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Todd McFarlane Toys
- Action Figures and Sports Picks
Bringing photo-realism to sports figures
and action figures
McFarlane
Toys is the fifth largest action figure manufacturer in the United States. Established
in 1994 to manufacture and sell action figures based on founder Todd McFarlane's
comic book character Spawn, the international award-winning company has expanded
into licensed products to become one of the premiere action figure producers on
the planet.
Spawn is still the bedrock of the company -- McFarlane Toys
released the 30th line of Spawn figures in 2006. Marquee toy lines include: Alien
vs. Predator, Napoleon Dynamite (Twentieth Century Fox), Tim Burton's Corpse Bride,
(Warner Bros.), Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Shrek (Dreamworks),
and Lost (ABC Television).
McFarlane Toys also has its own line of proprietary
figures including: McFarlane's Monsters, McFarlane's Military and McFarlane's
Dragons. The newest venture, Pop Culture Masterworks includes 3D album covers
and movie posters (Led Zeppelin, Sex Pistols, Metallica, and Jimi Hendrix, Jaws,
Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street and Rocky Horror Picture Show), McFarlane's
Music figures (Motley Crüe, Slash, Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Bon Jovi and
KISS). The latest licenses include the Hanna-Barbera cartoon library (Warner Bros)
and The Simpsons (Fox).
McFarlane
Sports Picks - Today's Leader in Sports Figures
McFarlane also works with
many of the top entertainment properties in the industry and has the official
rights to all four major North American sports (hockey, baseball, football and
basketball). The company's Sports Picks figures (action figures depicting current
and former professional athletes) are the most popular and actively collected
sports figures on the market today; the database of Sports Picks on this site
includes more than 1,400 different figures.
The hallmark of all McFarlane
products, and Sports Picks in particular, is detail. Sports Picks are created
with remarkable accuracy, including details like logo patches on the uniforms,
specific shoes or gloves, tattoos, artwork on masks, etc. Even when scrutinized
for small details such as the width of a stripe on a player's sock, Sports Picks
are found to be accurate more than 95% of the time - a remarkable level of performance
for 6" tall plastic figures that retail for $10.
Most Sports Picks
action figures are six inches tall and released in series. McFarlane typically
releases two to three regular series of figures of current players per sport per
year. Additionally, McFarlane releases one to two series per year per sport of
famous former players (these are called Legends or Cooperstown series). Within
each of these series are chase and variant figures as well as the regular figures.
(For more information about chase and variant figures, read the article What is
the Difference Between a Chase and a Variant Action Figure?)
McFarlane also
produces series of 3" figures for each sport and has issued some 12"
figures. Outside of the normal retail releases, McFarlane creates exclusive figures
that are sold only during events like Super Bowls, Hall of Fame Inductions and
the NHL Hockey All-Star Game, or that are sold only through their website or their
retail store in Arizona. On occasion, McFarlane has produced figures that were
given away as promotional items at specific sporting events.
McFarlane
Military Action Figures - Commemorating America's Finest
In 2005 McFarlane
debuted their new Military line of action figures. Like the Sports Picks McFarlane
Military figures are extremely realistic recreations of servicemen and women from
all five branches of America's services. These figures are not licensed per se
- the Pentagon does not license or approve commercial products - and as such they
can not include details like unit patches or other DoD insignias. In spite of
this limitation, the realism, from the patterns of material in the uniforms to
the design and selection of weapons for each figure, is remarkable.
Currently,
only modern soldier or sailors are featured in the Military line. The company
has not excluded the possibility of issuing American and Allied military figures
from World War II in upcoming releases.
More Information on McFarlane
Toys Action Figures:
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