We’re almost done with the nigh-insurmountable mountain of Toy Fair 2008 coverage (here, here, here and here), but no action figure, TV or movie geek could be satiated without a detailed mention of everything that happened over at the Mezco and NECA booths during The Fair.

[Click here for the full Mezco gallery at our Community!]

Now, I’ve been a dedicated Mezco fan since I first saw their Hellboy movie figures back in 2004. The movie hadn’t yet come out, and comic-based movies (and figures based on comic movies) have had a history of, well, sucking - but the Hellboy figures were outstanding items, and the movie turned out to be one of my favorite films. This year, for the first time in 4 years, Mezco’s booth had new Hellboy movie stuff for me to ogle.

Two waves of 6” figures are planned for Hellboy 2 : The Golden Army, due in theaters on July 11th. Like the figures from the first movie, they’ll be fully articulated and sculpted impeccably. Included in the first wave will be Hellboy, Abe Sapien, and finally, Liz Sherman, who was tragically absent from earlier figures. I have a thing for Selma Blair, and that thing is MY LOVE. Also in this first wave will be Johann Krauss, and bad guys Wink & Prince Nuada. The second wave (which was forbidden from photography, but looked stunning) will include a wounded Hellboy & a t-shirt Hellboy, as well as the beautiful Princess Nuada, the horrific Goblin (who is attached to a rickety wooden cart of some kind), and the huge, ominous Angel of Death. It’s a truly amazing collection of figures that completely blew me away. Even as stand-alone monsters, they’re really, really great.

Mezco is adding onto their usual offerings with small busts of Hellboy and the Right Hand of Doom, 18” figures of Hellboy and Abe, and at least eight 3.75” figures. These tiny, Star Wars-sized figures will have all of the articulation and sculpts of the larger figures, so nothing is lost in translation - an amazing feat that other companies would do well to learn from. Mezco revealed to us that while the tiny figures were cheaper in materials cost, the cost for the molds to cast the small figures was actually greater than the cost for the larger figure molds, due to the intricate details. There’s a certain production number somewhere in the middle where the cost justifies the product, and with all of these companies making 3.75” figures this year, I’m curious exactly how it balances.

Of course, Hellboy wasn’t the only license of note, as Mezco also has the Heroes TV show license. None of these figures have been released yet, but Mezco is already three waves deep into the sculpting, and the likenesses are really staggering. I’ve commented here before on the strange, imperfect likenesses that Mezco released as their PR photos, walking a weird line between photorealism and comic-styled artwork. As it turns out, you just need to see them in person. They’ve applied every ounce of accuracy and skill that made me love the Hellboy figures to these Heroes figures. Forget everything you’ve heard about the figures not being perfect likenesses - they ARE perfect - and the character selection couldn’t be better.

The first set of 5 includes Hiro Nakamura, Claire Bennet, Sylar, Peter Petrelli and Mohinder Suresh. Hopefully, the varied images in our gallery here will clarify some of the misperceptions about the figures that I, too, was guilty of. Keep on clicking around though, as ten never-before-seen figures were also revealed! Included in Wave Two are (and I’ll try to say this with as few spoilers as possible), Horn-Rimmed Glasses guy, Niki & Jessica Sanders (with alternate heads), Matt Parkman & Molly Walker, Mr. Linderman, and Future Peter. Wave Three will include Nathan Petrelli, The Haitian, another version of Hiro from season 2, Elle Bishop, and another character from season 2 that’ll pretty much blow your mind if you haven’t been watching loyally as I have.

Mezco rounds out this license with 9” figures of Sylar, Niki / Jessica, Peter and Claire. Also, like every other company’s been doing with toys this year, wait for a 3.75” line. Sylar vs. Darth Vader vs. Serpentor vs. Doctor Doom isn’t very far off now!

It’s also worth mentioning that Mezco is on their 15th series of Living Dead Dolls - the cute-grotesque series of dolls that pays homage to some of history’s most infamous killers and movie murderers. I suppose they’re all either zombies or about to kill someone, but they’re a very popular collection of higher-end dolls that tend to be collected by cute goth girls - so I can’t argue. The less said about ‘Gangsta Babies’, the better. Seriously - I don’t want to get drive-by’d from a stroller.

NECA also had a presence at Toy Fair. This company seems to pick up an odd assortment of movie-related licenses of all genres, but with a focus on fantasy and horror above all else. In the past, they’ve made action figures for Nightmare Before Christmas (a line that just ended, sadly), Planet Terror, 300, Reservoir Dogs and A Christmas Story. Despite the Christmas Story figure line being ostensibly dead for quite a few years now, NECA has just revealed an additional figure for the line in the form of bully Scut Farkus, sculpted in a perfect, creepy sneer.

[See the full NECA Gallery at our Community by clicking here!]

NECA’s Harry Potter line continues, and likely will continue throughout the release of every foreseeable movie, with figures that include all of the wizard kids, Voldemort, Snape, Dumbledore, the Malfoys, Bellatrix, Mad-Eye Moody and even a handful of the fantasy creatures. I’m no Harry Potter fan, nor have I personally seen the movies, but the figures are another example of the great likenesses that NECA captures for cult-favorite characters. There’s only so much I can personally geek-out over. I need to set limits so that I can be a functional adult - it’s nothing personal against Harry Potter.

Speaking of cult-favorite, my personal highlight at the NECA booth was the figure of Beetlejuice, perfectly rendered with a chubby Michael Keaton face and stained, striped suit. It’s the first time we’ve ever had a Beetlejuice figure that wasn’t from a bizarrely tangential animated show. He’s a great movie ‘monster’ as it stands, and I’d love to see figures of Lydia and the families with a build-a-sandworm - though a few less-than-great figures of the ghost family were released some years back. Let’s just start over. And next time you guys make Ghostbusters figures, make some of the Ghostbusters, okay?

Also an unusual license for NECA, but a great one, is the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This isn’t the movie license, or even the cartoon license - this is the license to make figures from the original comic books by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. Believe it or not, these original comics were a fairly complex drama, and drawn in a very different style than what ended up being animated in the 90s. These comic-accurate figures will all come with red masks and different weapons, and be sculpted to look ‘drawn’, with all of the original ink lines intact. April O’Neil will also join the line (but was forbidden from photography), and a series of black & white turtles (colored like the original comics) will also be released. They will all come with interlocking bases to form a scene together.

In terms of even more entertainment properties, Amok Time is a newcomer company with some interesting licenses. Not only are they making 12” figures from the original Lost in Space, but they’re doing the same for the original Battlestar Galactica, and Gort and Klaatu from ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’. Any of these will stand proudly right next to your high-end Sideshow Collectibles monsters, with a few additional B-movie monsters round out the collection, from movies I’ve never heard of, but look visually entertaining.

[Click here for a gallery of toys from Amok Time in our Community!]

The highlight at Amok Time’s booth was the 12” Elvira figure, which sported another perfect likeness, and would absolutely go well in any ironic monster display. I’ve been told that the figure will be solicited in late 2008, so there’s going to be a wait to even order it. On the bawdy end of things, Amok Time is producing bookends in the likeness of adult film star Seka, as well as a 12” figure of the same. True to form, all of these things, even the bookends, will have removable clothing. Two Bettie Page figures are also being produced, to the delight of pin-up fans everywhere.

Stay tuned for one more post about Toy Fair 2008, in which I summarily round up the rest of the awesomeness and finally put these life-consuming toys behind me until next year.

I wasn’t expecting it to happen, folks - it genuinely caught me unaware. As I wandered the hallowed halls of the remodeled Toys ‘R’ Us this past weekend, waiting for my niece to pick out a new set of Barbie clothes for her own vast collection, they finally reclaimed my soul.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

And as I walked with my set of Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michelangelo action figures to the counter, it felt comfortable. Like falling into the world’s biggest bed, and then being surrounded by affectionate kittens and an endless supply of hot cocoa. I tried to rationalize myself out of buying them - “if they don’t have the whole team, I’ll leave them here”, “I don’t have the room”, “what are you, 10?”…. but as I dug through the pegs and revealed that final red-masked Turtle at the back of the shelf, I knew that they were coming home with me. As I remarked to my family as I reunited with them in the Littlest Pet Shop section, “You left me alone for too long.”

Of course, these aren’t the exact same Turtles of yore - these are the digitally-animated Turtles of 2007, which are fundamentally similar in everything from color to expression to weaponry, fortunately. TMNT has always been a goofy franchise - never taking itself too seriously (except for the live Radio City Music Hall musical performance, which caused me to cringe so hard that I actually turned inside-out), and perhaps that’s the enduring appeal. Four Turtles with distinct personalities, bumbling villains, fighting action, and action figures produced in mass, ridiculous quantities. Secret agent Turtles, Star Trek Turtles, Wild West Turtles, Turtle Trolls… yes, the variety of basic Turtles was even more ridiculous than the Hydro-Mech-Squirrel-Ketchup-Assault Batman figures out there - but they made a lot more sense, because they weren’t really supposed to make sense in the first place.

TMNT has accompanied the modern resurgence of key toy and cartoon properties from the 1980s and early 1990s. So far, we’ve had re-released He-Man, GI Joe, Transformers and Star Wars figures, all using similar or identical molds to those used in their original production, and even using nearly identical packaging. While Ninja Turtles have not been yet re-released in their original, bulky form, a vast majority of the original figures are still very inexpensive, if not well-played with. Playmates has taken the figural helm once again and produced a copious amount of figures based on the current animated show - which has already lasted over five successful seasons, and into the aforementioned animated movie, making it perhaps the most vibrantly enduring television cartoon property of all time.

Ninja Turtles were some of the first heroic drawings I made, and some of the most frequently played video games in the stash, even if I could never make it past the swimming level with the deadly pink electro-seaweed. In fact, my earliest action figure was an extra Casey Jones that my friend and neighbor got as a birthday present and passed along to me. We’d spend long hours sending the giant eyeball atop the spherical Technodrome rolling down the pop-out ramp, using Turtles for target practice. And still, I never considered myself a serious collector or aficionado at the time.

It wasn’t until I brought these Turtles home, opened them up, and displayed them in fighting poses on my drawing table that I realized that I actually have a TMNT collection already. Original figures, a handful of newer figures, Pez dispensers, video games, some video tapes, trading cards… when those four sets of two-toed footprints were no longer walking next to me on that beach, well… they were probably in the Turtle Van, but they were still there.

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