Super7, which began as a magazine and then became a designer vinyl toy company, now boasts maybe one of the most eclectic rosters of licenses and styles of anyone at Comic-Con. From Glenn Danzig to Richard Scary, encompassing modern kaiju and ’80s cartoons, along with tributes to some of the most obscure international variants, the company run by Brian Flynn runs primarily on one mandate: what do Flynn and his team want to see that doesn’t exist yet?
Five Alive
For the past few shows, Flynn usually presented at least one insanely large dream item that fans might never have thought possible. The ThunderCats Cat’s Lair playset, scaled to 7-inch figures met its crowdfunding goals; the G.I. Joe Cobra Mothership scaled to 4-inch figures did not. This year’s dream item doesn’t have to crowdfund: it’s a $300 figure of the five-headed dragon Tiamat, arch-villain in the ’80s Dungeons & Dragons cartoon. It’s scaled to the 7-inch Ultimates figures but is itself a lot larger, at 15.6” tall, 19.6” long, and 19.7” wide. Unlike the solid plastic figures it faces, it’s more of a designer vinyl style.
“It presents such a problem in terms of the sheer volume of cost to get something that size injection molded,” says Flynn. “[With] the lessons we’ve learned in our super-sized vinyl figures, we figured out that there was a way to do Tiamat in vinyl and then make it more affordable, something more people could get. It’ll have articulation in all four legs, articulation at the wings, at the tail, at a segment in the tail, four of the five necks, plus all five heads, so you’re talking about 14-15 points of articulation.”
Go, Go, Pow! Arrangers!
Normally, when it comes to larger characters in a Super7 Ultimates figure line, like the Zords in Power Rangers, the scale gets cheated, so a giant might be a 10-inch figure or so. But Tiamat seemed doable in a way giant robots aren’t. “Normally, if I need to make the Zords in scale, they’d have to be eight feet tall,” notes Flynn, but he adds a sly caveat: “We’re actually looking into ways to make some of the Zords and bigger characters as well.”
Some other Ultimates lines may slow down a bit, like Transformers, though it is not canceled. “We’re moving to more of an in-stock on that [as opposed to preorders]; there are some really special Ultimates coming very soon.” Similar things are happening for G.I. Joe, which Super7 has the rights to adapt ’80s media for. “That next wave is gonna transition to an in-stock item. It’s a little ways away because our development time is a little over a year. So it’s gonna be a little while before we get some new stuff, but it’s coming.”
In the meantime, he recently put out his take on the European repaint Action Force Escape Armor with Red Shadow, originally released by Palitoy. There’s fertile room there, as other companies are showing. “We can definitely do Palitoy characters,” he says, in response to a question about the classic G.I. Joe-scaled arch-villain Baron Ironblood. We have to double-check on some of the things, like there’s a few different things on who designed some of that, but for the most part, all of that Palitoy rights is with Hasbro. One step at a time.” His own favorite is Muton, a mutant in an old-fashioned diving helmet with lasers attached.
O, O, It’s Magic!
Expect the 3-3/4 inch O-ring figures in October at Target, and maybe after that they’ll try again for larger playsets. Just not the USS Flagg. “USS Flagg exists. We don’t need to do the USS Flagg. Please no!”
Conan the Barbarian fans have happier news, as Flynn says it’s doing great. “There’s different hurdles depending on which movie you’re talking about, which actors you’re talking about, but we’ve made a lot of headway in the last year so we can finally get to a couple of things that are obviously missing.” He admits that the Arnold Schwarzenegger likeness sculpts, which are all hand-done with no digital scans, have improved over time.
Conan will also move into a 5-inch retro style similar to the original He-Man, and joining him will be Glenn Danzig, the short-yet-jacked heavy metal frontman who has looked like an action figure most of his career, yet never had one. The scale and style was Danzig’s idea, as Flynn says, “He’s great to work with, but he’s very specific in his wants. So we’d better get this figure out, and if it’s successful, I’m sure he’ll let us expand.” Fans might want a 7-inch Ultimate on a more modern He-Man-styled body, but Danzig himself has other notions for now. As for the rocker’s Verotik brand of sexy horror comics? Flynn says he will neither confirm nor deny any conversations about them.
Sight Beyond Sight
Super7 does still have ThunderCats, and that won’t change in the near future despite Mattel announcing a Masters of the Universe crossover line. One of the company’s most in-demand exclusives this year was a set of Mumm-Ra and Lion-O figures with classic light-up eyes, this time without the need for activator rings. “Lion-O has all-new tooling, top-to-bottom, to make him fit better in with the line as it’s evolved,” Flynn revealed. “With Mumm-Ra we did all new chest tooling, and there’s a cavity inside where the light mechanism with the batteries slip inside, and the head goes on top. And what you do is you push down on the head, and it activates the lights; push back down on the head, and it turns off the lights.”
Is there a bigger future for action features, like maybe the old “Battle-Matic Action”? “Sometimes putting a gimmick in doesn’t really help you, and then sometimes it’s, ‘Oh that’s amazing,'” he says. But Battle-Matic Action in particular? “That might be a little further away.”
Sooner than that, expect more Godzilla goodies, following next month’s release of the much-anticipated Godzilla Minus One action figure. Teasing “a ton more coming,” Flynn reveals that “there’s a really exciting product launch that’ll happen in October.”
Check out the gallery below for more images from Super7’s San Diego store activation and their SDCC 2024 booth.
