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Mike: I'm here with Tom, Matt, and Dan from ToyFare Magazine! My first question is: The toy industry: Where is it now, where is it going?
Matt: That's a weighted question. Right now, speaking from experience, I can say everyone in the toy industry is living, breathing, and eating Star Wars. Everybody is keeping an eye on what's happening with the new product. It's getting fans excited, it's bringing people into the stores. And it's getting us excited. I know we're all anticipating the second wave. We were all there May 3rd on line, very excited to get the new toys. So where the industry's going is banking on the success of Star Wars toys. And, on top of that the other trends we're following are the wrestling craze and the Pokéman craze, which is right behind Star Wars. It gets a little bit different audience, but still generates excitement.
Dan: Another thing I think is going to be big are Japanese toys. Japanese things like the giant Gundam robots are going to be coming over. I think they are going to be really big in the next couple of months.
Tom: I think Star Wars is going to be big for the next six years, at least. And the market in general seems pretty healthy, but I don't know about the comic book market-I'm not sure it's still sustaining all the heat that it had from about a year ago. Other than that I think everything else is "peachy-keen"!
Dan: Variant toys seem to be a thing of the past. They're fading away. They're not so prevalent as they were a couple of years ago where every toy that came out three or four different repaints.
Mike: Have we seen the last of the classic Star Wars or is there going to be resurfacing?
Tom: I hope it sticks around. I like all that old stuff and I'm sure a lot of fans appreciate seeing those characters. It would be a good idea for Hasbro to keep making them. From what we've heard so far, since you can only find Episode One stuff now, there's been a bit of a price spike in back market prices for the old classic stuff, so I think there's a demand there.
Matt: I'm wondering how much of the older classic stuff is going to turn more collector-oriented now since they're going to gear up most of the new product for the younger generation buying toys. Are they going to focus more of the older movie toys on just this market? I think once the hype of Episode I dies down, I wouldn't be surprised to see a resurgence in classic figures again. Maybe even combining them with the Episode I toys-an "Obi-Wan: Old and New" two-pack. Something like that. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Mike: They've done most of the main characters already, but there are still some holes I see that I'm still waiting for them to come out with-they'll come around to it sooner or later.
Dan: There are some three-packs coming out, like the Rebel Pilots.
Mike: Some disposable Ewoks would be nice.
Matt: Plus there's the COMM-Tech chip that they haven't used with any classic figures. If they're going to push the COMM-Tech chip along maybe they'll make older figures with them.
Dan: I want a Vader that can say "I am your Father!"
*laughter*
Mike: What about direct market vs. mass market? Do you think the direct market will be a viable source for collectors? Seems like it is right now-collectors who are looking for stuff that they can't find in a retail store will be looking at comic book shops.
Tom: Toy Biz and Hasbro are using comic stores now. That's a good sign-especially for someone like M.A.C. or Graffiti who just do direct market only-that the bigger companies are looking into it now. I'm sure there's a healthy market for all of them.
Matt: I hope so, cause it'll help the comic book market a little bit. It'll keep our comic book stores in business.
Mike: I'm hopeful, but I'm concerned about the prices. I had to pay $20 for a Ghost in the Shell figure through my comic shop to get it. It's the only way I could've gotten it, but do I want to do it again? I liked the movie and all but...
Dan: Yeah, it can be kinda costly.
Mike: So...ToyFare and Wizard. Are you guys siblings? You're not exactly the same people, but some of you are, right? Are you guys competitive?
Dan: If Wizard Entertainment has a funny bone, it would be ToyFare. *laughter*
Matt: We all work for Wizard also. We do some writing for them, they do some writing for us. It's a healthy rivalry. I think we're each other's biggest competitors.
Mike: It's a healthy sibling rivalry?
Matt: Yeah, and in addition to that, we make a point to play up that rivalry not only inside the magazine, but outside too. We always get blamed for pranks that we may or may not have done to their office.
Dan: More than likely may have done.
*laughter*
Mike: So, that April Fool's prank...? [see Wizard #92]
Matt: Yeah, that may or may not have been us.
Tom: We're not sure who did that. We're trying to track that culprit down.
Matt: Yes, we're trying to bring them to justice and help Wizard out.
Dan: Sounds like O.J. on the golf course. "I'm going to find the killer!"
*laughter*
Matt: It's a good thing. Toy Chest in Wizard is written by Tom. For a lot of the insert booklets we use Andrew Kardon, Managing Editor over at Wizard, who writes that and a lot of other stuff like our Austin Powers feature [see ToyFare #23]. He's one of our bigger freelance writers. We trade writers back and forth.
Mike: So did Mike Myers really say those lines in your Austin Powers interview?
Dan: Uh...yeah...all of them! *laughter*
Mike: One of my biggest concerns: shelf capacity. Comic books you can store in a box, but toys are a little bit harder to store. Do you think there's a saturation point in this market where collectors will say, "I've got toys all over my house. I can't go anywhere further. I'm not going to collect any more."
Tom: I think you can never really have enough toys. That's my feeling about it.
Matt: I think part of the fun of toys is it plays off of the nostalgia of a certain property. Naturally, there's going to be a rotating system of what those properties are. Because as generations get older and older, the kids of today will find nostalgia for Crash Bandicoot. Whereas people our age just think those toys look cool. There will always be kids who'll want to play with toys. For us it was He-Man, but for now, it's Power Rangers. I wouldn't pick up a Power Rangers toy ever, but I know my He-Man collection and Castle Grayskull are still in my attic.
Tom: So in 20 years from now for kids it'll be Power Rangers nostalgia?
Matt: I wouldn't be surprised if there's a Power Rangers craze in like 15 or 20 years.
Dan: The 10 year olds of today turn 25...
Matt: Yeah. They'll take over our jobs, y'know.
Tom: I think so long as there's cool toys out, kids will buy them. I know the second they make, I dunno...Blade Runner toys, I'm gonna be there to buy them.
Mike: I'd really want to see Road Warrior-I feel it could be a killer line: Max, Master Blaster, the Humongous, Feral boy...
Matt: One of the things we want to do is an article called "Movie Toys You Always Wanted to See." We'll not only write about the toys we want to see but actually get the toys made-NOT for sale! Like our Jek Porkins figure, one of my favorites. [see ToyFare #8 "Dream Toys"]
Dan: We got him hanging up in the office...you gotta love him!
Mike: What do you guys collect?
Matt: Star Wars, Final Fantasy, a little bit of everything. I'll pick up the main DC guys, like a really cool Batman and Robin. I got the Austin Powers stuff from McFarlane. I like those a lot. I'm looking forward to their Sleepy Hollow line. The more horror-oriented stuff I don't necessarily get-I got the Freddy and Jason figures just because they look cool. Oh, I love Transformers. I got a lot of those.
Dan: I collect Star Wars and Final Fantasy also. I was a big fan of the Metal Gear Solid figures that came out. I've also gotten into the whole Japanese toy thing. Gundam robots and models by Bandai from Japan-that stuff is really cool. So that's taken up most of the space in my room lately.
Tom: I'm mostly into Star Wars toys too and I really like the Bone figures that came out. I wish they'd do more of those. Occasional McFarlane stuff, like Spawn guys that looks cool. I'm not a really big Spawn comic fan, but I think the toys are really cool. I'll pick out the best looking figure from a line and buy that one. And, I also like the alternative superhero stuff like Madman or Grendel.
Matt: I gotta add the Mario Kart figurse-those are my favorite toys right now. I hope they do every one of those guys. All eight of them! I don't know why-it's the silliest game, and the figures look cool as hell.
Mike: What were your favorite toys as a kid?
Dan: Star Wars was the first toys I remember really collecting. Then as I got a little older, I got really into He-Man toys, and of course Transformers and G.I. Joe was just huge in my collection. I also really liked the Micronauts as a kid. That's about the main stuff.
Matt: For me it was pretty much Transformers-I have so many of those, it's ridiculous. Star Wars-I think I have every one of the old collection. They're probably not in good shape, though. I have a few Megos, but that was when I was really young. G.I. Joe I got just to fight with my Star Wars figures, but Star Wars always won. I didn't get into Micronauts too much but I had that big Mazinga guy that shot missiles out of his arm from Shogun Warriors! That guy kicked ass.
Tom: This is probably going to sound like everyone else's list, but Star Wars, Transformers and I think I had like every G.I. Joe up until that whole Serpentor thing.
Matt: Aw! I loved Serpentor!
Dan: Aw! Man!
Tom: I hated that stuff! Sucked. I had every one one up until that point and then I said "No more!" Also, I had some Megos when I was really, really young. I was like two or something. Guess I was the wrong age group for that stuff.
Dan: We all kinda missed the boat. We're all like 25.
Tom: Yeah, I probably destroyed a lot of Megos when I was a kid, so I don't really remember them. I do remember having the Joker-Batman bridge playset. It had the ol' dynamite plunger type-thing. You press down and it would blow up the bridge. It was very cool. I wish I could find that.
Mike: I guess Star Wars was my first. My mom came home with the Star Wars Early Bird specials-visionary! She said "I think this may be collectable someday." Then I got the Micronauts. Interchanging everything. Had some G.I. Joes. We had the G.I. Joe/Micronaut Wars, the G.I. Joe/Star Wars Wars. Then in the '80s I just stopped. I really liked the Transformers cartoons, but I didn't collect the toys. I didn't collect anything again until I saw the first X-Men figures on the shelf. I thought, "I wish they made that character" which got me into customizing.
Dan: That got me back into it too, when Toy Biz started making that stuff. I was in college and I thought, "finally there are cool toys again!"
Tom: Yeah, Power of the Force brought me back into it again. Oh, and I forgot to add LEGO from my childhood! I was very into LEGO. I had buckets and buckets of LEGOs . It was sick! Mattl See, I liked LEGO, but I needed someone to put it all together for me.
Mike: Matt, your answering machine message: Is it really Anthony Daniels?
Matt: Yes! I interviewed him and we talked for about two hours. And we got along, so I figured I'd ask him -and he said "sure". I taped it on a tape recorder but when I tried to play it back it was too long and it sounded muffled. So I had to call him back and ask him to do it again! I gave him the code to punch into my voice mail and he actually did it! It's pretty funny! Anyone who's heard it a bunch of times gets so sick of hearing it.
Dan: I heard James Earl Jones will record a message for you if you donate money to a charity.
Mike: You call and hear "This is Bell Atlantic!" So, what other famous people have you gotten to meet through ToyFare?
Matt: A bunch of wrestlers. We just spoke with Mankind and the Rock yesterday. Kinda cool. Dan got body slammed by...
Dan: Shane Douglas!
Matt: ...the ECW wrestler. [see "Editorial" in ToyFare #21]
Dan: He had me over his head, he was throwing me around...
Matt: Who else?
Dan: I met Jenny McCarthy and Dean Cain at a wrestling event at the Nitro Grill restaurant.
Tom: I met H.R. Puffnstuff.
*laughter*
Tom: He's famous!
Matt: We meet a lot of famous people who like toys and who'll do a guest column for us. Like Seth Green's going to be doing one for us. He talked about in Entertainment Weekly how he customizes figures, and gave them out as Christmas presents. We saw that, so we tracked him down and he said he'll write us a guest column. All we have to do is pay him with a couple of weird figures like Issac from the Love Boat. It's really cool! It's exciting to hear that these famous people are fans of the magazine. Like even Alex Ross said "I loved the last 'Twisted Mego Theater' " while I was just thinking to myself "I loved Marvels" and all his other works. And Bruce Campbell also did something for us.
Mike: Did he come to you?
Matt: A bunch come to us. Others we track down. It's a little bit of both. We're close enough to New York that anyone who's in the city can pop up in the office. Plus we do some press junkets every once in a while. You don't really meet the person there, but you try to get them to come up on another day.
Mike: What license would you really like to see? Anything-TV, movies...
Tom: Blazing Saddles.
Dan: Matrix
Matt: I hated that movie. I thought it was way over rated. But I can understand why people would want those figures. There was a video game I was just thinking of...
Tom: Parappa the Rapper
Dan: Yeah, Parappa figures would be cool.
Matt: I would buy those in a second.
Tom: How about Abe's Odyssey?
Matt: Yeah, Abe's Odyssey also.
Tom: There should be more DC toys.
Dan: Justice Society would be cool.
Mike: Any Marvels? Excalibur? Rachel...Meggan
Tom: They should do a new Fantastic Four, like really good versions of them. They could even do different eras of the team-different costumes.
Mike: How about a Mr. Fantastic who really stretches?
Tom: Oh yeah! Also, I want Cerebus toys, but I'd probably be the only one buying them.
Dan: Brady Bunch action figures
Matt: Boo!
Dan: And Gilligan's Island.
Tom: They made Gilligan's Island!
Mike: How could they make only three guys? I mean, they're like a team!
Tom: How about Strange Brew figures -something off-beat like that?
[sidenote: Strange Brew figures ARE being made by McFarlane!]
Dan: Pulp Fiction figures would be awesome!
Mike: How about Seinfeld?
Matt: Yes! That would be awesome!
Tom: It would be really weird, though. I mean, it's just a "guy" figure.
Dan: Well, it's the show about nothing, so it's toys that do nothing. *laughter*
Matt: And of course the ToyFare staff figures. Everyone wants those.
Tom: Yeah, lots of demand for those!
Dan: In our next issue [see Issue #25 on sale now], the Homemade Heroes contest is going to be "Design One of Us"! The prize is you get a figure made of yourself.
Matt: Digger from Art Asylum will sculpt the winner of the contest.
Mike: I loved the Star Wars figures of you guys [see "Masthead" in ToyFare #23]
Tom: You can see the origin of that in the office on one of our markerboards. That's how it all started! Someone drew a caricature of me, of my head, and then someone else drew a Jabba the Hutt body on it. So we wrote "Palmer the Hutt" underneath it and it just grew from there. Everyone had different characters, different match-ups. People drew on that marker board for a good month or so until it was full of little drawings. People would run into the office, writing down names, drawing pictures.
Dan: What's great is that we got that markerboard for the sole purpose of actually using it for work and its turned into this Star Wars haven-there's no room for anything else! It's been up there for like six months now and I don't think it's ever coming down. I had a dream that someone erased it and I flipped out!
Tom: Also, we put a poll up on the board every week-we'll just ask people random questions.
Dan: It's usually offensive stuff.
Tom: Should we tell 'em about the rainbow...?
Matt: No!
Dan: No!
[Note: Apparently, this is a ToyFare inside joke]
Tom: But a lot of our ideas spring up around the office while we're joking around and we'll say "Ooh! Write that down!"
Matt: What's good about the office is that we're all about the same age, about 24 or 25, and we all get along both inside the office and outside the office. We run things kinda loose unless we're right before closing-then we'll get regimented. But until the deadline crunch, a lot of the time we're goofing around, we're shooting things off people's desk, throwing things at each other...asking each other really dumb-ass questions.
Mike: A lot of late hours?
Matt: Near closing time sometimes. Toy Fair in February was a nightmare.
Dan: A nightmare...
Tom: Killer.
Matt: We'd come back from Toy Fair, work all night, come home, go to bed, wake up, go back to the show...And we did that for 2 full weeks!
Tom: Our deadline for that month was like, right after Toy Fair.
Dan: Yeah, it worked out perfectly!
Matt: Yeah, great planning. Beyond that, we're at a point where we are nice and ahead.
Dan: A well oiled machine.
Matt: Yeah, we were just talking about how our covers are done through October. It's unheard of. Our exclusives are done through the end of the year.
Mike: Why do you care about a figure? Could there have been a ToyFare magazine 10 years ago?
Matt: It's nostalgia. It's all about that.
Dan: And imagination.
Tom: It's also what you have an affinity for. If you're a Star Wars fan, you'll probably be into the Star Wars toys. Even if you're not a big toy fan, you're gonna think they're cool. I think it's also the appeal of holding stuff. As a kid you're always told to look with your eyes, not your hands. But nobody listens to that! You have to pick stuff up!
Matt: Instead of certain types of house ornaments, some people have toys. I think it's better than having a weird impressionist painting or a statue...
Dan: Plus you get to bring things home with you. If you're one of the few people that liked Jar Jar Binks, you can bring him home with you and every time you look at him you can say "Oh yeah! Jar Jar Binks!" Also there the collector aspect too. Sure, there are people in toys for speculative purposes and we understand that. So we're not only serving people who just love figures and are really nostalgic about them, but also those collectors who want to know what they've got, and what it's worth and are cataloging everything they own.
Mike: What's your favorite part about working at ToyFare?
Dan: The best part is it's such a collaborative effort. There's creative freedom amongst ourselves, so really it's the ability to sit around with a bunch of guys you're buddies with and what you think of together comes out on paper. It's so rewarding to be able to think of something, conceive it and then three months down the road be at a convention and have someone come up to you and say, "Hey! That was really funny!" I think the best part is the rewarding nature of publishing-and these two guys! I love you, man!
*laughter*
Tom: I'm really into playing around with words and getting a reaction out of people-I don't mean by trying to shock people. But like Dan said, I think it's cool to write something and have people react to it. Also, after all the hard work you do, and then finally a month later to have that thing in your hands...that's a neat feeling. You can say, "I did this!-We did this!" Everybody pitched in and helped out and made it work. You get that feeling every month, which is pretty amazing. It's kinda cool having a weird relative come up to you and say "Hey! I saw your magazine at a 7-11!" That's kinda cool.
Dan: Sometimes we'll get a letter from somebody thousands and thousands of miles away and somebody in a completely different culture is relating to what we wrote. They feel the same way about these toys and these characters as we do.
Tom: Also the chicks. It's all about chicks.
Dan: They swarm the office like bees!
Matt: For me it's the power! Just kidding! No, it's about the fan reaction. I love it. Ever since we did that thing with my head on an action figure body [see "Tour of ToyFare" in ToyFare #20], people are recognizing me at conventions and going, "I love the magazine!" Tom and I were in Denver at the Star Wars Celebration and people out of the blue came up to us and are like, "Hey! You're the guys from ToyFare! Good job, man!" And they shake your hand. It's almost become a cult phenomenon in a sense, and it's really exciting. All we're doing is having fun ourselves and we're trying to portray that as best we can. I love watching Dan read the new issue when it comes out...he laughs at everything-I mean, he's laughing at his own writing! *laughter*
Dan: I'm my own biggest fan!
Tom: The great thing is that you'll make some little offhand comment in the magazine and not think much about it. But odds are somebody will read that and find so much more in it.
Matt: I love watching a person read ToyFare and start laughing. It's just the best feeling!
Tom: Plus we get to see all the toys early-we see prototypes! This is a toy fan's dream.
Matt: I know, I'm geekin' out! I love it!
Dan: We get to see everything!
Matt: A friend last night said "You're like that guy in 'Big?' " and I thought, "Huh! I never really thought about it!" I guess kinda sorta!
Tom: We're also like the Lost Boys from Peter Pan.
Dan: Yeah, we never grow up!
Matt: Not many people get to be a kid all day.
Mike: That's awesome.
Matt: All we need are more free stuff from companies, more video games...
Tom: More Pork Sausages!
Dan: And chocolate chip cookies.
Matt: and more chocolate chip cookies for Dan. *laughter*
Mike: I think this is a good point to end! Thanks for everything, guys!