Maximo (Toycom)

Maximo
Toycom
2001

Maximo is a video game character created by Capcom for the Playstation 2. What many people don't know is that the game is based in the Ghost N' Goblins universe. Yes, the very same Ghost N' Goblins that punished gamers on the original NES for having the nerve to try and play it. To say that the original NES game is brutally hard is an understatement.

But we digress. Maximo: Ghost to Glory as it was known on the Playstation 2, is not as difficult to play. As such, it was met with fairly high praise from fans and review sites. It even spawned a sequel, and there were rumblings in the gaming world a third installment (that to date has not been released).

Toycom released six figures in 2001 to coincide with the game's release. The figures were sculpted meticulously to that of their video game counterparts. Each also featured highly detailed accessories, also precisely sclupted to match the look of the game. Toycom truly did an amazing job with the line.

Captain Cadaver*King Achilles*Lord Glutterscum

Maximo*Queen Sophia*Zombie

With the success of the above figures, Toycom quickly put into production a second run. With this came two additional figures - Bako la Bas and Ghastly Gus. This time around, the entire package was encased in a plastic clamshell.

 Captain Cadaver*King Achilles*Lord Glutterscum

Maximo*Queen Sophia*Zombie

Bako la Bas*Ghastly Gus

These figures are fairly common on secondary markets, and as such they don't sell for that much. The average sale price is around $8.00 to $10.00 each. This is a far cry from the hundreds of dollars it can set you back to collect other video game related action figures that have come and gone in the past.

Click "HERE" to go back to the home page. For more posts related to this one, please click the labels below.

Samurai X (Toycom)

Samurai X
Toycom
2001

Samurai X, or as it's known in Japan as Rurouni Kenshin (Meiji Swordsman Romantic Story) - Or るろうに剣心 -明治剣客浪漫譚, was a highly popular Manga, later adapted into a feature film in 2012 starting Takeru Satoh. The original comic book story was written and created by Nobuhiro Watsuki, and follows the life of former assassin Himura Kenshin, turned wandering samurai who protects the people of Japan with a vow to never take another life.

When the story was first developed, it appeared in the weekly magazine, Weekly Shonen Jump. It unfolded in serial fashion, I.E. small chapters each magazine, between April 1994 to November 1999, much like many Manga style stories did - Such as Katsuhiro Otomo's 1982 story, Akira.

Toycom began producing toys in 2000 with its first line, Future Ninja. From the get go, the company was determined to export Japanese Manga style characters to the US in the form of plastic, and did so fairly regularly until 2004 when the company folded.

Its 2001 venture (as you probably could already tell from the title of this post) was Samurai X. Much like most of Toycom's lines, the series was incredibly small, confined to just four figures. A separate line of PVC style figures were produced as well, but many fans don't contribute them as part of this particular series - We won't go into those here.

 Kenshin Himura

 Kaoru Kamiya

 Hajime Saitou

Sanosuke Sagara

The figures aren't too difficult to find these days. Unfortunately the problem lies with most sellers having them priced too high to sell. The average asking price is between $20.00 and $35.00. However, most people aren't willing to pay more than $10.00 for them mint in the package. Unless you can find a seller that is willing to face facts, you're going to be playing a game of patience to get these at the best price.

Join us next time when we take a look at The Dave Clark Five!

Click "HERE" to go back to the home page. For more posts related to this one, please click the labels below.

Ghost in the Shell (Toycom/Alpha)

Ghost in the Shell
Toycom/Alpha
2000

Want a challenge? See if you can collect all the Ghost in the Shell figures from Toycom/Alpha. You'll be pulling the hair out of your head in no time.

Despite being only two versions of the character, Major Motoko Kusanagi, Toycom and Alpha made sure to bombard the market with variant upon variant upon variant.

The first figure, Hard Disk has five different versions - Mind you, that's just in the USA. The second version, White Out, has a whopping seven! Again, that's just in the USA. To track down all of them, you'd have to first collect the versions from Japan. These are designated with the Alpha logo at the top left of the package. Then you'd have to hunt down the USA versions. These are denoted with the Alpha and Toycom logos at the top left.

For the sake of not going bald, we've only compile the USA version. There's no difference between the two versions with the exception of the company logo on the package, so unless you absolutely need every package variation out there, though it's still a ton of figures, you can probably suffice with just the ones listed below.

Hard Disk*Hard Disk (Clear)*Hard Disk (Repainted Previews Exclusive)

If Akira was the first Japanese animated film to take US shores by storm, then Ghost in the Shell (released in 1995) certainly fights a close battle to come in second. We saw the film way back in the day, and quite frankly we were as confused by it then as we are now - Then again we were never really big fans of reading our movies (AKA subtitles), so we admittedly didn't pay attention a lot of times when any form of Japanese film was on. For a full summary of the plot, we suggest you take a look at the film's Wiki page, "Here".

White Out*White Out (Black and Gold)*White Out (Black)

The figures aren't necessarily expensive, they're just difficult to track down. On average, they'll set you back anywhere from $6.00 to $10.00. We've even seen the figures sell for as little as a buck a piece. However, some of the more rare variants have sold for as much as $30.00 each. These more pricey variants include White Out (Red), White Out (Black and Gold) and White Out (Black).

White Out (Red)*White Out (Previews Exclusive)

For those interested in the basics of this line, yet are frugal with their money, you can also find two different two packs which were released. The first contains the standard Hard Disk and White Out figures. The second contains both of the Previews exclusive versions of the two figures. Of course both of these sets were Previews exclusives.

The two packs sell for roughly $10.00 a set. Unfortunately they're even hard to track down than the single packs.

White Out and Hard Disk Two Pack*White Out and Hard Disk Two Pack (Repainted Previews Exclusive)

We remember these figures selling for upwards of $100.00 each in their prime - With the exception of the basic Hard Disk and White Out versions. It's shocking to see how far they've plummeted in price. We wager that this was mainly due to Americans getting swept up in the Japanese animation craze to the point that they were willing to pay just about anything to get a crumb of anything that the Japanese would sprinkle on the ground around us.

Of course, back then getting your hands on any form of imported Manga was quite hard and expensive - Even on VHS. Now that it's far more common, we can understand the massive decline in value.

Join us next time when we take a look at Nintendo Power!

Click "HERE" to go back to the home page. For more posts related to this one, please click the labels below.

King Of The Hill (Toycom)

Some toy lines are designed to be short and sweet, and that's what I like about Toycom's approach to Fox's King of the Hill series.

The animated series King of the Hill, created and developed by Mike Judge (Beavis and Butthead) began in 1997, and ran until 2010 on Fox. During its run, the world got an inside look at the Hill Family, Hank, Peggy, and Bobby, as well as other reoccurring characters such as niece Luanne Platter, and best friends Dale Gribble, Bill Dauterive, and Boonhauer.

The series followed Hank though his daily routines of work at Strickland Propane, and was often times supplemented with misadventures of the characters as they made poor decisions on obvious life choices. It showcased white, middle class Texans in all their stereotypically glory.

In 2002, Toycom obtained the rights to produce a line of figures based on the characters.



The toys came with zero articulation, and contained accessories as seen in the opening credits in the series, including the actual fence that Hank and the boys stand in front of to drink. However, because they were sculpted so accurately, and posed in positions as seen in the show's opening, this worked out well.

The packaging, while colorful, was cluttered. Between the artwork stretching from corner to corner, covered in sections by photo bubbles of other characters, there was just too much going on. A simpler approach of the artwork on front, and the characters on back would have made this packaging more appealing to the eye (from a collector's standpoint).

The first series released contained Hank and Peggy Hill, as well as their neighbors, Dale Gribble, and Bill Dauterive.


Released shortly after the first series, series two contained Bobby Hill with his dog Ladybird, Luanne Platter, and their gibberish talking neighbor, Boonhauer. The package are remained the same.

As you can see from the sections of the fence that were included with each figure, this entire series was planned from start to finish before the first figures even went into production. A respectable tactic, but also a disappointing one if the series doesn't pan out, and the remaining figures are never produced. Fortunately this paid off, and all seven planned figures were released.



While you may look at the series and say, "Wow, that's a small set of toys," it works out rather well when you think about it. Toycom produced all the main characters of the show, cashed their checks from sales, and then moved on to bigger and better things. They didn't milk the series for every dime they could get. They didn't continue to produce secondary characters until interest dwindled, and toys cluttered the clearance isles. They had a plan, they followed through, and delivered a great set of toys based on the hit show. What more can you ask?

Toycom's King of the Hill figures may not be the biggest set of toys out there, but they certainly are one of the best.

Join us next time for our look at Sega Master System!

Click "HERE" to go back to the home page. For more posts related to this one, please click the labels below.