Spawn in 1996
Straight from 1996 and an issue of Tomart’s Action Figure Digest (Amazon.com search*) comes this full-page featuring the new Spawn toys of the year. McFarlane Toys had already stormed retail shelves by 1996, and I think we can safely say that this is right about the time that the company was having a dramatic impact on action figure design and marketing. Just look at the toys of the age and you can see that before McFarlane designs were far more static than they were after McFarlane.
Hell, Kenner’s Legends of the Dark Knight series (Amazon.com search*) looks to me as if it was directly influenced by McFarlane’s work of the time. Not that this is at all a bad thing . . .
Related articles
- “And now . . . Spawn” (battlegrip.com)
- 1999 Techno Spawn Advertisement (battlegrip.com)
- Spawn Series 13 Action Figure Ad from 1999 (battlegrip.com)
I wish Toyfare magazine had an online archive like Starlog: I want to see if I can find which McFarlane sculptor started the thing with the mismatched boots! Swear they phrased it as, once they finished one boot, they would decide to do a different one on the other foot as it was more interesting to sculpt! The trend seemed more pronounced for female figures; I think the X-Files Scully is the only one with matching shoes.
@googum – I will have to search for that article. Thanks for the tip!