ReMego figures that never made it into production

[greenguy]

When I heard the retro heroes were being cancelled due to poor sales, I had to laugh at myself. I never saw any of these for sale except at the local Toys R Us. That was only Luthor, and Sinestro. All along, I thought that they were selling out faster than I could find them.

Me too!

Although it was always Sinestro and Captain Cold here.

[BifBangPow! JLabs]

just found these images.... I guess they weren't going to be Megos then?





Ah well, I would have bought them all if they were in Mego format, but I probably would fave been one of the few.

We didn't have plans for Mego figures for this line. Also - this was the first and only time we've ever announced a license before the deal was signed. Learned that lesson the hard way back in 2005! Won't happen again.

[samurainoir]

just found these images.... I guess they weren't going to be Megos then?





Ah well, I would have bought them all if they were in Mego format, but I probably would have been one of the few.

[samurainoir]

Jason Lenzi was saying on his podcast that the first figure line they went after (even before Flash Gordon) was SPACED?! That would have been awesome. I wonder if there are pics of prototypes floating out in the ether?

[Timothy2251]

Desperately want that Kung-Fu Master figure.

[thunderbolt]

Famous Covers suffered from trying to emulate the Manga-influenced artists that were popular at Marvel at the time. Humberto Ramos and especially Joe Maduriera (or however you spell it) come to mind. I call it the "Screaming Pinhead" line. The early figures are pretty hideous.

Chris

I always thought more of Rob Liefeld when I saw those sculpts. What they really suffered from is the scale communication problem with China.

[samurainoir]

I forgot about the War of the Dead figures. I was really looking forward to these.









and I don't remember this at all... this would have been cool!

[Earth 2 Chris]

Famous Covers suffered from trying to emulate the Manga-influenced artists that were popular at Marvel at the time. Humberto Ramos and especially Joe Maduriera (or however you spell it) come to mind. I call it the "Screaming Pinhead" line. The early figures are pretty hideous.

Chris

[JediJaida]

Mostly because of the expression on some of the faces.

Black widow had this expression on her face that made me think she was either constipated or her face was stuck on 'snarl'.

[PNGwynne]

Hmmm. That's hyperbole imo: Some Mattel sculpts were excellent, most were serviceable. A few--like Black Adam & Capt. Marvel--were off-model.

I can respect Mattel for trying to tweak Mego originals, even if not always successfully. The paler, less opaque vinyl worked against some sculpts. And yes egad those bodies were awful, as was the marketing of the line.

As for new sculpts, we shall see with FTC. Batman '66 looks great, Evel not so much. And expanding a line with 40-year-old antecedents & expectations isn't easy. Famous Covers featured new sculpts, and most of them were worse than vintage Mego or Mattel imo.

[JediJaida]

I can sort of understand them wanting to use their own body for the line, but REALLY! Why didn't they get all of the bugs out of it during production? Isn't that what their quality control dept. is for?

BUT, since Doc had a perfectly good body ready, there was really no need for them to use their own design. It would have saved them quite a bit of time, effort and money; so all that they would have needed to do was produce some decent head sculpts.

They didn't need to be replicas of the old Mego designs. They could have been all new sculpts of the characters, instead of the plug ugly bits of vinyl that we got.

I will say that there were only TWO sculpts that I actually liked; Luthor and Green Arrow. That was pretty much it.

Luthor had a nice symmetrical face, with slightly chiseled cheekbones, intense eyes, and in a pinch, he could also be Professor X.

Green Arrow, was excellent as well. To this day, I have yet to remove him from the card.

[megocrazy]

From the EMCE slideshow, all indications were the new protos were miles ahead of the previous work and had some really neat choices of character. This line cancellation remains one of the greatest travesties of toy history. Mattel is still dead to me...

Had Mattel stayed with it and done it the way they were instructed to, the line would have been the first thing since the super powers line to compare to mego's WGSH line. They screwed up the body and just like in life, first impressions can be a killer. Not saying sales would have supported it, we'll never really know that, but character selection was discussed into double digit waves. Having seen the prototypes, Scott worded it accurately. It was a travesty.

[johnmiic]

Seeing that pic says to me too much concentration on the Tom Baker era. I can understand that because the Tom Baker stories were the ones that introduced Doctor Who to American fans and BBP! may have been specifically targeting that market. These are also fan choices and we know Jason is a fan. He probably grew up watching these stories with these characters. I think the figures for this line needed to be from the show more as a whole.

Making the Anti-matter guy, the Kraal, Magnus Greel, Morbius, (not pictured - Eldrad, female version), just confounds me. How can you go with these characters when so many others are more widely recognized? Why not go with another type of Cyberman, another classic companion like Sara Jane or Romana, The Brigadier or the other incarnations of The Master?

I know that getting an actor's likeness is probably harder than doing a make-up or monster character. So I assume it was easy to get Greel, Kraal, Master and Morbius but you could've gone with a generic U.N.I.T. Soldier. As popularity goes aren't Davros, the Axons, the Draconians more popular characters to go with than Greel, Weng Chiang and Mr. Sin, (Greel, Weng Chiang and Mr. Sin are all from the same story too)? Would not a 6th Doctor and Peri with the villain Sil or The Rani or The Master have generated buzz? Being a fan maybe it just boils down to my preferences over BBP! but I think more momentum would've been gained with other characters.

[dr_cyclops]

When I heard the retro heroes were being cancelled due to poor sales, I had to laugh at myself. I never saw any of these for sale except at the local Toys R Us. That was only Luthor, and Sinestro. All along, I thought that they were selling out faster than I could find them.

[jayraytee]

Didn't it, though?

Instead of four of these great characters, we got that Matty collector wave of GL stuff as a movie tie-in.

A crappy movie at that. Mattel made one bad move right after another, as big as they are it seems like whoever is in charge is a real boob.