McFarlane DC Multiverse

Poe Ghostal said:
I wonder how the McFarlane Toys as a company is going to be after this. They’ve been boxed out of all the major licenses at this point. It’d be neat if they moved more toward indy comics, but I also wonder if they’ll just retreat in sports toys like they did for years.
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I’ve quite literally wondered this for decades. Todd brought me into collecting as an adult. I had action figures as a kid, but gave ‘em up at around 13/14 years old. I’d always been tempted by the Marvel/DC figures from back in the day, but never really gave in to that temptation. Until Todd came along. I had no real connection to Spawn, but the figures were outstanding. Until they weren’t anymore.

There is a plethora of indie properties Todd could grab. Two in particular would have, at one time, been a license to print money. The Boys and Invincible. Both play well to Todd’s strengths. Yet he’d rather do video game figures. Can you imagine a full line of Astro City or Hellboy figures from McFarlane? I can. Problem is that apparently, Todd can’t or won’t.

It’s certainly not a replacement for DC, but it fills a niche and a gap in Todd’s portfolio.
 
Atomic Knight said:
I’ve quite literally wondered this for decades. Todd brought me into collecting as an adult. I had action figures as a kid, but gave ‘em up at around 13/14 years old. I’d always been tempted by the Marvel/DC figures from back in the day, but never really gave in to that temptation. Until Todd came along. I had no real connection to Spawn, but the figures were outstanding. Until they weren’t anymore.

There is a plethora of indie properties Todd could grab. Two in particular would have, at one time, been a license to print money. The Boys and Invincible. Both play well to Todd’s strengths. Yet he’d rather do video game figures. Can you imagine a full line of Astro City or Hellboy figures from McFarlane? I can. Problem is that apparently, Todd can’t or won’t.

It’s certainly not a replacement for DC, but it fills a niche and a gap in Todd’s portfolio.
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One of the recent rumor lists included an Elite Edition Hellboy from McFarlane. But I think Jada Toys has Invincible.

(That said, the Boss Fight Hellboy line looks great.)
 
I saw that about Hellboy. I might bite on a one-off, but at 60 bucks, an ongoing line is a non starter. A regularly priced McFarlane line of Hellboy figures won’t pave the road, but it might patch the pothole.
 
Yes, Jada and Super7 have both announced that they're doing figures for Invincible. Jada has shown their first 3 figures but have no release date yet - but likely this fall. The Super 7 announcement just happened in January so we won't have figures in hand from them until 2027 at best.

If Spawn had been selling well, I'm confident that Todd would be making more figures from that property but he basically stopped so that tells me all that I need to know (and I bought them all). The same seems to be true for Mortal Kombat as those have come to an abrupt halt after only a couple of waves as well (I also bought all of the single packed figures).

They're making a run at these $60 Elite editions for the Image Founders series. We'll see how that goes, I guess. Too expensive for me personally.

There is a Hellboy figure rumored for McFarlane but I'd read that is from the Injustice video game and will be released within the DC Multiverse line specifically - I have absolutely no idea if that's true or not. I thought as another entry in that Founders line (although not Image) would have made more sense, but whatever.
 
I didn't see the Injustice aspect of the Hellboy rumor - I wonder if that's just speculation? It seems to be aligned with the other creator-owned figures like Savage Dragon and Shadowhawk, so it was my assumption he'd be a regular Hellboy.

Yeah, Spawn has never really had the cultural penetration of other superheroes - even indies like Hellboy or Invincible. I think it's partly because his origin is weird, gory, based in overly-complex religious mythology, and very '90s. But also, to some degree, I've always felt like Spawn, as a franchise, primarily existed as an excuse for Todd to make other things he thought were cool - toys, posters, cartoons, movies. Spawn has never really felt like a living, breathing character to me, for whatever reason.
 
Yeah, that's the thing, what could McFarlane produce out of available licenses that has the footprint the DC does, both culturally and with collectors? Like, a central hub property for the next 5 years the way Multiverse seemed to be for them. The Sony games license is a decent acquisition but you wouldn't have that as your core IP, it's not wide enough. And video game figures are still sort of a hit-or-miss proposition. And so much else is already taken by Mattel and Hasbro.

Honestly? I think they should try to succeed where Super7 failed and get Disney. I think Todd would be deeply uninterested in that, but it's the one huge thing that seems open in this format still.
 
I know this would be controversial for many, but I wanted Todd to get a crack at Star Wars. The property hasn't been doing all that well for the past few years and I thought last year there might have been a chance Hasbro would have let it go. But no...I guess they're betting SW will rise again, which isn't a terrible bet.

But yeah, that does leave McFarlane without a good "central hub" property. Honestly they'd be smart to invest heavily in anime if you ask me.
 
Poe Ghostal said:
I know this would be controversial for many, but I wanted Todd to get a crack at Star Wars. The property hasn't been doing all that well for the past few years and I thought last year there might have been a chance Hasbro would have let it go. But no...I guess they're betting SW will rise again, which isn't a terrible bet.

But yeah, that does leave McFarlane without a good "central hub" property. Honestly they'd be smart to invest heavily in anime if you ask me.
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They've already done stuff for One Punch Man, Demon Slayer, and My Hero Academia, but they never really seem to promote it as extensively as the DC stuff despite how big those properties are. If they can get One Piece, like if there's still an option to grab it in a format Bandai might not be doing, they absolutely should.
 
Poe Ghostal said:
But yeah, that does leave McFarlane without a good "central hub" property. Honestly they'd be smart to invest heavily in anime if you ask me.
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Seems like a natural spot and I feel like they tried. I bought the My Hero Academia 7" figures and a handfull of what they did for other Anime properties (ATLAB, Seven Deadily Sins, Vox Machina) but they didn't seem to perform well. Most eventually went to clearance on his website for under a few $ each.
 
Yeah, I’m not sure what’s currently available for Todd to grab that has the footprint DC has.

To me, he definitely needs to look at some other comic book properties outside of Spawn and Manga. I think Image or Dark Horse has plenty of source material to work with.

They did mention on the last McFarlane TV installment that they have a big announcement they’re saving for after Toy Fair. Dunno why that would be.
 
Aren't they doing fully-articulated NHL figures? I'd be interested to see if they could try that with the NFL and the NBA maybe...
 
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