripts,animation and voice-over work in advance. So I would think that gave them plenty of time.

[warlock664]

The truth may NEVER be known... We could always ask Stan Lee himself. That's probably the best source.

Sadly, that doesn't hold true these days; Stan's memory (by his own admission) is unreliable at best. I doubt he'd remember such a minute detail from 35+ years ago.

Actually the simplest explanation is that Superman, Batman, Robin, and
Aquaman were DC's big four since the Superman/Batman hour of the
late sixties.

That seems much more likely. Also, 3 of the 4 selected as the first releases were inarguably DC's biggest name heroes, and even Aquaman had been featured in a cartoon in the late 60's.

It's possible. I would say work on Superfriends started around '71/'72. They've got to do scripts,animation and voice-over work in advance. So I would think that gave them plenty of time.

It still seems highly unlikely Marty would choose his initial WGSH assortment based on a still-in-development Saturday morning cartoon series that wouldn't air until nearly a year after the assortment made it to toy store shelves.

[drmego]

I don't think he launched WGSH just because of Superfriends, but
having a Saturday morning cartoon would help sales. As it turned
out, WGSH was such an instant hit that MEGO had trouble getting
enough product to the shelves. (See the Playboy style interview
ad with the kid for numbers sold)

[ctc]

>I don't think he launched WGSH just because of Superfriends, but having a Saturday morning cartoon would help sales.

My guess is that there was some underlying synergy that caused the toys AND the cartoons. Maybe the superhero fans of the sixties having kids and wanting to pass the torch, like nowadays?

Don C.

[Earth 2 Chris]

Sadly, that doesn't hold true these days; Stan's memory (by his own admission) is unreliable at best. I doubt he'd remember such a minute detail from 35+ years ago.

I actually made contact with Stan Lee for a project I'm working on, and his assistant passed along a message that Stan didn't recall dealing with Mego, and it was handled by a different department at the time.

Chris

[The Toyroom]

^^
This.

The "Mego-influenced" explanation for the nose is a myth. The same holds true for the old "Super Friends tie-in" theory to justify Mego's original assortment of Batman, Robin, Superman and Aquaman in their WGSH line. How could Super Friends, which debuted in Fall 1973, have influenced Mego's first character assortment, which came in late 1972/early 1973?

I've never subscribed to those theories either...including Green Arrow being included in the assortment because of ONE guest-star episode during the early years of "SF". If that's the case how come no Flash or The Atom, both of who would have required less tooling than GA?

[MIB41]

I actually made contact with Stan Lee for a project I'm working on, and his assistant passed along a message that Stan didn't recall dealing with Mego, and it was handled by a different department at the time.

Chris

Yeah. That makes sense to me. I don't think Mego's place in the market, at that point, was well enough established to give them clout (or balls) to go to any company and dictate a new look for their product. And I certainly don't think Stan Lee would take kindly to someone telling him how his product should look either.

[PNGwynne]

I like Mego IM's more human face, but I've never understood the IM-Doom theory, because:

-Wave 3 (w/ IM) premiered a year before wave 4 (w/ the FF)

-As to production costs, IM contains just as many pieces as Doom would have (sans cape). Actually, since Doom's suit is less detailed construction-wise, wouldn't the production cost have been about the same, even with a cape?

Let's say (even though Mego did "armored" Knights & Tin Man) that Doom was considered too expensive:

In wave 4, the FF are simple, but Thor is deluxe & Conan has tons of accessories (admittedly, mitigated by just needing a loincloth).

So imo the real question is, why Conan & not Doom? It would have been comparatively easy for Mego to rework/redeco its IM sculpt later for Doom for wave 4, witness Verdon/Cheron and LJS/Green Arrow.

[ctc]

>why Conan & not Doom?

I recall reading that the Conan comic was insanely popular at the time. That's why you see his mug on so mnay things from the early 70's.

Don C.

[MIB41]

Yeah. Conan was very big back then. He had the comic and the giant black n' white magazine. Both done by John Buscema. Great stuff!

[thunderbolt]

Mystery solved. See article below. Mego played no role in the creation of the nose.

Comic Book Legends Revealed #262 | Comics Should Be Good! @ Comic Book Resources

Thanks for finding that I knew I read the story somewhere and that it had nothing to do with Mego.

[samurainoir]

Any links to Mego development material for doom?

[MIB41]

^^^ Yep! Customego.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sourc...PZbNwg&cad=rja

[johnmiic]

Does any art or photo exist of what a MEGO proposal for Dr. Doom would look like?

[generic]

Iron Man's nose: I don't know that the Mego Iron Man nose has anything to do with how he looked in the comic book. I don't think there's any question about the fact that some of the final Mego products don't match up to the source art (see 8" Captian America). It's quite possible that whoever did the sculpt just didn't think anything at all about the nose or just thought it didn't look right as a 3D toy so they changed it.

Dr. Doom: Depending on what year they were planning to release him, he could have been very simple: In the early years, he might have come with a silkscreen suit, a green Shazam cape, flesh color hands (with no gloves) and black fishing boots. Later on, it would have been super easy to grab a Tin Man body, a knight bodysuit, either Tin Man or Knight boots, a Robin Hood tunic w/o the sleeves, a Robin Belt molded in brown or black, an Iron Man head molded in silver with a little paint on the eyes and you're a cloak away from having a Dr. Doom figure with no new parts.

Was the Iron Man head originally supposed to be Dr. Doom? Maybe. Is it a perfect match for Dr. Doom? No. Doesn't that suggest that it wasn't ever supposed to be Dr. Doom? (see 8" Captain America )

It is possible that the idea was to creat a head sculpt that would work for both Dr. Doom AND Iron Man. That would explain why it's not a perfect match for either character.

I would bet that we have given both of these issues much more thought than anyone at Mego ever did.