Toy OTD: Wendy's Mighty Mouse - The New Adventures Premiums (1988)

Since I worked on Ralph Bakshi's The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse (and being my first job in animation), I was very excited about any merchandising tie-ins related with the show! Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot to be had (especially by today's standards), and most of it wasn't very good. The best of the lot - and the closest thing to action figures the show got - were the Wendy's kid's meal premiums.

I'm not sure I understand the play concept behind this line. Maybe the suction cups were simply intended to be bases - but it's not really used consistently, as you'll see. They're not exactly action figures, nor are they really window clings (like the enormously popular Garfield items were in the '80s), so the functionality of the toys is somewhat awkwardly conceived.

The character choices for the line make a lot of sense - since it was probably cooked up during the first season, all the toys are first season characters. Fortunately, they're all pretty prominent and popular. I wonder what Wendy's got to see from the show while creating the figures... partial episodes? Model sheets?

The sculpts are decent for a fast food premium. The characters are reasonably on-model, and some of the poses are asymmetrical. Unfortunately, the scale is all over the place: The Cow (the biggest character in the cartoon) is the smallest toy, and Scrappy's scale in the hierarchy is reversed, too. It's a shame, because individually the toys aren't too bad.

The paint work is pretty good, too - the colors are accurate and emphasize the sculpts' details well. The facial paint is reasonably clean and sharp. Mighty Mouse's eyelashes are fairly crisp, and bonus points for the highlight on Bat-Bat's sidekick, Tick.

There's no articulation at all, being the size the toys are, but at least the figures balance okay. I should say the standing figures balance well - which brings us to the bigger flaws.

All of the toys have a suction cup molded onto their feet, ostensibly to stick onto a surface like a dashboard or a window pane. The problem is that some of the figures are sculpted standing upright, while others are horizontal, in a flying pose. As a result, they don't display together well at all. Additionally, the suction cups don't stick very firmly, especially after prolonged use.

Like most fast-food premiums, the packaging is minimal and not all that compelling to look at. It's exactly what you'd expect - clear plastic bags decorated with some single-pass graphics. Inexpensive and practical, which makes sense for giveaways. Each toy did include a trading card of the character, which added a little more color.

Since these figures are over twenty years old, it may take a little while to get the whole set. You can get three of them (Bat-Bat, Pearl & Petey Pate still bagged) on eBay for $4.99 + shipping, and Mighty Mouse sells for $1.29 + shipping on eBid. At the moment, Scrappy isn't for sale online at all - odd, as I'd guess that he's the least popular of the characters. Good luck!

It's Mighty Mouse Drop Day!

That's right, the day I thought would never come has arrived - Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures comes out on DVD! You can get it at Amazon.com for $28.99 + shipping, or at your local DVD retailer.

You'll get all the original episodes, plus a new documentary featuring interviews with lots of the show's creators (including me - it was my first job in animation way back in 1987)!

After twenty-two years of waiting, why wait any longer? Pick up a copy today!

Toy OTD: RFX, John K.'s Political Toys: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton

I'm way overdue for another Toy OTD column, so I thought I'd come back with something special. After a long toy hiatus, John (Ren & Stimpy) Kricfalusi has designed some terrific new figures! I'm not exactly sure why, but John has graced us with cartoony versions of all three candidates from the primaries.

These are simply wonderful figures - the designs are really pushed and fun, the sculpts are great 3-D versions of John's drawings (a big shout-out to sculptors Chris Peterson and Arshak Nazarian), and the paint work is amazing as well!

There's a lot of imaginative, striking color choices to savor. Look at how many colors there are in Hillary's hair alone! Barack's face could've looked very uniform and dull, but there's some airbrushed accents here and there that really go the extra distance. The gold podium is unusual but eye-catching, and Hillary's flocked pantsuit is a great touch!

The toys are generously sized - up to nine inches tall! - so the $24.95 price is a great bargain, considering the quality of the figures.

The John McCain figure is the only disappointment. It's still a good toy, but for me, it's not as successful as the others.

Granted, he's a tough guy to caricature, but the body seems a little generic compared to the other designs. The color work on his face is low on contrast, so the viewer's eye tends to get pulled to the detail on his body instead. It's loaded up with props, which feels a little unecessary, considering how successful the other designs are without them.

Mr. Kricfalusi is a firm believer that toy packaging can be just as entertaining as the toy itself, and I heartily agree! While the boxes for these toys are nicely colored in the old-school style, and loaded with funny drawings and comments (check out the huge American flag with "MADE IN CHINA" printed beneath it!), the package design feels a bit scattershot in approach. The clubhouse and rocketship boxes were so strong in John's early toy work, that I came away feeling like I wanted a unifying theme to pull the current package designs together - like a campaign bandstand or a voting booth decorated with bunting - something that says "presidential election" more clearly.

Regardless, this is an awesome toy line! You can get Barack Obama or John McCain for $24.95 + shipping each, Hillary Clinton for $19.95 + shipping, or all three for $54.99 + shipping at the RFX toys website. Order yours today!


PS - John even had a Huckabee figure in mind... too bad it wasn't to be. Check out this, and a lot of other cool stuff in his interview with Meltdown Comics!

Another Mighty Mouse Rough

Here's the other half of that unfinished T-shirt design. Enjoy!

Mighty Mouse Turns Twenty

Well, Ralph Bakshi's version of him, anyway. Yup, that's right, the second season (or half-season) of Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures was created in the summer of 1988. It was my first job in animation, and a pretty good one, at that! A bunch of future big shots worked on it, including Andrew Stanton, Bruce Timm, Rich Moore, John Kricfalusi, Vicki Jensen, and Jim Reardon. Tom Minton wrote some really funny scripts for the show, too!

Ralph let us vent our spleens on television, and the result was wildly uneven, but it had its moments. I got to get a lot of stuff out of my system early, so it wasn't as big a deal when I couldn't do it elsewhere. I got to trot out my smart-ass obsessions with UPA design, Hanna-Barbera kidvid, Warner Brothers and M-G-M shorts. I didn't know what I was doing, so I got to make a lot of mistakes, learn from them, and get paid at the same time! It was crazy and rewarding, but I'm glad I don't have to do that now. I remember nights at home with my hand cramping up as I cleaned up character designs. TV animation schedules are rough!

Unfortunately, the rights are owned by five different people who don't exactly like each other, so they'll probably never come out on DVD. Ultimately, that's not a tragedy - in the context of what was going on in animation at the time, it was fun and experimental, but compared to Adult Swim shows today, it's pretty tame stuff.

The drawing I'm featuring here was done long after the show ended, in 1991 - I had wanted to make an anniversary crew tee back in the day, but I never finished it. It was going to picture the Cow and Bat-Bat squaring off - I'm not sure how Mighty Mouse was going to figure into the design. It might be fun to do, if I could finish it before the year is out!

If you're a fan, bust out those VHS dubs (or bootleg DVDs), pop on your favorite episode, and remember. Thanks for watching it the first time around!

PS - Ralph's releasing a career retrospective book that'll hit stores this April. I can't wait to see it!

Toy OTD: Spumco Three Stooges Dolls (1997)

When Ren & Stimpy was riding high, Spumco had the clout to make toys. That meant, for a brief time, many Spumco characters and staff favorites took vinyl form. And that meant - Three Stooges toys, that appear to have been designed by John Kricfalusi himself!

As you might expect, these toys were done in the classic manner of the late fifties/early sixties, (I'm assuming) John's favorite period of merchandising. This line consisted of three variants - a large trio (sold individually), a smaller version (sold as a packaged set), and another small set with the guys dressed in harem outfits, and as golfers. I'm assuming that the costumes references to one of the shorts or films.

These toys are pretty fancy - fully clothed in tiny outfits, rooted hair, soft-sculpture hands (in poses yet!), and nicely sculpted/painted vinyl heads. The caricatures are really pushed and fun, but still recognizable as the iconic comedy team. The scale of the suit cloth (even on the smaller dolls) is quite good, but there is a little awkwardness in the fit due to the Velcro fasteners. both sizes are fine, but I prefer the small dolls, both in their proportions and shelf economy. The major difference between them is that the larger dolls have vinyl shoes, while the smaller versions have plush ones.

I bought this set some time after it was released, at Golden Apple Comics for about forty dollars. I'm sure they're long sold out in stores, but you can get the small golfer set for about that much on eBay, the small plainclothes set is up for auction (currently $18 + shipping), and a large Curly doll is starting at $5.00 + shipping. Keep your eyes open for the version you want - good luck!

Coming Soon: Cool Tenacious D Toys!

A great team-up between John Kricfalusi, Thunderdog Studios and STRANGEco. I love the retro colors and oversprayed paint work. Can't wait to buy 'em!

Thanks to Vinyl Pulse for the photos.