I still remember my very first McFarlane Toy. I was a wee lad of maybe seven or eight years old, and once day my dad came home with an incredible Spawn figure that held more detail than any other figure I’d ever owned. I was a huge Spawn fan at the time (much to the dismay of my mother), and I can still recall staying up way too late watching the animated series with my father.
It took me some time to realize why this first figure wasn’t infinitely posable, but once I did, I set it in its base and marvelled at its intricacies and wondered how a figure like this could have been so perfectly pulled out of the comic book. Then a year or so later I received a Violator figure and it scared the hell out of me to the point where it had to be put away at night.
I can’t wait to see stop-motion created with these.
I still have that Spawn figure displayed on my desk. That being said, I haven’t purchased anything resembling a toy in years, but later this year I’m afraid I’ll be going flat broke, both on Nintendo’s Amiibo’s (which I finally saw in person at SDCC), and then on the just-announced McFarlane Building Sets, which take the idea of a Lego style buildable, customizable playset, except that once it’s built, it no longer looks like a pile of bricks.
I had peeked a few images of the cool-looking building sets, but once I saw these The Walking Dead sets in person and had the awesome opportunity of listening to McFarlane passionately talking about the idea and how he came up with then, I knew that he had an absolute winner, and I knew that I’d be shelling out a lot of money on it.
As with all McFarlane Toys, the detail in each and every one of these pieces and hand-painted figures is impossible. On getting into the building toy business, Todd stated that “it’s the same reason why 20 years ago I got into the action figure business. They [toy companies] keep leaving gaps for guys like me, and the gap here is art. They’ve got the functionality down, but 20 years ago when I walked down that aisle, I asked a simple question and it was why can’t they just look cooler? That started my company. Just I don’t understand why that can’t look cooler. It’s just plastic, it doesn’t have any intelligence, it’ll go into whatever shape you put it in. Why they choose to not put it into realistic and highly detailed shapes? I don’t know, go ask them after we finish this conversation. We’ve won a lot of awards for our realistic sports figures, and the question that you guys from the media keep asking me is “Todd, how do you keep making your sports figures so realistic” but that’s the wrong question. The question should be “how for 40 years could they not?”
That was a mind-blowing, and incredibly powerful thing to hear. Just about as mind-blowing as these figures, which when assembled, look phenomenal and not-at-all like they came out of a building block set.
As mentioned, the McFarlane Building Sets will begin with products based on AMC’s The Walking Dead, though McFarlane said that they are actively exploring other IP’s as well. The first sets will launch this Fall, and be a Toys R’ Us exclusive until 2015, after which the floodgates will open and they’ll go international too.
I cannot wait to get my hands on all of these.
A little blurry, but what a nice guy!