Tuesday, 31 March 2020

The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror issue 11

Tales From The Crypt issue 41 homaged in Bart Simpsons Treehouse of Horror issue 11.

Halloween EC Comic Covers

 A homage to Tales From The Crypt 36 by https://www.instagram.com/dvglzv
 Gripping Tales of Horror by https://www.instagram.com/caseybooth/
Tales of Halloween by https://www.instagram.com/theaterofcreeps/

Sunday, 8 March 2020

Skeleton Warriors Collection

Skeleton Warriors figures, comics, books, DVD and Skeleton Fighter knock offs. 


Skeleton Warriors sadly never gained a foothold in the toy market of the 90s but it's influence can still be seen today in the toy industry. Todd McFarlane saw the Skeleton Warriors line at it's initial reveal during a toy fair and was very impressed with the sculpting detail. Other toy companies and designers had been telling him such detail was impossible at the small scale of 4-6 inch action figures. Motivated by what he had seen from Playmates Skeleton Warriors line, Todd went on to insist on such detail in his companies action figures, leading to Movie maniacs which spawned the horror and movie action figure collectors market we see today from the likes of NECA. Hasbro and Mattel also took note of the success of McFarlanes toys and started to put more effort into the detailing of their Marvel and DC toylines Marvel Legends and DC Universe Classics as well as Mattels Master of the Universe 200X series of figures. 
If not for Skeleton Warriors and it's influence on Todd McFarlane, we may not have the many highly detailed collectible action figure lines we do today. 

Monday, 2 March 2020

Skeleton Fighter

 Though Skeleton Warriors proved unsuccessful, it did still spawn a bootleg line that featured reasonably nice quality figures for the time considering they were semi knock offs. They make good army builders for any Skeleton Warriors collection. Though funnily enough they are rarer and harder to find now than the official Skeleton Warrior figures which can be found quite cheap and easily on ebay.





Skeleton Warriors Unproduced Toys

Skeleton Warriors had a high quality toyline and cartoon series yet for some reason never caught on. Much like Visionaries which too had a well made toyline and cartoon, a second wave of figures that were shown in promo images and prototypes never saw the light of day. The second wave of figures would have included Claw, a Skeleton Warrior who made a few appearances in the last episodes of the cartoon and Talyn, the only main member of the Legion of Light not to have been released in the first wave.

 A large skeleton dragon that also appeared in the last episode of the cartoon was planned and shown in promotional pictures. October Toys had planned to produce and release the dragon in the mid 2010s but unfortunately this never came to pass.



Skeleton Warriors


Gary Goddard, director of the Masters of the Universe movie conceived of the Skeleton Warriors in the hope it would be to the 90s what Masters of the Universe had been for the 80s. A phenomenon of toys and cartoons. Unfortunately like many other cartoon and toylines of the 90s it failed to catch on, with comic book properties being the flavor of the decade. Much like Masters of theUniverse, Skeleton Warriors was influenced by Conan the Barbarian when Goddard took his godson to a Conan attraction and saw how much the child enjoyed it.
A 13 episode cartoon series was produced with an ongoing story arc and dark, apocalyptic tone. A reasonably mature series and maybe ahead of it's time. It failed to get a second season but did end with a finale that made the series feel complete. 
Marvel comics produced a four issue mini series that tied into the cartoon and an annual was also published in the UK featuring some UK exclusive comic strips inside.





A toyline consisting of 8 figures was released by Playmates who were riding high on the success of their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles line but looking for a replacement after the failure of the Toxic Crusaders line and with the Turtles popularity starting to decline. All five of the main Skeleton Warriors were produced but only three of the four heroic human leads were made into toys. Talyn the token female however was left out, much like female characters in other cartoon toylines such as Visionaries and Bucky O'Hare. A second wave of Skeleton Warriors figures were revealed as prototypes along with a giant skeleton dragon but unfortunately never saw the light of day.
The toy boxes featured beautiful artwork very reminiscent of the 80s Masters of the Universe packaging. An obvious inspiration after Gary Goddard worked on the Masters movie.