Looking back, when it comes to comic-book style action figures, I think none does/did it better than MEZCO Toyz. After successfully producing the superb 7" Hellboy 'movie' figure line to coincide with the 1st Hellboy movie way back in 2004, they proceeded to produce the Mike Mignola drawn version of the characters in 7" plastic form in 2005. If you must know why I absolutely hail these as the BEST comic-book-inspired action figures ever produced in the geek universe, just take a gander at the pictures here and tell me that these ain't how the characters look like in the pages of Mignola's comic books! They look like a direct transfer from Mignola's comic book pages.
Excellent sculpt, great articulations, faithful representation of Mignola's 'blocky' character designs and superb paint made the line 'legendary'.
L to R: Roger the Homunculus, Liz Sherman, Red himself, Abe Sapien and Johan Krauss
When the 1st wave was introduced way back in '05, fans and collectors alike had very high hopes that MEZCO will make it to produce many fan favourite characters such as Rasputin, Kroenen, Ilsa and the likes. If I remember correctly, Wave 1 had Hellboy (duhh), Lobster John, Kriegraffe the Ape and Liz Sherman. It was such a pain in the ar** to track down Liz since I started relatively late into the line (I bought the whole of Wave 2 when I realise the all-important Liz was in Wave 1!). To make matters worse, one could only get their hands on Abe Sapien if they're able to get hold of the SDCC '07 version, which was literally harder to get since it was released in limited quantities. Luckily I was able to get one from a local eBay seller years after SDCC '07 to complete my core BPRD line-up.
This cool 'alien' figure was included in wave 2, giving collectors hope that more 'core' characters were going to be produced in the purported 'wave 3'.
Regretfully, Wave 3 never materialized, thus ending any hopes of getting heavy hitters such as Rasputin, Kroenen and many others from Mignola's comic book pages. Initially there were rumours that MEZCO had plans to resurrect the line but it soon turned out to be baseless rumours flamed by endless fan requests and petitions. I guess no one would really know the real reason behind the abrupt end to the comic-Hellboy action figures except for the people at MEZCO Toyz themselves. Surely it can't be a 'business' decision as the line sold out everywhere it was sold and currently it commands such a ridiculous secondary premium price on eBay and many other online toy stores. Was it due to legal reasons? I'm not sure myself....but whatever it is, it sucks to have such a highly-anticipated/fan-demanded line to end prematurely at the top of its game.
Well, here's hoping and wishing that MEZCO or Mignola would re-ignite the line sometime in the future. These are definitely one of the 'gem' in my collection of plastic crack. I'd love to see more comic-Hellboy characters being reproduce into action figures. The few that I have in my hands (pictured above) are enough to tell me that what superb action figures they could have been....if only it had been continued beyond Wave 2.....*sigh*
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