The company that invented action figures as we know them is back after a 35-year hiatus.
Mego Corp. (pronounced “me go”) has found a new lease on life in today’s nostalgia-fueled toy industry. Brands like Batman, Superman, and Star Trek that it was the first to license in the ‘70s are today not only relevant, but in demand with kids and collectors alike.
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Mego entered the scene in 1954 as a producer of cheap dime store toys but pivoted to action figures when the founders’ son, Martin “Marty” B. Abrams, took over the business in 1971. Abrams, then 28, had the innovative idea to partner with media companies to create licensed, official toys. He had an uncanny knack for determining which licenses would appeal to fans, as evidenced by the fact that most of the brands he first worked with are still popular today.
There was just one misstep: the company was unable to acquire the license to a little-known property called Star Wars and was bankrupt by 1983. But the Mego legacy didn’t end there. For 35 years, Mego collectors have been trading the still-popular toys in the secondhand market. Eventually, big box retailer Target took notice and offered Abrams a second chance.
Today, Abrams is 76 and working just as hard as he was in his 20s. Mego Corp., now called Marty Abrams Presents Mego, has already regained its prior US success; Abrams now has his sights set on world domination. I sat down for a phone interview with the so-nicknamed “father of the modern action figure” to talk about Mego’s beginnings, that fateful Star Wars license, and how the toy industry has changed over the past half-century.
Lauren Orsini: Why is Mego, a company with a 60+ year history, doing a publicity push now?
Marty Abrams: We’re doing press right now not only in the US, but the whole world. The level of interest in us launching a new brand, really an old brand that’s been in retirement for 35 years, has been extraordinary. Quite candidly, I was probably more shocked than anyone that the love of this old brand has been carried through the last 35 years.
When we saw that happening, we took advantage of it. One of the ways that happened was through Target. When Toys ‘R Us was going out of business, Target realized there was an opportunity to take over a good part of the collector’s market. Toys ‘R Us had so much space in their stores to dedicate to collectors’ items, something only a chain like Target could match.
They saw this opportunity and came to me. “Would you be interested in launching your own company?” I’ve gotten this same question about two times a year for the last 30 years, and I had no interest. It’s a huge amount of work. You need a tremendous amount of licenses, for 80 to 130 different characters, to make collectibles. But Target said, “Listen, Marty, we’ll give you 2,000 stores until Christmas, and millions of dollars of product so you can be competitive with today’s toy manufacturers,” suddenly I was interested.
We delivered it to them last year and it was a great success at the retail level. Target doesn’t want us to give the specifics, but last year, in tens of millions, we were looking at $35 to $40 in profits. The response from collectors has been overwhelming.
Orsini: It’s interesting we’re talking about collectors as the main market for these action figures, and not kids, for example. Has it always been the case that Mego marketed to collectors?
Abrams: There have always been collectors of something, from Hummel figurines to Beanie Babies. People who can’t buy a Picasso can still collect things they enjoy, and these pieces are often toys. When I took over Mego, the main collectible item was something called Britains, diecast collectibles of military soldiers, safari hunters, cowboys, and more. The kids played with them, and the parents collected to them.
In 1964 or so, Hasbro came out with the male alternative to Barbie, G.I. Joe. They had a single action character and a range of different costumes. The kids would buy the figure and change its clothing, but the character was hard to dress and undress. That’s when we got the idea of selling action figures each with their own costume, so people could collect them all.
We use the same exact body for each of our characters, whether they’re 8-inch or 12-inch or 14-inch. All we do is change the sculpting of the head and the costume. What that allowed us to do was move incredibly quickly. Once we were into the rhythm of making hundreds of different characters, we could turn around that head sculpting and costume in six days, and ship the product in sixty. We could take advantage of the next hot new thing right away.
Orsini: What made MEGO figures innovative at the time?
Abrams: We got licenses for the characters. At the time, nobody was doing that.
Orsini: Why wasn’t anyone licensing?
Abrams: You have to understand, this is 1970. The only thing that was being licensed at that time was Mickey Mouse. At that time, Paramount, Fox, Universal, none of them had their own in-house licensing departments. They worked with outside agencies. The studios couldn’t afford to pay anyone full time to manage it, there was just no demand at that time.
When I made the decision to license Batman, Batman had already been on network television with Adam West. They [Warner DC] never licensed that character! It just wasn’t done.
I was located in New York City, so I could walk to their office from my office. So I walked over and made offers for Marvel and Warner DC. To this day, there is no company who holds the licenses to both of these brands.
The next piece was Star Trek, that was [owned by] Paramount. Licenses were being handled by a third party. I called him up and he gave me the rights to Star Trek for an advance of $5,000 [about $31,000 in 2019]. Let me say that again. I acquired the license to Star Trek, all of the characters, worldwide, for $5,000. Today, if you wanted that license you would have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars. But back then, he was so happy I would pay that much!
Orsini: You had a good eye for which licenses to buy, to what do you credit that?
Abrams: The brands that we selected back in the ‘70s, for whatever the reason, have carried on for the last 45 years. Even Aquaman just had an international movie release. We did Iron Man, Spiderman, we did Black Panther, all the way back then, and they withstood the test of time. That’s why they became so collectible. That’s why the secondary market is still going strong, and people have still been trading these figures back and forth for the last 30 years.
Orsini: Tell me about the fateful decision not to acquire the Star Wars license.
Abrams: Well, it was never a decision.
Everybody asks me this question, and all I can say is that it was the perfect storm. I was in Japan with my senior management team working on Micronauts. Micronauts became a $150 million brand worldwide, but it meant me, my engineers, my licensing guys, my marketing guys, were all in Japan at the same time that Fox was shopping Star Wars around.
Instead, Fox went to [toy company] Kenner. Even though it’s a Cincinnati company, the senior manager happened to be in New York and made the deal right then. This guy would have bought a bag of manure just to keep it away from me.
That’s the true story of what happened. We never passed on it. We never even saw it. When I got back from Japan, I heard about the Star Wars license, picked up the phone, and Fox told me it was already gone. If we had been there, we would have acquired it. I can’t acquire what I don’t see.
Orsini: Today some Mego toys are valued in the thousands. Will you be re-launching any of those rarer action figures?
Abrams: There’s a digital museum called the Mego Museum that gives us a sense of what the secondhand market is like. The ones that are worth thousands of dollars, and many of them are prototypes, stuff we never actually launched. There are a few toys we only made samples for, and like with baseball trading cards, less is more. It turns out that some of our employees, when they left, took molds or samples, and I don’t begrudge them for anything. But having said that, those items that survived are being traded in the aftermarket. The ones that we did make and are worth a lot are in mint condition. Those can be worth hundreds or a few thousand.
Orsini: What will you do differently this time? What do you know now that you didn’t know before?
Abrams: Here’s what I know for a fact: when I was doing this before, I had one goal, and it was to maximize every single product out there in terms of piece count. If I could sell a million pieces, I would shoot for 1.2 million. If I could sell 1.2 million, I would shoot for 1.6 million. Today, no matter what, we’re making X amount of pieces and we’re stopping. Remember, in those days, we had just a few brands every year, and needed to maximize them. Now I have all those brands, so I don’t have to turn around and make big quantities of anything.
One thing I do know for a fact is that if you’re over-making and you overbuild the product line, you have closeouts. And when you have closeouts, you hurt the brand. By that very definition, we’re under-manufacturing everything.
Orsini: In your opinion, what are the most dramatic ways the toy landscape has changed since you entered the business?
Abrams: That’s easy. When I came in, you had hundreds of retailers buying toys. Over the course of the years, most of them went out of business. Now there’s just a few, like Target and Wal-Mart. Back then there was potential: if one guy didn’t buy it, the next guy would, or the next. Now you have a very small amount of companies you can sell to, and if they don’t buy, you can’t launch.
The second part is that it’s all digital now. There’s Amazon and the whole digital market that has taken a big hunk of the distribution. If you don’t have a digital distribution model set up, you’ll fall behind. Technology has also changed the toys themselves: electronic toys didn’t used to exist. So you’ve got a completely different toy market.
Orsini: The relaunch began exclusively at Target. If this goes well, is the plan to keep it Target exclusive or to expand to other retailers?
Abrams: Target exclusivity expired January 1, 2019. We are now in the process of selling internationally.
After the exclusivity clause expired, we went to a toy fair in January in Hong Kong. Companies come from Italy, France, India, Singapore, and more, to look for American product to buy and distribute in their countries. I sent my head of sales over to get a feel for it. I thought there would be zero demand. But there was just as much interest as there was in America, everybody wanted it. When we hang up on this phone call, Mego toys will be selling in every country in Western Europe—everywhere from the British Islands to Greece. We’ve also had interest from South American, Australian and Asian companies. I’d estimate that we’ll be selling in around 30 countries by the end of 2019.
Again, this is a perfect storm. The collectibles market has just exploded. We’re launching right into that nexus of excitement for the brands we have licensed, which are all in demand. Everyone knows what Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, and Planet of the Apes are.
You know the Godfather expression: “I thought I was out, but they pulled me back in”? That’s exactly what happened. I’m working harder now at 76 than when I was 25 years old.
All photos come from the Mego Corp. official Facebook page.
