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McFarlane Sports Picks Customizers

Creating the Sports Figures We WISH McFarlane Would Make

My brother was an excellent quarterback for our high school, leading his team to several wins against highly touted conference opponents in 1970. Anyone from our school would acknowledge his accomplishments. That said, I'll admit it's very doubtful that action figures of my brother in his high school uniform would sell heavily on the national market. Certainly McFarlane has shown they believe this to be true as they have not issued a figure of my brother - or of any other high school athlete.

Recently I wanted to give my brother a figure of himself for a Christmas present - what was I to do?

I turned to a customizer (Jomo), an artist who takes sports figures and changes them into one-of-a-kind collectible. The result was a figure that looked as good or better than a figure you'd buy from the store, made to exacting details of my brother's uniform back in 1970. Another artist (RB) created the packaging for the figure so I was able to give my brother a packaged sports toy of himself that look like I'd purchased it right off the store shelves.

Here are two photos of the final figure, fully assembled and in its packaging - the quality is so good you can't tell that this wasn't created by McFarlane and sold in one of its football series just by looking at it. The final product was tremendous.

Incidentally, the names you see above in parenthesis (Jomo, RB, etc.) are board names, or handles, used by the customizers on the Spawn discussion forum.

Many people turn to customizers to create figures of college professional players that haven't been released by the companies. I did this for a figure of Jimmy Smith, a great receiver on the Jacksonville Jaguars. Jacksonville isn't the major market New York or Dallas is, and the companies just haven't released many Jaguar figures. I really like the Jaguars (notice the color scheme of this website?) and wanted to get a Jimmy Smith figure. I took matters into my own hands and asked a customizer (Heater) to create one for me. I got to pick the pose, the uniform, every detail about the figure and the final product is indistinguishable from a figure that was part of a regular McFarlane SP series. Heater's work was impeccable as well, as you can see to the right. My wife has an NFL Series 6 Emmitt Smith figure in Arizona Cardinals uniform. She wants it to be put into a Dallas Cowboys double-star uniform. When we get around to it we're going to ask Heater to do that repaint for her.

Customizers do a wide variety of modifications, from repaints like the two examples above (where the customizer only changed the paint scheme on the figure) to full scale recreations where the artist assembles a custom piece using pieces of several figures, even sculpts parts of the figure's body to create the pose or facial features they want to create.

Customizers set their own prices for their work so I can't provide standard fee schedules here. If you look on Ebay you'll see that some customizers' efforts are not nearly as . . . satisfying as what others produce. Many customizers do figures of only one sport or team. These are craftsmen doing individual, work-for-hire artistic renderings and they set their own terms for what they'll do.

Your task, then, is to review different customizers' websites and coordinate the right deal for your needs and budget.

Another customizer, Chipper, has created a list of customizers' websites and was kind enough to allow me to post that list here. If you're interested in having a custom figure created, look through the websites below (the alphabetized list shows the website name and the customizer's Spawn board handle) and you'll find the right customizer for your project. (If you're a customizer who wants to be included in this list, please let me know.)