Spawn Action Figures
Todd McFarlane's hyper-detailed, faintly grotesque action figures based on his Spawn comic — spikes, chains, teeth, and claws painted in a level of detail no toy aisle had ever seen. Aimed at teenage and adult collectors, they made every other action figure suddenly look like a baby toy.
Spawn figures were the toy-aisle spillover of a comics revolution. Todd McFarlane, a superstar Spider-Man artist at Marvel, broke away in 1992 to co-found Image Comics and launch his own book, Spawn, whose first issue sold a record-setting 1.7 million copies. To merchandise his dark antihero, he started a toy company — originally called "Todd Toys," established in early 1994.
The figures were unlike anything else on the shelf. Where rival action figures wore a few sloppy dabs of paint, McFarlane's Spawn line rendered every spike, tooth, claw, and chain in meticulous detail, and shipped them encased in hard plastic as collectibles rather than playthings. The debut 1994 line — six figures plus playsets like the Spawnmobile — sold over 2.2 million units in about three months. (In 1995 the company was renamed McFarlane Toys, after Mattel objected that "Todd Toys" clashed with Todd, Barbie's little brother.)
The impact rippled across the whole industry: McFarlane essentially created the adult action-figure-collector market. The company branched into hyper-detailed music figures (KISS, Metallica, the Beatles), the Movie Maniacs horror line, and sports figures — but it was those grotesque, gorgeously painted mid-90s Spawn figures that changed what an action figure could be.
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