NECA
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#AshWednesday #40th




Once again Army of Darkness gets the shaft

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Army of Darkness is a separate license, which they may not have at this time. Evil Dead 1 & 2 are also separately licensed as well. I know Creative Licensing Corp owns the merchandise rights to Evil Dead 2. Evil Dead 1, I believe is still owned wholly by Sam Raimi's Renaissance Pictures.

Army of Darkness is problematic right now, from what I remember. They couldn't get rights to reference it in Ash vs Evil Dead because they couldn't track down who owned the rights at the time.

The super7 reaction were army I’d darkness weren’t they? I didn’t get them yet. I always found it fascinating that the same character from the same series of films and tv could be so flipping complicated.

I don’t ever remember anything released for the first Evil Dead.

Any word on what and when NECA is showing some” toy fair” stuff?

They did yeah. The Ash vs Evil Dead comments were from when that series was airing, so rights may have been sorted by the time Super7 got to do them. Unfortunately, it would still be a different license compared to 1 & 2.

I always try to say that licensing rights, especially for anything pre-1990's, can be an absolute nightmare. As older studios died off, their film catalogs were scattered to the wind in a lot of cases.

I remember talking to a buddy of mine in the industry (he runs a small company) who was tracking down rights to some old 70's toy properties. He tracked them to a guy who had no idea he owned the stuff, simply because they were left to him.

Didn't they start referencing Army of Darkness in the later half of the show though?

Not really. Anything alluding to the 3rd film was extremely vague. There was never anything like Ash telling someone "I went back in time to the medieval era once". The closest we get to references is him having a mechanical hand and I think seeing the page in the Necronomicon showing the drawing of of him on the castle wall, but that was shown in Evil Dead 2 so that's probably a legal loophole that allows for it. And then of course the series ended with another frustrating cliffhanger of him time traveling into a post apocalyptic future, obviously a nod to the alternate ending to Army of Darkness.

Only vague references that wouldn't explicitly be pointing to AoD.

I swear there was something about AoD finally being fair game and then there being references in the show. Guess it's just been a while since I've seen it.

I do remember the ending and thinking it was a very clear (and cool) nod to the movie's alternate ending. I'd love a comic or something to follow up on that.

They really have a mess with the licensing. Supposedly licensing issues also kept Ash out of MK11 when in game files already had all of his dialogue listed.

Now this has my attention!

I've wanted to see Neca tackle the original Evil Dead, but I figured it would never happen since the rights to it have been a mess.

My guess is an ultimate Ash, but I'd love to see the Deadites, especially Cheryl, Scotty, and Linda.

It's definately going to be Evil Dead movie but a few years ago, I joined Twitter and asked NECA about S-Mart ash. They said they can do it, but this was like 4 years ago and nothing since.

I would actually love a 1/4 scaled Ash, but it seems NECA isn't doing much 1/4 scales unless it is TMNT related. I love those big pieces.

PS: Weird place to place this but I bought the original Pacific Rim NECA figures and my Striker Eureka just broke apart. Both legs just broke. It was on my display for 5 or so years, never touched, I literally picked it up and both legs just broke from the hip joint.

I worry about NECA's longevity now. I was shocked. Just a warning to those who own these products.

they did reference AOD in season 2 like ash makes a nod about traveling in time when doing donuts in the parking lot with pablo's dead body in the car.

Army is my favorite of the Evil Dead movies and all I want someday is a Neca ultimate medieval ash. so if they don't have the license for it I hope they get it soon.

Though I see this more with NECA, I think it's a problem we'll be seeing more and more moving forward. Plastic simply isn't what it used to be, and I've heard several times that the pressure to use less petroleum in it's manufacture is resulting in a more brittle end product. Only the factories in China can really say just how much things have changed, but it's definitely sobering.

Literally right now lol, NECA teased Bttf2 Doc, showed off the TMNT cartoon disguise 4 pack, and now this Ash.

Mezco is doing theirs this weekend, so I guess they're all running in similar time frames.

Lol. Duke....not crumbs (teasers) the meat and potatoes. Would have been nice for someone to do a power point or walk through video with lots of product.

The turtles have been known and shown. I’m not blown away by the back of Doc and accessories put out by other companies, and a bland pic of accessories they’ve done.

If this is the knew toy fair, I shudder.

Yeah, teasers aren't the kind of reveals like we'd get at Toy Fair in mid February. It would be nice to see some full reveals of new product with preorders for some going up soon after. Slowly revealing one figure every few weeks doesn't exactly blow away collectors and spark industry buzz compared to showing a bunch of stuff all at once like at Toy Fair/SDCC in the past. Info/clarification on new lines would be nice too. I'm still waiting to find out:

- Who all they can do in the Universal Monsters line (is Legosi Dracula off the table due to issues with his estate?)
- What their plans are for Hammer Horror and when we'll see the first figures from that
- Is the release of wave 2 of Defenders of Earth strongly hinging on wave 1 sales and if wave 2 will include Garax to complete the full vintage set of 6 characters (since he wasn't shown before with Mandrake and Lothar)
- When are we going to see more of the Lost Tribe Predator updates - we're still waiting on 4 more I think
- What happened to the Gremlins accessory pack teased at last year's Toy Fair that was to include the unhatched cocoon
- When will we get reveals of TMNT movie April, the rumored unmasked Casey, and other movie figs this year
- When or if a TMNT toon Party Wagon is coming, which has been hinted at in Pixel Dan interviews
- When will they reveal figures for The Boys since all the other companies have already been showing their first figs

It sucks that they aren't more forthcoming with info/reveals lately except when Pixel Dan sets up an interview with Randy or when Randy feels generously open on Twitter. The slow trickle of new product reveals has been frustrating for months now.

CDF33248-9282-413C-80DE-197C99B63C8E by Comedian Horseman, on Flickr

Going back to Evil Dead 1? Awesome! I'll take it if it's an accessory pack but I'd love some specific figures from the first film. Here's hoping NECA can snag Army of Darkness next.

As for the rights, something I think might have been worked out because we have a new Evil Dead game coming up with Scott from Evil Dead, Ash from Evil Dead 2, Arthur from Army of Darkness, Pablo AND Kelly from Ash vs. Evil Dead, so they may have worked out some arrangement by now between everyone that has some stake in the license for various Evil Dead films.

NECA's Pacific Rim line had a pretty rough QC record, especially the early figures, so it probably has more to do with that specifically. I was recently messing with my water emergence Jungle Hunter which is like eight years old now and it's still fine.

I’d be surprised if they didn’t have AOD. When AvED was wrapping up, Randy said AOD was probably next to be visited. That was probably 2+ years ago now, might just be waiting for a 30th anniversary next year

Yeah, do the original this year for its 40th and then AoD next year for its 30th. I could see that.

I do hope for an updated facial sculpt. Young Bruce has always been such a tough likeness to capture.

And if they do a non-damaged facial sculpt, I'll take a Brisco County Jr too please!

If this figure is for the first movie, then it better be an all new headsculpt. The films are 6 years apart and the younger Bruce looked a bit different in the first film than he did in Evil Dead 2.