todd mcfarlane
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You are currently reading a thread in /toy/ - Toys
You are currently reading a thread in /toy/ - Toys
what do you guys think about todd mcfarlane toys?
i'm a big spawn fan and love most of the series and the attention to detail that mcfarlane's company puts into the figures
i don't see that much discussion about his products here
>i don't see that much discussion about his products here
That's mostly because there aren't a lot of adults here and aren't allowed to watch the shows his toys are made from.
His stuff is pretty great.
>>5742080
>That's mostly because there aren't a lot of adults here and aren't allowed to watch the shows his toys are made from.
More like the fact that Spawn and other series haven't been relevant in years and there's nothing nowadays that's being made. Not to mention that there's barely anything being made, and if there is it's typically a statue.
I'd love to get modern figures that are actually well articulated. Maybe they can do a Kickstarter kind of deal like 4H does, or some shit.
There was a point where McFarlane Toys was by far the best toy company in the world, and they were a big influence on a lot of the companies that are great nowadays that have sort of carried on that old torch, but modern day McFarlane Toys stuff is all shit. So that's kind of why it doesn't get discussed much on here, because most of the discussion is about new stuff that's coming out, and most of us only liked McFarlane back in their heyday.
>>5742088
>and there's nothing nowadays that's being made. Not to mention that there's barely anything being made
Don't know how I typed that twice.
>>5742070
>i don't see that much discussion about his products here
McFarlane's stuff is outclassed in everything, so nobody pays it any mind here. For likenesses and sculpts in western properties, Neca beats them. For articulation, basically everything but Funko Pops beat them. So it has no following other than with casuals that have little to no actual standards in their toy purchases other than "this will look great displayed in the box on my bookshelf", and they usually get shooed away from here pretty quickly.
>>5742070
I got several MiB Spawn figures from my childhood that I'm about to part with. Cool shit but most of it seems to statuesque at this point for me.
>>5742094
I can agree to an extent. Spawn figures were unique and there is some cool sculpts to collect. I have a few Alien figures from McFarlane, the first series plus the Queen. I'd say they still have their place in a collection. NECA does have good Alien figures but if I remember correctly McFarlanes Dog Alien is more accurate than the NECA one I saw.
>Casuals
Oh fuck off. Lets see your collection faggot.
Early McF was decent, but series 13 is about the cutoff point. After that they shifted to statues and brittle plastics. I've not heard one good thing about Interlink 6, and the one video review I watched had numerous breakages. I mean, I guess Samurai Spawn was decently articulated but he focused on statues for poor people mostly.
The numerous lawsuit she's had to deal with over the years didn't help his reputation either, and in the Tony Twist and Angela cases he was 100% in the wrong but refused to be a man about it.
>>5742110
>Tony Twist and Angela cases he was 100% in the wrong but refused to be a man about it.
Yeah thats unfortunate. Angela then had to killed viciously cause he lost the right to use.
>>5742088
>More like the fact that Spawn and other series haven't been relevant in years and there's nothing nowadays that's being made. Not to mention that there's barely anything being made, and if there is it's typically a statue.
>making walking dead toys
>making Game of Throne lego sets
>series are some of the most popular in ages
>not relevant
seriously, it just seems like the underagedfags on /toy/ can't like these because their moms and dads don't allow them to watch matoor tv shows
I don't get how people on /toy/ can be ignoring some of the most creative and best looking lego sets since forever.
The fact the building blocks can double as diorama for almost any scale really befuddles me on why it isn't more popular
McFarlane's Halo line used to be really popular on /toy/ (shock and awe: underagedfags love this series), but it's understandable that the series didn't get all that much hype as the games went on, since those newer games disapointed the gaming community so much.
>>5742147
Sorry, I had Spawn and those other Image series in my head when I said that.
That's what people have in mind when it came to McFarlane back in their prime. That, and shit like Aliens/Predators but that's NECA's deal now.
I remember 1993, Spawn figures really blew my 4th grader mind. There was just something cooler about them then Toybiz X-Men figures. They kept pushing the envelope in quality and sculpt. It was like a golden standard. Imagine holding a super cool and details Samurai Spawn and holding some derpy Spader-man. Toybiz got close but never close enough to the quality of sculpt.
It also invited lots of imitations to a point where Japanese companies reverse weeaboo Spawn. I never see Japanese speak about He-Man, but Spawn always comes up in Amecomi stuff. Yasushi Nirasawa figures come to mind. SIC also has that dark and edgy feel to it. Kaiyodo stuff also. People may find this statement controversial, but Mcfarlane Toys was a second revolution in toys.
I am not sure if this has anything to do with it, but their later stuff just didn't satisfy the ever-changing market. Spawn lost its steam. It was around this time that Marvel Legends started emerging and McFarlane stuff became more and more statue shit. Their stuff break easily since the cheaper plastic helps soak in detail but are extremely fragile. Maybe part of it is they make stupid Sports figure too. The 10th Anniversary and this other one seemed like the answer to ML but then they never followed through.
I dunno how much the Todd VS Neil Gaiman lawsuit affected his reputation, or his toys. There was that controversy about Miracleman limited edition figure and Man of Miracle and my understanding of it is Todd acted like a big baby about it.
Ever since the cancellation on their Zodiac line, stopped making Spawn figures, and started making Halo..... I feel like the company just keeps going downhill making oddball scale figures and is a joke of its past self.
Plus I think most of his staff moved on to other companies like NECA. And Jean St. Jean was a rookie sculptor there too.
I am cautiously optimistic about his Red Label stuff. Probably statue shit with retarded cut joints again.
McFarlane was Spawn for some time. Canning that killed a lot of what made the company.
Sports statues
NASCAR statues(sorry hillbillies, but that will never be a sport)
weird soldier figures no one knew what to do with
some crappy Simpsons sets that didn't work with the Playmates stuff
movie tie-ins, most of which they've lost to Neca since
band figures, which I don't think people went too crazy over, although the Jimi Hendrix with stage was okay
now it's just more licenses, one of which they just lost to Mattel
Spawn is coming back as a one-off figure, time will tell if it's a statue or not
>>5742165
Don't forget Doug and Bob McKenzie. Love those figs.
>>5742182
or the Little Nicky toys that clogged discount chains for 5 years straight.
>"Adam Sandler sleeping on a radiator" statue for $1
>even poor people aren't that desperate
>>5742070
>todd mcfarlane toys
You mean statues.
>>5742353
calm down autist
they're only terms
>>5742353
They technically had articulation.
But since they were sculpted in a static pose then hacked up, it was useless articulation.
They had awesome sculpts, mandarin spawn and his essentially statueshit that was based on covers (Angel Spawn was great).
He also did some super edgelord shit. Yinz remember The twisted world of OZ with Dorothy in bondage being tortured by fat demonic munchkins?
Or Clive Barkers tortured souls? Yeesh.
>>5742454
>>5742454
>useless articulation
depended on the figure really.
The early stuff was awesome, honestly. McFarlane was a leader in detail, sculpt, and--despite everything--was actually raising the bar for articulation for a while, in the 90's.
Problem is, they don't really make any Spawn or horror figures anymore, which is what they were really known for.
Last I checked the only things they were making figures of were sports figures and Halo stuff. And they just lost the Halo license to Mattel.
McFarlane's toy stuff just isn't relevant because they're just not making hardly anything anymore.
I think most of the salient issues have been covered. I was never a Spawn fan, so endless variations of that design didn't do shit for me. Skullsplitter mentioned above was a great figure, and an outlier when it comes to functioning articulation. I don't recall the exact quote, but he essentially said the "art" of the sculpt will always come before the function of the articulation.
Then in his normal show of "fuck common sense", he started making figures in a scale that he had largely killed off 15 years earlier. Now he's moving back up the scale chart again, to some vague 7" scale. Is it 1:12? Is it 1:10 like NECA's stuff? Who knows? He's purported to hate God's own scale (1:18), again because of some bullshit about not being able to make them detailed.
The final nail for me was not releasing that bad ass fucking Falcon from Halo Reach.
I used to buy SO many McFarlane toys. I'd buy the random Spawn figure if it looked badass enough, loved Movie Maniacs, loved the random monster lines (Twisted Christmas was amazing).
But their dragons line was the thing that I loved the most. I bought ever, single, mother, fucking, one. Even bought several of their fantasy figures.
I'm still uber butthurt about them cancelling the Griffon box set from the Fantasy series.
>>5742754
Man, there's hardly even any photos online anymore
>>5742147
Prolly because people want their articulated minifigures
Only McFarlane figure I have is the Ironic Punishment Homer Simpson one.
I dont really remember if the Island of Dr Hibbert is a McFarlane Toys release though. If it is, then that one too.
Todd was at his peak when he was willing to do unique ideas. The earlier years of Spawn weren't hampered by "only do things that appear in the comics". Half the toy characters weren't in the comics at all, Cy-Gor was a toy first, and Spawn variants were totally new things instead of "yellow repaint with bobsled" the way Kenner/Hasbro/Mattel did with Batman.
Look at this. Is this Al Simmons gone crazy? It's sort of a transforming toy too, because if you flip up that jaw and hunch it over you get a mutant piranha with legs, almost like a Sharkticon. Top Gun & Bottom line had no comic appearance, they were just an experimental idea.
>>5744101
Yeah, they were actually action figures then too. Not a lot of articulation by today's standards, but they had something.
>>5742153
Nirasawa, Takeya are influences to the sculptors who worked for Mcfarlane. There's a podcast by Jordu Schell where he said the moment one of their friends brought Nirasawa's "Creature Core" book and showed their circles, prominent sculptors across the US entertainment art were all rushing to rip off that whole book lovingly.
What Mcfarlane did was showing those companies their sculpts that were largely thought of as for the model kit audience, can be sold as toys too. As a business model, they did kickstart a change in the industry somewhat.
That being said, I would welcome if they started making the old Spawn comics designs in the style of their 10th anni Spawn that was a good balance between sculpt and articulation, even if not as durable as I'd like them to be but I'm used to that.
