In an interview with IGN, Todd McFarlane revealed that McFarlane Toys will be returning to its roots in a big way. It was announced that McFarlane Toys will be reviving two of its most iconic brands in Movie Maniacs and Tortured Souls. They will also be producing new figures in their Spawn and Twisted Fairy Tales lines. From the article:
“So we’re gonna go back to our origins and we’re gonna go, hey, for all you people who like Tortured Souls? There’s gonna be more. For all you people who like some of the Movie Maniacs? There’s gonna be more. But even the new — the stuff we just created, like Dragons? More. Spawn? More. Twisted Tales? More.”
Movie Maniacs was born out of the numerous monster liens that McFarlane was producing in the early 1990’s. Instead of crafting original creatures, McFarlane Toys began to license some of the most iconic characters from horror and sci-fi. By combining legendary and modern horror icons with some of the best sculptors in the business, McFalrane crafted a long running, dedicated line, where every figure could be displayed together as a cohesive collection. The line started in 1998 with characters such as Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, and Leatherface. This also allowed McFarlane to license newer films, and run them concurrently with Movie Maniacs with the same scale and craft fans had come to expect. The line eventually ended in 2004 after series 7 of the main line, as well as numerous 12″ and 18″ figures. NECA’s own Cult Classics were spun out of this line, after multiple employees, including Randy Falk, migrated from McFalrane Toys to NECA in 2002.
Tortured Souls was done in a similar vein to Movie Maniacs, however it focused on the creations of iconic horror master Clive Barker. This series focused on original creations from Barker that looked like they were ripped from the Hellraiser films. Each figure came packaged with a novelette, giving the figures their own world. That line ran for 6 figures in 2001.
Along with these announcements, he revealed that McFarlane will begin selling direct to consumer, in order to more effectively compete against the ever changing retail landscape. As the dedicated toy store becomes more difficult to maintain, and with toy aisles becoming more and more competitive, it only makes sense for a company of McFarlane’s scale to finally offer items direct. From the article:
“Unfortunately, the stores we were selling to at that point, like Tower Records and Suncoast and Babbage’s and KB Toys, and all these other ones, they’ve all fallen to the wayside.
So we end up having to follow the game plan of the Fortune 500 companies and having to do big brands. But we’re gonna just start selling more just direct to the consumer.”
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