Lizard's Rant

To commemorate the Giants historical Super Bowl victory McFarlane is producing an ultimate team set of the New York Giants team. Featured in their white Super Bowl jerseys, this set also differs from the original Giants set by replacing Shockey with Boss and Finn with Hedgecock. Like the other team sets, I wish the figures were a bit bigger than 2 inches, but you can’t argue with the cool packaging and ~$20 price. The set is due in stores nationwide in October.

McFarlane made an announcement the other day that they will be changing their packaging (again), this time to better showcase the figures.

This new format will give our designers more freedom to create new and unique sports poses without size limitations. For example, a pitcher can be fully extended in a pitch follow-through, or a receiver can be diving for a football with arms fully extended - without the worry imposed by previous size restrictions.

In the past, we have had to “cut” some figures to fit in the packaging, thus requiring some assembly before displaying. Now, collectors who prefer to leave their figures in packaging will have an improved, more inclusive display.

Here are the two prototypes they unveiled:

This is a GREAT move in my opinion. One of the great advantages (probably the only one) of Starting Lineups over McFarlane’s is that they displayed much, much better. Now McFarlane is wising up and realizing that most people don’t open the packaging and want something that doesn’t look like a torso and collection of limbs.

Now, the other announcement (that’s buried a bit in the article) is that they are changing the way they release chase figures.

A “chase” is an alternate version of the advertised figure, usually involving a different paint scheme. These chase figures are mixed randomly into our casepacks - and are sought by collectors for their rarity and additional value on the secondary market.

In the last few years, we’ve been making chase figures for about half the figures in a typical Sports Picks lineup. Starting with July’s NFL Legends 4 lineup, every new figure will have a chase version, but the rare versions will be more subtle - less likely to get picked off the shelf except by the informed collector who knows what he’s looking for.

Our traditional-style chase figures (alternate jerseys, throwback uniforms) will be added to future lineups, as a way to expand our series depth (from six to eight or nine players) while offering collectors the opportunity to purchase a figure they might have had trouble locating under the previous guidelines.

For example, the Joe Montana figure in this July’s NFL Legends 4 will be released in a red San Francisco 49ers jersey, with the chase figure featuring a tweak of that jersey. A re-painted Kansas City Chiefs version of the Joe Montana figure is scheduled as an additional figure to ship with our NFL Legends 5 series in the summer of 2009. By making the Chiefs figure available as part of next year’s lineup (rather than the chase version in this year’s line) we will make that figure available to more collectors, and also be able to ship solid-packed cases to stores that sell Chiefs merchandise strongly.

Eh. I personally don’t like it. Yes, it makes every figure available to everyone…but wasn’t part of the fun with the Tom Brady snow figure or Marshall Faulk Colts figure that you couldn’t find it in stores? I think this move will take a lot of fun out of the collecting for the hard core McFarlane sports collector.

I meant to post about this last week when the news came out, but it slipped my mind. McFarlane announced a Micky Mantle and Roger Maris Two-Pack commemorating the famed Summer of ‘61. The two pack has both Yankees in their road jerseys.

I wasn’t alive back in ‘61, but I’ve always been fascinated with the story of that season. It has so much allure: everyone rooting for Mantle but Maris breaking the record, Yankee fans rooting against Maris because they love Ruth, the asterisk next to the home run total because Ruth played less games, and even Maris’ hair falling out from the stress.

Definitely worth a pickup for any Yankees fan. Reminds me of the Mantle/Maris SLU I have lying around somewhere….

Last week McFarlane announced that voting has opened for their Fifth Annual Action Figure Awards - a brilliant marketing tactic to re-ignite interest in the best figures of 2007. You can vote for the sports figures over on the forums, but the one disappointment that I have with the voting is that they don’t show you pictures of the figures you’re voting on. Now, with most figures you can just peruse the Spawn.com site and find a quick pic to refresh your memory. But for arguably the coolest vote - Best Chase/Surprise Sports Figure - there are no such photos available. So I thought it was a good opportunity to piece together pictures for everyone to see the best of the best chase figures that McFarlane has put out in 2007. It took some work (special thanks to Google Image search and eBay), but I pieced together pics from all 9 figures:

Mariano Rivera 2 (expanded bullpen wall - MLB 18)

Ozzie Smith (Gold Glove super chase - Cooperstown 4)

Dominique Wilkins (All-Star uniform - NBA Legends 3)

Tony Romo (Home alternate uniform - NFL 15)

Steve McNair (retro Oilers uniform - NFL 16)

Markus Naslund 2 (retro Canucks uniform - NHL 14)

Cam Neely (vintage Canucks uniform - NHL Legends 6)

12-inch Walter Payton (blue jersey chase)

Jason Terry (throwback uniform - NBA 13)

Now that you’re properly educated, go vote!

It’s not coming out until April of 2008, but I have to believe that the McFarlane MLB 21 Daisuke Matsuzaka figure will be the SportsPick of the year…possibly the most popular McFarlane baseball figure ever (of course, that’s not saying much considering how relatively unpopular baseball figures are compared to the other sports). Unveiled the other day, photographs show that the figure is vintage McFarlane - they have a way of capturing motions that are distinctly unique to the athlete, and Dice-K is no exception.

All year long Dice-K’s cards have been some of the most sought after rookie cards, and his first McFarlane piece should follow suit. The only thing McFarlane has working against it is the fact that they may have waited a bit too long and missed “Dice-K fever”. Of course, with Red Sox nation and those rabid Japanese fans, it’s hard to see the figure as anything other than one of the most anticipated McFarlane’s of ‘08.

Last week McFarlane came fast and furious with SportsPicks announcements for 2008 in their news section. Here’s what really stood out to me:

• NHL 17 will include Joe Sakic in a retro Nordiques jersey (so cool). McFarlane will also make available modern and retro goals with peg holes for both players and goalies. I can think of some really, really cool customs that could be made with those…maybe a few Miracle on Ice one’s for the retro goal?
• NHL 19 will be a “hybrid” series with both modern players and legends. Weird, because later in 2008 NHL Legends 7 is coming out. Not sure what the point of the one hybrid series is if you’re just going to return to normal after that.
• Greg Oden will make his SportsPicks debut in March in NBA 14. Too bad he won’t take the court for another year.
• NBA Legends 4 is going to include Patrick Ewing and Spud Webb…two of my favorite basketball players from my youth. Has there ever been a little athlete with more heart? Or a big guy with a better fade away jumper?
• Dice-K will make his SportsPicks debut in MLB 21 due out in April. If his cards are any indication of his popularity, this could be the figure of the year.
• There will be a Mantle and Maris two-pack due out in June. Very, very cool. It’s hard not to love the story behind their home run chase in 1961.
• Warren Moon will get a well deserved figure in NFL Legends 4. Can’t wait to see those beautiful blue Oilers uni’s on a McFarlane.
• NFL 17 will include Randy Moss’ first figure as a Patriot. At that point, the Pats will probably have won like 30 straight games and be the best team ever (although I’m not particularly rooting for that).

“I never saw anyone like Ty Cobb. No one even close to him. He was the greatest all time ballplayer. That guy was superhuman, amazing.”
- Casey Stengel

One of my favorite topics to read about is the dead ball era. For years I had been meaning to read Cobb: A Biography by Al Stump. Aside from widely being regarded as the best baseball biography ever written, there’s an interesting back story: Stump was Cobb’s ghostwriter for his autobiography in the 60’s and got to know him well. That autobiography was obviously wildly biased by Cobb, and just before Stump died in the early 90’s he decided to “set the record straight”. Well the book was fantastic, but ever since I picked it up weird Cobb related things have been happening. I mean, it’s been 80 years since the guy played - he’s not exactly in the news but for some reason the last few weeks I’ve seen Tyrus every where I look.

First, Chipper made a fantastic custom of the famous picture of Cobb sliding into third and “spiking” (classic Cobb) Jimmy Austin of the St. Louis Browns - probably the most reproduced baseball picture ever:

And a few days later I received an inquiry from a Price Guide user about the value of a 1911 Cobb card with Hughie Jennings that has the famous image on it:

And finally McFarlane unveiled Cooperstown Collection 5 with a Cobb figure!

What’s next!?!???

Side note: Cobb, in my opinion is the best player to ever play. Funny how we idealize Babe Ruth. For the first Hall of Fame class in 1939, the Baseball Writers Association of America gave Cobb 222/226 votes, while Ruth only received 215 (tied with Honus Wagner). Seems those who saw them both play undeniably thought that the Georgia Peach was better. Sure Cobb had his fair share of problems and run-ins with the law (and was a known racist), but Ruth also was suspended for fighting and other behavioral problems and was certainly no saint…which seems to be lost upon todays fans who just think of him as a fat jolly guy who hit home runs. To date, the Ty Cobb Educational Foundation has awarded 7,454 scholarships totaling $11,133,123. Cobb was never able to attend college, and in his early playing years decided he was going to help talented underprivileged southerners attend school.

Want to know a record that will never EVER be broken? Ty Cobb’s 35 steals of home plate!

McFarlane just launched a very creative online feature to promote the upcoming release of the NFL Legends 3 series. The site includes: complete figure photography, wallpapers, backdrops, packaging photos, interactive QTVRs that let you rotate the figure 360 degrees, player information, and of course information on where to buy.

The Bo Jackson player page:

The QTVR that allows you to view and rotate the entire figure:

The packaging:

And the wallpaper page (which includes backdrop downloads…perfect for photoing Customs):

Very cool. Hopefully they’ll do the same for all upcoming releases.

A few days after stroking Todd McFarlane’s ego, I’m going to knock him back down a peg. Back in May I wrote about how McFarlane’s NINTH Wayne Gretzky figure, a figure with him in a Blues uniform, was overkill. Well Todd is back at it again. In McFarlane’s newly unveiled NHL Legends Series 6 (keep that number 6 in mind), we find ourselves presented with Gretzky’s TENTH figure:

After 1,487 NHL games, “The Great One” called it a career on April 18th, 1999 and played his final game with the New York Rangers against the Pittsburgh Penguins. After the game ended, Gretzky circled on the ice, removing one glove and waving farewell to the appreciative crowd. Gretzky remains the leading scorer in NHL history, and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1999.

Don’t get me wrong - I like the pose. And I know that the “Great One” is the most popular hockey player of all-time, but this is analogous to McFarlane producing a Joe Montana figure every single time they did a NFL Legends series. It just gets old after a while…particularly if you’re a Gretzky fan and are trying to collect all of these figures.

With McFarlane located in Arizona, and Gretzky being the coach of the Coyotes, I’m sure there’s some added bias to making “Great One” figures (kind of like how Todd makes a ton of Edmonton Oilers figures because he grew up there). Then again, If I was Todd McFarlane I would make any freaking figure I wanted to and I wouldn’t listen to a blogger like myself

Really. He is, and he’s smarter than me. He gets SOOOO much publicity for being the collector that overpaid for the $3 Million McGwire 70th HR ball. Read this article on Portfolio.com and tell me what you think:

McFarlane’s baseball collecting, meanwhile, rather than being an expensive distraction, has helped open doors for his company’s expansion.

Without the publicity from his purchase of the McGwire home run ball, McFarlane says he may never have won a licensing agreement with Major League Baseball in 2000 to produce its action figures. And without that agreement, he would not be selling tens of thousands of action figures for the N.H.L., the N.F.L., or the N.B.A.

Indeed, before he bought the McGwire home run ball for a record price of $3 million, baseball wasn’t paying much attention to McFarlane. Carmen Bryant, former vice president of licensing for McFarlane Co., says she sent packages to Major League Baseball pitching an action-figure deal almost weekly.

“They sent them back unopened every time,” recalls Bryant, who is now McFarlane’s director of public relations. “They wouldn’t even talk to us.”

“There’s times you have to buy yourself into the poker game,” says McFarlane, sitting in his cramped, paper-strewn corner office on a recent day. “I wanted to do sports figures. I figured they’d say, ‘Who is this kid? He does action figures? Oh, he spent a lot of money-bring him in.’ 

“If you look at the intangibles, it actually works from a marketing perspective. How do I know that? I bought [the McGwire ball] in 1998. It’s 2007, and you’re asking me about it.”

Brilliant. We all fell for it. How does $3 Million sound in exchange for a large portion of Spawn’s $50 Million/year!