I've added a new page about Mighty Star Plush Toys!!!

Here's my collection of giant Mighty Star plush toys from the 1970's and 80's! At the far left is Pink Panther (39 inches tall) and in the center is Bugs Bunny (38 inches tall)! Porky Pig however is not by Mighty Star, he was made by Ace in the 1990's (30 inches tall).  Take a look at my Mighty Star Plush Toys collection!!!

Mego's new Green Arrow is ripped!

Check out Mego's new Green Arrow! It uses the new "type S" doll body. Not sure why they call it that but I'm sure there's a good reason. LOL But man is he ever ripped! Look at those mighty abs! He must get quite a workout slinging those arrows! Of course, he also has those cool bicep bands painted onto his arms for added macho-coolness! LOL

It's so cool that Mego now has a body with articulated shoulders! I can't tell you how much I disliked those metal hook thingys that the old bodies have, as they get caught on the edge of the arm opening when moving the arms. So frustrating when that happens! And then keeps happening! Well, no more! This update is soooooo long overdue, and I'm very happy with the result. Killer sculpting job on the torso, can't say enough about what an awesome job Mego did in that regard, and amazing how poseable the bodies are now! Very impressive!

My only criticism has to do with the space they left between the underwear section of the body and the upper torso, as well as the rod that connects the two. It looks like that rod could be easily snapped in two because of how thin it is and that there's so much wiggle space. In my view, it would have been better if Mego could have made that rod piece a little bit thicker to make the toy more durable for kids to be rough with their toys. I know Mego isn't targeting their products to kids anymore, but I think that's a mistake, as Mego dolls are such awesome toys they should be marketed for kids too. In any case, the new bodies are definitely a major step in the right direction which I suspect will make future Mego toys far more appealing to geeks everywhere! 

Oh, one more thing! I really like how the underwear has the Mego logo sculpted as a pattern around the waist band! Hilarious! Very awesome to see this new and very much improved Mego!!!

Here's another photo taken without the flash. 

The shadow really shows off those rippling abs! 

He must be the world champion of doing crunches!

Mikey's Star Wars Dolls

 

...and some Batman dolls too!

(Click on the image to see a larger version)

May the Force be with you!

and

May the dolls be with you!

Lots and lots of cool dolls!!!

Custom Murdoch Mysteries Megos!!!

Once in a while I like to make custom Mego dolls of my favourite characters. I enjoy making the costumes though I don't know how to make my own original head sculpts, so I try to use existing Mego heads that look similar. Here are three Murdoch Mysteries Mego dolls that I made...

I used Captain Kirk's head for Detective Murdoch, a DC Comics' Robin head for George Crabtree, and for Terrence Meyers I used an old Dr. Mego reproduction of a head that Mego had used for their dolls of Will Scarlet, Zorro and Sir Galahad. Someday I'd also like to make Mego dolls of Dr. Ogden, Inspector Brackenreid, Constable Higgins, James Pendrick and Detective Watts. Plus there are still so many more characters that could be made from this show!

Detective William Murdoch and Constable George Crabtree. George is still missing his helmet, not sure what to make it out of. Sucks! The hat that I found for Murdoch is actually a little too big, but it looks good with him just holding it. Close enough!

Terrence Meyers! (Dramatic pause) Sometimes he's a foil to Detective Murdoch and sometimes he's an ally! He likes to boast about having knowledge of top government secrets and then withholding them from Murdoch. Gotta have a Mego of Terrence Meyers if you're going to do Murdoch Mysteries Megos!!! The top hat that I found for my Terrence Meyers Mego is a cake decoration. It's a bit too small to fit on the doll's head, and it's too tall compared to the type of top hat that he's supposed to have, but it still looks good with him holding it I think. You get the idea.

These images show how the outfits work. The jackets for both Murdoch and Terrence Meyers can be closed or left open. They both have a separate vest underneath with an actual pocket for the removable pocket watch. 

Silly me, I forgot to put Murdoch's detective badge on the front left side of his vest before I took these photos, so I'm lucky that his coat is covering up that part of his vest. Not exactly a minor costume accessory to forget about!!! LOL! 

Below is a closer look at Murdoch's pocket watch which is made out of a piece from a decorative earing. I added the chain and watch face to it and drew the details by hand. 

Official Mego 8 inch doll reborn!

New Mego dolls from 2019: Bruce Lee and Elvis 8 inch dolls from the Mego Legends series.

Go ahead and pinch yourself, this is really happening! Beginning in the summer of 2019 the original owner of the 1970's Mego company, Marty Abrams, resurrected the Mego brand! Through the new Mego Corporation several 8 inch dolls were marketed including reissued classic Mego dolls and new characters. Check out the  Mego Dolls page for information about the entire new line of Mego products!

Reissued Mego Spider-Man by EMCE Toys and Dimond Select

Well, I'm a bit late to the party but at last I've acquired the EMCE / Diamond Select Toys reissue of Mego's Spider-Man from Marvel comics. Originally announced in April 2014, and released later that year, this is a remarkably well made Mego style item. I admit to being very picky when it comes to Mego reissues, but this one passes my inspection with flying colours! Let's take a look....

The box that holds all the goodies has a clear plastic lid which I've removed for this photo along with the cardboard banner. The set includes a reissued Mego Spidey doll along with outfits, heads and hands for making two additional, different versions of the character. The idea is that you can take the head and hands off of the doll body and replace them with the extra pieces that are included. I'll get back to the two extra outfits later, first let's take a look at Spidey!

The re-issued Mego version of Spider-Man comes in a Mego style box which I think is a really cool feature. My only complaint is that they GLUED the left side of the box into position so that it wouldn't move around inside the larger box. Although I tried my best to get the smaller Mego-style box freed from the adhesive as slowly as possible, I ended up ripping the side of the smaller box which really, really sucks! :( Thankfully though it's just a small tear and it's not overtop of any of the artwork. (You can see the tear underneath small image of Wolverine on the side of the box, above.)

Spidey himself is resting comfortably in his customized cellophane insert, which is likely making all of the original boxed Mego dolls jealous! He's wearing a reproduction of one of the classic, rare "circle suits" which were mistakenly drawn incorrectly for the first run of the Mego Type 1 Spidey doll back in the early 1970's. At the time, Marvel insisted that Mego correct this design issue, so the circle suits were quickly replaced with the standard version... of which there are also several variations! As there was no way I would have ever been able to find or afford a circle suited Spidey, this reissued version is quite fun to have in the collection. It's awesome that Marvel allowed EMCE / Diamond Select to reissue this variation!!!

The back of the Mego style box has an awesome retro like illustration of Spidey, and the banner at the top is similar to Mego's packaging design for the original World's Greatest Superheroes line. The sides of the box show Spider-Man, Captain America, Wolverine and Thor, all of which have since been released in this collection. The Spidey doll itself is very high quality. The doll stands up nicely without any weird twisting, and is held tightly together rather than being loose and wobbly (unlike way too many other reissued Mego dolls that have been so poorly made!). The suit is also very good quality with solid fabric, and is well sewn. The fabric has a slight shine to it which I think looks quite spiffy. To be honest, I find the original Mego Spidey suit now looks quite dull next to the new shiny Spidey suit!

Here is a comparison of the original Mego Spidey (left) next to the EMCE / Diamond Select reissued version (right). As you can see the reissued doll is slightly smaller. In fact it's exactly 7.5 inches while the Mego is 7 3/4 inches, so the new doll is 1/4 of an inch smaller. I've shown a side view comparison below. The photo below also shows how the detail in the reissued Spidey's head is more defined than the original Mego (the lines are deeper). It also still has the 1972 copyright date on the back of the neck.

The reissued Spidey has a red body as compared with the Caucasian body that Mego used. Mego also issued their Spidey with a red torso section in the late 1970s, a version that is less common. I must point out though, that for some bizarre reason this reissued Mego and those made by Figures Toy Company all have lopsided plastic briefs in which the doll's left leg opening is lower than the right side. This forces the left leg to stick out slightly, making the hip appear deformed. Fortunately in this case it doesn't distract from the doll too much when it has the suit on, and it can still stand up straight without any difficultly. Very strange though that the reissued Mego briefs are being made that way!

The back of the reissued Mego Spidey doll has five screw holes and four additional smaller holes which I'm assuming must have to do with the manufacturing process. Marvel copyright information is printed on the doll's back in black ink.

Now lets take a look at the "stuff" that Spidey comes with... first up is an outfit, head and hands to create Spidey's alter ego Peter Parker which is an all new version of the character. Mego had produced a Peter Parker doll in the 1970's that is quite hard to find these days, however at least two companies have previously reissued the parts for that doll. Therefore I think it was a wise choice to make this Peter Parker a completely new doll on it's own, with a unique head sculpt and outfit. He comes with a shirt, vest, pants, shoes, and a camera. He even has removable glasses and a Daily Bugle newspaper! The last outfit is a modern version of Spidey complete with a unique head sculpt and the web wings under his arms. Three different sets of Spidey hands are included, along with some Spidey boots. I find the boots are a bit weird since Spidey doesn't wear boots, but it's still fun to have them none the less! This Spidey also has his web-shooter wrist bands and a matching belt.

As for using the supplied doll body to put the different pieces onto, I'm not sure how well that would work out. This reissued Spidey head is made out of hard plastic rather than the soft squishy heads Mego used, so I don't know how to get the head off without damaging the doll (unless you undid the screws on the back of the doll, but then the whole doll might fall apart!). I did get the hands to pop off easily enough, but it's not something that I would want to do very often as it did put strain on the wrist joint. In any case, including these extra pieces makes sense as the set is aimed toward Mego collectors who are likely to have extra Mego doll bodies in their collections that can be used to complete the other two dolls if they wanted to have all three complete at the same time.

The set comes with an ultra cool mini magazine which presents the history of this ultra cool Mego doll! The magazine also outlines the production process that took place when creating this reissued Mego doll set, in addition to some other captivating Mego and Spider-Man articles.

The back of the large box has a giant picture of Spidey, reusing the same art from the Mego style box and magazine cover. As an obsessed die hard Mego freak, I am very happy with this set and find that this is the best quality reissued Mego item that I've seen to date! Awesome job EMCE / Diamond Select Toys!!!!!!!!!

I can't wait to get my hands on more from this collection. Here are the Marvel Mego style doll sets that have been released so far:

Series 1

Spider-Man

Captain America (with brown army uniform)

Captain America variant (with police uniform)

Thor

Wolverine

Series 2

Deadpool

Deadpool variant (pirate costume)

Daredevil

Punisher

Iron Man was announced for Series 1 but has yet to be released.

Text and images © Mikey Artelle, 2018

Mego Review: Wizard of Oz 8 inch dolls

In 1974 Mego produced an excellent series of seven 8 inch dolls based on the 1939 Wizard of Oz movie. To my knowledge this is the very first doll line ever to be based on this classic film rather than the original storybook. Shown above is the Scarecrow (missing his shoes and diploma), the Cowardly Lion (missing his bravery medal), the Tin Man (missing his axe), and Dorothy (missing her white socks and red shoes). Dorothy originally came with a yellow plastic basket and a one-piece plastic grey figure of her dog Toto. The other dolls in the series include the Wicked Witch, Glenda the Good Witch, and the Wizard. To complete the collection Mego made an Emerald City Playset and four Munchkin figures (Mayor, Flower Girl, Dancing Girl, and General). Unfortunately the Munchkin figures were rather poorly made as three of the figures are action figures rather than dolls, for which the body of the figure has the clothing sculpted and painted. In addition the legs are not articulated or poseable. A castle playset for the Wicked Witch was also sold exclusively at Sears stores. Mego also produced a set of larger sized plush dolls with plastic heads based on the four characters shown above.

The Mego Cowardly Lion 8 inch doll was produced with different colour variations for both the head paint and the fabric used for the costumes. The heads can be found painted with an orange face or a yellow face. The two dolls shown above have the orange face but different coloured fabric was used for their costumes. The Lion suit on the left was made with light brown fabric and fake fur, while the suit on the right used an orange-tan fabric and fur with shorter light brown fur accents. Dolls with yellow faces can be found with yellow fabric outfits and fur. I've also seen the orange faced Lion with a brighter orange fabric costume. For this version the chest fur section is more like a thick felt type of fabric. The lion doll on the right is missing the shoes which are shaped like lion feet, as seen on the left doll. There is no variation in the colour of the lion shoes, all were made in light brown plastic. The Scarecrow doll also has a variation with regards to the tuft of hair on his forehead, as earlier produced dolls do not have this tuft of hair.

All of the male Mego 8 inch dolls that were produced from 1971 to 1974 were made with Type 1 doll bodies. At some point in 1974 Mego introduced their revised and very much improved 8 inch male doll body. As such, male characters that Mego continued to produce in 1974 and onward were made with Type 2 bodies. Due to the switch over to the Type 2 body certain male Mego dolls can be found with both Type 1 and Type 2 bodies, as is the case with the male characters from the Wizard of Oz series. Above is an example of the "Fat Body" used for the Cowardly Lion and the Wizard dolls. On the left is the Type 1 Fat Body which has metal doll joints, and on the right is the updated Type 2 Fat Body which has plastic joints. Type 1 doll bodies are quite crude in their design and the legs tend to spread out to the sides rather than keep the doll standing naturally, as seen with the Type 2 body. A side view is shown below to show the metal joints in the elbows, wrists, ankles and knees.

Above is the standard male Type 1 and Type 2 doll bodies as shown on Batman's sidekick Robin from the DC Comics superhero line, part of Mego's "Official World's Greatest Superheroes" series. These are the same doll bodies that the Scarecrow and Tin Man dolls have, however their hands were made with yellow (Scarecrow) or grey (Tin Man) plastic instead of skin tone plastic. Below is the side view. The shape of the hands for the Type 1 doll are quite different from the Type 2 doll. This is one of the ways collectors can quickly identify if a doll has a Type 1 or Type 2 body... aside from the spread open legs of the Type 1 dolls. Looking at the doll hands in the photo at the top of this page you can see that Tin Man is a Type 1 doll while Scarecrow is a Type 2.

Text and photos copyright Mikey Artelle, 2017