#Mego style figures

[chernobog13]

8-inch Mego-style Six Million Dollar Man figures from Bif Pow Bang: Bigfoot (Andre the Giant version), Steve Austin, Fembot, and Oscar Goldman.

[micromanclub]

Project M's newly named Zero Zero (a reference to Zero Zero Magazine, the incredible Microman reference mook from the 1970s) appears to be the equivalent of the M10X "breastplate" type figures (known also as Time Travelers in the Micronauts version from Mego). In one sketch he appears to have a wingpack and is next to a Moai-style capsule like the old Command 1 figures used to have. Given that there's a couple of Command figures called out separately, it's unclear if this capsule actually will be matched with Zero Zero or if it's just a concept size comparison.

His attributed backpack unit seems to resemble an elephant's face, but that may or may not be intentional. It would appear to have folded wings which are seen open in the sketch with the Moai capsule.

Thanks again to Patrick Chan for his compilation and identification of the images!

[dat2ndaccount97]

So i've encountered a weird anomaly recently. I guess someone decided to make 12 inch versions of some of the old 70s 8 inch Mego DC Figures.

A company by the name of Figures Toy Co. has been doing mego style DC figures, and in addition to doing the usual new characters and modern versions of old characters in the mego style are just remaking the old mego figures. But I guess they also decided to make 12 inch versions for a few of them as well. nd they just look kinda off in this scale

They've done a variety of characters but I think the girls really highlight just how odd they look at this scale with their flesh tone leggings (and body suit in Diana's case), and especially Batgirl's cowl and gloves. Despite that tho I kinda wanna get Supergirl

[theflashcollection]

Growing up Mego Action Figures were my favorite toys. My great grandmother would by some for me for every holiday. I spent hours playing with them. I always wondered why they didn’t release a Flash (or Green Lantern). My Justice League was always incomplete. There was a Kid Flash but it was impossible to find. Now Figure Toy Company has made every one we could want and always seems like there are more down the road. These are my Flash versions displayed, each has a different card and face. I hope they keep them coming, would love a John Wesley Ship version or a current Wally West.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Pandora Papers

By now, you’ve likely heard about the Pandora Papers — the landmark reporting on financial secrecy havens, corruption, and the hidden wealth brought to you by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and its 140 media partners worldwide.

https://www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/

This isn’t the ICIJ’s first rodeo: they’re the same consortium that brought us the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers, leaks from the world’s tax havens and the elite law and accounting firms that enable the wealthy and powerful to live by different rules from the rest of us.

Each of these leaks have been almost unimaginably large: millions of documents, the otherwise invisible paper-trail left by likewise unimaginably vast fortunes amassed by the 0.1%. The scale and scope of these secrets makes them too big for any one news org to report out.

Hence the ICIJ, a consortium of hundreds of news organizations around the world, who bring both the raw human labor-hours and the specific, regional knowledge of the oligarchs implicated in the leaks to the reporting.

The ICIJ’s earlier landmark publications dealt with gargantuan leaks — but Pandora Papers are galactic, 29,000 accounts leaked from 14 offshore firms from all over the world: Panama, Seychelles, Hong Kong, Belize, BVI, Cyprus, Switzerland, Dubai.

https://www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/secrecy-brokers/

The arrangements themselves are characteristic of this kind of elite “financial planning,” which is to say they are idiotically complex, with companies in one country owning companies in another, which own companies in a third.

Each of these arrangements represents a risible fiction: a shell company is a business, a business is a person, that person resides in a file-drawer in the desk of a bank official on some distant treasure island.

10-figure assets can be owned by no one, until the instant some great beast liquidates them, whereupon these mysterious riches can be fully and incontrovertibly controlled by them, but only until the paperwork is signed, whereupon the assets disappear into mystery again.

These arrangements, complexified by their own sake by deranged lawyers and accountants, have various names. Finance regulators and their prey call this MEGO (“my eyes glaze over”). Merely reciting the schemes’ details plunges the listener into a drugged stupor.

I like Dana Claire’s version better, though: “The shield of boringness” — when a straightforwardly corrupt and unsupportable arrangement is armored by layers of pointless complexity.

Some things are hard to understand because they’re complicated — others are complicated so they’ll be hard to understand.

The ICIJ and its partners have done incredible work in trying to penetrate the shield of boringness.

Here’s their Twitter thread, summing up the headline findings:

https://twitter.com/ICIJorg/status/1444703213349969929

And the BBC’s “simple guide to the Pandora Papers leak” is quite good:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-58780561

Reading these guides will give you the top-line findings, like the fact that Andrej Babis, the Czech Republic’s billionaire president, a self-styled “populist corruption fighter” who is up for re-election, used financial secrecy vehicles to acquire a $22m French chateau.

Or that Cherie and Tony Blair avoided £312,000 in tax by buying a multi-million-pound London townhouse for Cherie’s law practice through an offshore shell company owned by an ultrawealthy Bahraini pal of Tony Blair’s.

There’s more — Putin cronies, mafia hitmen, even Shakira (!), all using these offshore secrecy vehicles to buy and sell assets around the world.

I’m not going to rehearse all the scandals here — ICIJ and its partners have done a better job of it than I ever can.

Instead, I want to explore two recurring themes in the reporting.

First, the legality of these arrangements. Over and over again, in all the media organizations’ reports on these leaks, they stress that most of these financial MEGO shenanigans are legal.

What they mean is, these ultrawealthy people and their procurers have found a way to operate by a different set of laws from you and me. As with Propublica’s IRS Files, these leaks reveal two, separate parallel legal-financial systems.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/15/guillotines-and-taxes/#carried-interest

There’s a public system, the one you and I send an appreciable chunk of our annual income to, as part of the cost of living in a civilized world where there is fiscal space for public spending on roads, schools, hospitals, public health, firefighting and other necessities.

Then there’s the other system, a system that operates in the shadows, a system you need millions and millions to participate in, a system that lets you pay little tax, no tax, or even negative tax — when states and countries hand working people’s money over to the 0.1%.

When these arrangements come to light, its practicioners — plutocrats, elite enablers, captured regulators — always mount the same defense: “This ultra-secret parallel legal system is perfectly legal.” They’re (usually) not lying.

The legality is the true scandal. These leaks reveal, time and again, is that we live under the conservative ideology so summarized by Frank Wilhoit, with “in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

The beneficiaries of the secret, parallel elite legal system are its architects. The same City of London law firms and banks that sit at the center of these corrupt hairballs also lobby like hell for the creation and expansion of the secret legal system.

The Pandora Papers implicate finance ministers of Pakistan, the Netherlands, Brazil, Malta and France. Of course this corruption is legal — it’s being practiced by the people who write the laws! The King of Jordan’s bullshit is legal because he’s the fucking King of Jordan.

I’ll say it again: the legality of these scams is the true scandal. Ex-UK PM Tony Blair and his wife did something perfectly legal when they ducked hundreds of thousands in tax — they exploited a loophole that Tony Blair could have closed, but didn’t.

Blair — who transformed the Labour Party into an organisation that celebrated the “accomplishments” of billionaires — talks a lot about the evils of tax evasion, but Blair was PM for a decade. If he cared about tax evasion, he’d have closed these loopholes.

The other point to make is that “offshore” is a huge misnomer. The relationship of tiny, poor, finance-blighted tax-havens to the ultra-rich is as a kind of pinball flipper. They exist to make momentary contact with vast fortunes and then fire them off across the ocean.

The Aliyevs are brutal oligarchs who control Azerbaijan. They laundered £400m through distant tax havens, but the money landed in the United Kingdom, where they have bought up vast tracts of land — flipping some of it to the Queen of England’s Crown Estates.

The King of Jordan’s money ricochets from island to island, but it comes to rest — shrouded in secrecy — in Malibu, California, London, and Ascot, where he owns mansion upon mansion upon mansion.

The “offshore” money is firmly onshore. Just as Apple’s untaxed offshore billions were laundered into assets including US Treasury Bills, these dead-eyed monsters own huge swathes of LA, London, New York, Paris, Toronto, Vancouver…

What’s more, the enablers who wax fat by helping the corrupt navigate the secret law system are are largely at arm’s length — for example, many of the clients who fled Mossack Fonseca after the Panama Papers now own shell companies administered from the City of London.

The tax havens are increasingly onshore. Cyprus — the laundry of choice for corrupt Russian billions — isn’t a Caribbean island far from the jurisdiction of European tax investigators. It’s an EU member state, fully signed up to tax and law-enforcement treaties.

The American states are hotbeds of onshore-offshore corruption. Over and over, the Pandora Papers reference South Dakota’s role in helping the ultra-rich hide their wealth from the rest of us, enabling them to remain behind the secret legal system’s curtain.

South Dakota, in turn, is merely the current winner in the US states’ race to the bottom on enabling finance corruption. The granddaddy of corrupt state finance is Delaware, or, as Joe Biden calls it, “The corporate state of Delaware.”

https://prospect.org/power/corporate-state-of-delaware/

In many ways, Delaware is yesterday’s news — legislatures in Nevada and Wyoming have passed suites of financial-secrecy-friendly laws that make Delaware look like a model of financial transparency and corporate control — only to be surpassed by the South Dakota state house.

“Offshore” is bullshit. The call is coming from inside the house.

And the business about how this is all legal? It’s also bullshit. Yes, there are plenty of people who manage these corrupt arrangements without breaking laws, but that’s not the whole story.

Over and over, the Pandora Papers show the same procurers, banks, and structures that are used by “law abiding” plutes are also being used by literal murderers like “Lell the Fat One,” a mafia hitman, and corrupt officials who embezzle billions from government treasuries.

These systems aren’t kept secret because the people who design, operate and use them are planning to share them with us later and don’t want to ruin the surprise.

They know that they’re shady as fuck, and they know they’ve created a system whose beneficiaries include murderers and thieves. They know that the secret legal system is only legal because it’s secret.

They know it is so manifestly unjust and unfair that it could never withstand public scrutiny. The legal, offshore system of finance crimes is neither legal, nor offshore. It’s all around us, and it’s crooked as hell.

[actionfigureinsider]

These will be coming home to live with me! (And there’s an #Aquaman - not shown, in the set) • @megocorp Mego’s World’s Greatest Super-Heroes are back! The 50th Anniversary WGSH figures come with that same iconic 1970’s styling that we all grew up and still love, now paired with Mego’s new super- poseable body with 26 points of articulation! “Holy Super-Combo Batman!” The replicas of the 1972 WGSH figures come in classically styled window boxes with the original WGSH artwork and original item numbers! We are also debuting our new WGSH inspired Hal Jordon Green Lantern!! Don’t miss out! The 50th Anniversary WGSH Collection by Mego comes out this fall! Collect them all! #WGSH #MakeMineMego #Mego #MegoCorp #Batman #Superman #Shazam #greenlantern #Robin #Aquaman #superheroes #superhero #dc #dcmultiverse #actionfigure #actionfigures https://www.instagram.com/p/CgwuYzcuiwd/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[iodoesdolls]

So I found this semi-Mego-affiliated company that does 8” retro-style action figures but also has 6” “teen” bodies. So I ordered a few pieces to determine whether they’re a viable source for my 1/12 scale needs.

So here’s an 8” Mego girl, an 8” Classic TV Toys guy, a 6” CTVT guy, and a 6” CTVT girl.

The CTVT figures are all obviously a lot cheaper than Mego. The 8” dude’s head won’t go back on because there’s a tear; I might be able to reinstall it without further tearing if I heat it up a little, but that’s a problem for later. I love the 6” boy. He’s exactly what I wanted. The girl...her legs broke the moment I touched her, and obviously she’s not as well articulated as the others.

I was hoping to use these as body donors, but since the boy’s body has no neck and the girl’s neck is extremely short, I doubt that will be an option. The good news is that the smaller ones are in scale with my Dawns:

Other good news includes the clothing; there are dozens of wardrobe options for the 8” figures, and while they’re a little big on my guys, it’s the best option I’ve encountered yet that doesn’t require sewing:

Another thing is that I’ve been trying to shorten a Mego girl’s limbs to bring her down to 1/12 scale:

Which is really slow going because she’s really sturdy. But the CTVT dolls are much less sturdy, so maybe I’d have better luck chopping them up? Or maybe it’s the kind of cheap plastic that’s going to splinter if I try to cut it. I might do a trial run on the 8” guy; I really only bought him because it was a much better deal to buy a dressed figure than just the clothes on their own.

[weekinnerd]

Mego Reveals G.I. Joe Figure Line (VIDEO)

Mego Reveals G.I. Joe Figure Line (VIDEO)

Mego has announced a new collaboration with Hasbro to make G.I. Joe figures in the classic Mego style. During a live online presentation Thursday evening (and featured below), Mego founder Marty Abrams revealed the first two figures in the line, Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow. The figures feature their classic look as seen in the 1980s comic books, cartoons, and action figures. They will be sold…

[ageless-aislynn]

Every day I check the prices on the Retro Reverse Flash figure (aka jammies!Eobard). Every day it hasn’t changed. I’ll check again tomorrow with my fingers still crossed. 🤞

He’s the one with the awesome image on the back of the card...

TEH DRAMAH from Eo and Len, lol! I love it! 😁

PS - Ooo, and I maaaay have found a Frost stand-in to hang out with jammies!Eo!

She’s in the right scale, she has blonde hair and cloth clothes (and is wearing blue!) and that’s going to be about the best I can do as far as I can tell. And I think she’s pretty (she’s a Mego and their style can be... sometimes not super pretty, IMO 🤷‍♀️ though YMMV, of course). This is Charlie’s Angel Kris Munroe, btw, in case anybody was wondering. Anyway, when I say I MAY have found her... Yeah, I already won her at auction for $5, so there’s that. 😉 Frost is just waiting for jammies!Eobard to come home and snuggle with! 🥳

♥♥♥

[shanie-the-toyaddict]

Are there any "Star Trek: Discovery" figures? All I'm seeing all the retro style Mego figures where the characters come with actual cloth clothes, which to be honest is very cool, but at the same frustrating because they don't put their figure in boxes you can slip back in, but just those cardboard backs covered with plastic, which are designed to force you to keep the figure in the packaging.

Ok, so here's what I know so far.

Playmates, who used to make the Star Trek figures the whole way through the 90s and is probably the best known maker of Star Trek figures, announced this month that they have re-acquired the ST license and are going to be producing figures again in 2022.

By messing around with the promo photo in photoshop, you can see that the first wave will include (so far):

A TNG Era Data Season 2 Disco figures of Michael, Saru, Pike, and Spock (bearded) Season 1 Picard version of Picard.

Now, this means that YES! As of right now we are very likely going to be getting Discovery figures that are in the same style and scale as the old figures.

HOWEVER

Playmates figures, as far as I know, have *always* used cards, not boxes. I don't know of any Star Trek action figures, playmates or otherwise, that did come in boxes outside of those old 12-inch voyager dolls. Boxed figures are pretty much exclusive to collectors items and Playmates has specifically stated that these figures are aimed at kids. (Again, making childrens toys for Picard seems questionable, but at least we are getting the figures.)

So if you don't want to destroy the packaging to play with the figure, I fear you will be very disappointed.

[chernobog13]

Mego’s version of the crew from Star Trek: The Original Series, in the U.S.S. Enterprise Play Set.

Kirk, Spock, and Bones look to be originals from the mid-1970s, when Mego started started the line.  Scotty and Uhura, although they were also released in the way back then, appear to be newer re-issues (I could be wrong).  Sulu and Chekhov were never originally released by Mego.  They could be from Diamond Select or other companies that released “Mego-style” Star Trek figures; more likely they are part of the new line of figures (including updated re-issues) from Mego.

Kirk, Spock, and Bones demonstrate the most frustrating thing about the original figures: the Starfleet emblem stickers drying up and falling off.  That happened to every one of my Star Trek figures.  If I could find the emblem, I would attempt to glue it back on with Elmer’s Glue, but it never lasted.

Alas, like most of the toys from my childhood, my Star Trek figures and the U.S.S. Enterprise Play Set did not survive the malicious attention of my younger brothers.  Luckily, I have been able to replace them all, and grown my collection with numerous additions, since Mego re-issued the line.

[dollsonmain]

Stuff I Didn’t Buy

Not much going on this weekend.

The one on the left looks like it was probably expensive but ngl I hate baby dolls.

I mean... That’s it for Goodwill. There were a couple Boxy Girls, but I already have those two and don’t really need their bodies, since I don’t hybrid my Hairdorables. Boxy Girls are a really good body for Hairdorables.

Walmart

I’ve never watched Ryan’s World, my son was already outside of that age demographic when it started airing, but here’s an 18in My Life As doll designed specifically to appeal to little boys, and that’s great.

My Life As keeps stepping it up with the cute playsets and furniture. They are less expensive than AG, and Our Generation, and they look it. But they’re also imaginative and cute.

Someone’s had a hard day.

The ONLY first wave Snapstar still at full price. Yuki and Echo are over on the clearance rack for $9 each. Dawn got down to $4 and are sold out.

The Fabulous Fashions set there is the only other one on the shelf.

I didn’t take a pic, but the Barbie section keeps shrinking.

That didn’t take long... They’re $15 each. I didn’t buy any, their faces really do look terrible in person and that’s a shame.

My store really doesn’t understand clearance pricing. They’ll take off one or two dollars and put a clearance sticker on it. That’s just a rollback. Clearance is 50% or more, far as I’m concerned.

Target

Aw, fully articulated vintage-style action figures. The face sculpts are decent. They could be repainted and look really good.

Parents!

I was tempted by this 14in Mego Wonder Woman with real fabric clothing It looks painted on but it isn’t! There were also classic Aquaman and Batman. Both looked constipated. She’s $20.

5 Below

They didn’t have any more Unicorn Squad, but I’m not surprised since those are a new line that was expected to retail closer to $10. 5 Below probably got them by mistake.

TnT omg.... I have to resist so hard to not start collecting mugs, so I didn’t get one. I don’t know what it is with me and mugs, but I already collect tons of different types of dolls and toys, so no mugs for me.

That’s really cute for a $5 styling head.

Gabe’s

I mean, this one was like... $10.

[blackphoenixinvictus]

This month forty two years ago, Batgirl and Robin had a shotgun wedding in the pages of Batman Family #11 (Cover date: June 1977)

Side note: I would LOVE Mego or Tonner style dolls of Wedding Batgirl and Robin, preferably in a two figure box set.

[thirdeyecomics]

THIRD EYE TOY SPOTLIGHT, IN STOCK NOW: Wes Craven's NEW NIGHTMARE Freddy Krueger 8" Clothed MEGO-Style figure from NECA!

[brokehorrorfan]

NECA will release a Michael Myers clothed action figure, based on his Halloween (2018) appearance, in the third quarter of the year.

As revealed at Toy Fair, the Mego-style toy stands 8" tall, is fully-articulated, and includes knife and hammer accessories. It comes in window box packaging.

[hodgman]

Content Warning: #Putty In 1976: The Mego toy company declined the license to manufacture Star Wars toys, allowing Kenner Products the opportunity to limp in and grab them cheap. No one predicted what a massive success Star Wars would be of course, or the massively lucrative enterprise Star Wars action figures and toys would be. Certainly not 20th Century Fox, who saw no share in the proceeds, whereas Lucas, who did, supposedly funded both EMPIRE STRIKES BACK and RETURN OF THE JEDI from his share of the merch. In 1979: as the release of a new space movie called Alien loomed, Kenner sensed another potential fortune and snapped up the toy rights. They did not know that the movie was about cynical, grimy grown ups being stalked by a psycho-sexual machine witch with a phallic head. Even when they found out, they decided to go ahead and make an 18 inch action figure of it anyway and try to sell it to kids. This did not work. Also in 1979: about seven seconds after they hit the market, parents complained that the Alien figurine, which surprisingly, intricately, lovingly replicated every gross, body-horrific detail of the HR Giger design, was frankly scaring the feces out of their kids. Kenner ceased production. But not before I got one for Christmas. Sometime between then and last Friday: Joe Dropkin sat on my Alien figurine and broke its leg. That one eventually got lost or thrown away after I went to college. Then, a few years ago, Adam Savage gave me another one, source unknown, in medium condition, and with fragile arms. The rubber bands in the arms immediately gave up, and the arms disappeared, having crawled under the furniture using their own power (probably). Last Friday: I put “Enchanting Unicorn” style thinking putty on top of the Alien’s head to see if that will make it less scary. After a full weekend of gravity doing its work, I can report: NOPE. This is the final report of Putty Experimental Substation Nostromo. Hodgman reporting. Signing off. https://www.instagram.com/p/Bty7fPGH87l/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=x2o1xzr6df48