Articles Related to Toyark Spotlight

3D Printing is making it possible for customizers to create their own Action Figures. Using digital models, you can now directly print  three-dimensional solid objects of virtually any shape. Thanks to ToyArk.com board member “Hauke” for posting up images of his “Dan Generiko” 3D Printed Action Figure, that has 30 points of articulation, swappable hands and weapons, and is in 7 inch scale.

This brings us to our talking point. Are companies who manufacture action figures like Hasbro, Mattel and Sideshow going to face a storm of 3D Printed home made action figures that can rival the quality of today’s standards? It looks like we may be just a few short years away from more accessible pricing of higher quality 3D Printers, including software.

In a time where it seems like companies are moving away from articulation and heavy marketing of brands, and the core fan base wanting more, this could get interesting. Not only would it be a nightmare scenario to try and shut down the “sharing” of 3D Models over the web, it would be nearly impossible to stop people from printing their own versions of Licensed Products.

One thing is certain, we’re entering a brand new day; one in which we can make our own action figures. This could open the door for many smaller Action Figure producers to enter the market, and shine some new light on the industry.

Welcome back to another round of MattyCollector 2013 Q&A! We have our newest batch of answers. Also Mattel sent us a promo shot from the newest episode of Toy Hunter on History Channel. So read on to check that out, and also, here are our answers:

Any plans for 3.75 ’60′s Batman figures? Even just Bats will do the trick for me.

The 2013 line is in 6” scale.  3.75” Classic TV Series Batman figures would be pretty awesome though!

How long does your Voltron license last?

 Sorry, that is not something Mattel can comment on.

WOOOOOOOOOO! Is the Nature Boy Ric Flair in the works for the WWE Elite line? Perhaps a soundstage too since his entry theme is so epic?

Anything is possible but nothing to announce right now.

The Upcoming Red Reign/Vampire Batman looks like it sports a V-crotch instead of the traditional 4H style universal movement hips. Will it have the 4H hips by final production?

Yes, Vampire Batman does indeed have the traditional 4H style hips- no V-crotch!

Don’t forget to post your questions in our MattyCollector 2013 Q&A thread!

Well, this is weird.  Right now, there are over 9000 people on Toyark.com, browsing around the site.  And, of those 9549 (as of this story) , 9,007 are looking at this post, specifically the picture: http://www.toyark.com/halloween-costume-ideas-66798/#post152284.  Not sure where we were hot linked from yet, but hey, enjoy.  I just wanted an excuse to post this….

Welcome to another round of MattyCollector 2013 Q&A! Today we received our newest batch of answers to questions we sent last month. Here we go….

A while back we asked you if the 4H worked on the Injustice figures and you said “yes”. Having the Batman figure in-hand, it feels more akin to the Green Lantern Movie Masters sculpted in-house by Mattel rather than the 4H. To what extent did the 4H work on the Injustice figures? Did they just do the initial sculpt and hand the figures off to you to cut in articulation? Having collected 4H figures since the Spawn days, through the 1st 6″ Batman line, DCSH, DCUC, MOTU, MOTUC up til now, the Injustice figures certainly seem substantially different.

The Four Horsemen did indeed work on all of the Injustice figures through the full development cycle in terms of sculpt, articulation, and paint- the difference is that they worked off of 3D reference files from the game itself, to ensure that the figures were consistent with the look of the game and looked clearly unique from the rest of the DC Unlimited style figures

Is there a particular reason Mattel stopped the oversized figures in the Club Infinite Earths subscription? The only one slated for 2013 is Mallah.

Not enough sub holders to justify the skus. The more sub holders we get the more skus we can offer. Like we did with MOTU.

Who is sculpting the 1966 Batman line?

The Classic TV Series Batman line is being entirely sculpted internally by Mattel’s excellent sculpting group

The most recent figures released from Club infinite Earths had room for additional Accessories like Lantern Constructs, attachment for Platinum, or switchable parts for Elongated man is there a reason that few if any were included? Because many fans would have liked to see more with Elongated man in particular

There is not overarching rule on who gets accessories and now many. It is usually determined character by characters in addition to cost factors involved.

Don’t forget to post your questions for the MattyCollector 2013 Q&A here!

Just a quick reminder to our regular Facebook users out there. The Toyark is on Facebook, and we stream our news to our Toyark fan page there. So if you like the page, you’ll get all the Toyark news delivered right to your feed and can jump over if anything sparks your interest.

For all the Twitter folks, we are over there too: @Toyark.

The Toyark is also on Google+ – however at the moment they don’t allow (easily or at all) streaming of news into it’s feed. So, it’s just there in a holding pattern till we can figure out what to do with the spot.

Lastly, if you want to add our feed to your favorite reader which supports RSS – you can use: http://news.toyark.com/feed

Welcome back to another round of MattyCollector 2013 Q&A! Today we received answers to a few of our questions slightly ahead of time.

1) One notable villain yet to be made since the DCUC line began has been Ras  Al Ghul. How much longer will we have to wait for a figure of him(comic version)?
A) Hopefully not long. We’d love to get to him in time.

2) Is Batman the only Dark Knight Returns figure planned?
A) At this point, yes, but you never know what the future may hold!

3) Will the upcoming Batman Beyond figure use a smaller buck than the previous DCUC wave 4 version?
A) The new Batman Beyond uses the same buck with a new head, removable wing pack, and matte finish on the black.

As always, don’t forget to post your questions in our MattyCollector 2013 Q&A thread!

We’d like to introduce you to the newly renovated Toyark.com! To start, we’ve given the entire site a fresh coat of paint. Spaced things out a bit, changed up the sidebar to read a little easier.

We’ve switched up the back end of the front page areas, we are now running on a different system. So if you see any errors floating about, any broken links, etc, it’s most likely due to that. We’ve tried to make it as seamless as possible, but there are bound to be some errors. Feel free to let us know in the forum thread (linked to this story).

In this new system, we’ve decided to start using a tagging method which will let us specify what each story is about in more detail. You will now see links to Company (Hasbro, Mattel, etc), Character (Batman, Iron Man, etc), Scale (3.75 Inch, 6 Inch, etc), and Sub-Line (Marvel Universe, Marvel Legends, etc). This should hopefully allow our regulars who are only into particular toy lines, styles of toys, particular characters and the like to find and browse just what they are looking for on Toyark.com. You can find this under each story in the black strip, or, from the drop down menus at the top of the site.

For those used to the Marvel, DC, Star Wars, MOTU links on the sidebar, you can now get to those threads by clicking “Forum Topics” in the drop down menu at the top of the site. These will pull up tagged threads for each topic. To get to the news areas for those topics, use the “News” drop down menu at the top of the site.

Even though it doesn’t look like it, this was a major structural change on our part, so things are a little incomplete right now. We just wanted to get it live and get some feedback before moving forward. As time passes, we will tweak and adjust, maybe add some of the sidebar blocks back, etc. Just let us know what you like/don’t and we will do our best!

If you were pulling Toyark.com News RSS Feeds into your various RSS readers – please be aware all urls have changed. For the technically literate, you can access the specific category feeds again by checking the source code, in the head section. For normal folks, we will have a list of feeds available soon. Until then, you can access the main feed for all toy news here: http://news.toyark.com/feed

Also of note: If you have been having problems logging into the site, or staying logged in, please clear your cookies in your browser settings, and re-log-in. This should clear that up.

We have our answers mid-February answers for the MattyCollector 2013 Q&A. Check them out:

1) Recently we saw the official images of the Man Of Steel Movie Masters toys. They look very impressive however all toys in promo shots usually do. By final production sometimes things change, Will the final production Man of Steel Movie Masters figures feature detailed paint jobs, like washes to being out the detail, hair color, et al? For example, the Movie Masters Ras Al Ghul figure in hand did not look as good as the protoype shown on the card.
A) There are always some changes between early prototypes and final product but we do our best to maintain quality in every way we can.

2) Are there any plans to do more New 52 characters particularly those who for decades have been highly popular with Image Comics (Grifter, Vibe, Voodoo) to future series or are these going to be left out?
A) Certainly. But nothing specific right now to announce.

3) We’ve been told that core characters (in the case of last month, Batman specifically) “sell more than any other character.” Hopefully you can answer this follow-up question: How do you track this data? Is it based on how many units were shipped, or how many actually sold-through at retail?
A) NPD which is the national retail tracking system for most major retailers/manufacturers (for a variety of consumer products) does provide sku by sku sales data showing which individual figures (component skus) sell better.

4) Last year SDCC there was no DC Figure Is there a plan to do a Comic Con Exclusive in 2013?
A) Last year we offered a 6″ Batman figure. This year there will also be a 6″ figure. Who that is remains to be announced.

Some of us never found the DC All Stars wave with Superboy Prime. Will that figure be re-released as part of the DC Unlimited line?
A) No, no plans for a rerelease at this time.