Spawn 1

I have a confession to make. When Spawn was introduced in the early 90s, I didn't like the character. I didn't like Spawn because I was too much of a Spider-man fan, and losing McFarlane, to pursue his own creative calling, seemed such an unthinkable inconvenience. At that time, not only did McFarlane reinvigorated Spidey's popularity, but he got other people, who no longer read comics, excited again, with his stint in the Hulk, then in Amazing Spider-man, and then his own (simply) Spider-man series. McFarlane paved the way for guys like Jim Lee, Wilce Portacio, and Rob Liefeld, to get the level of notoriety that they enjoyed during that time. Todd McFarlane meant so much to comics in the 90s, as John Byrne, Chris Claremont and Walt Simonson did in the 80s, Neal Adams in the 70s, and Jack Kirby in the 60s. Among the elite artists of the 90s, McFarlane's star shined the brightest, and we had him for Spider-man.

Then, he left, along with other "hot" artists of the 90s to start their own comic company, Image. Fans of Spidey were devastated, and I was one of them. So, I took it all on Spawn, Todd's creation. I didn't give the character a chance, I refused to buy the comics, and subsequently, the figures.

And I will admit now, it was a huge mistake. More than 10 years later, I had the opportunity to read Spawn, through trade paperbacks, and I was pleasantly surprised. Oh, do not get me wrong, i did notice some of the criticisms of other people regarding Spawn, and to a certain degree, they are valid. However, if you consider how the creators of Spawn tried to weave this tapestry of stories for the character, you can appreciate their imagination and uniqueness. They not only pushed the envelope, they were a decade ahead of their time. Had I read Spawn then, I will probably attribute this fondess for the character due to nostalgia. But since I only read Spawn a little over a year ago, from issue #1 up to last year's Armageddon storyline, I can honestly say, without a doubt in my mind, that Spawn was, and still is, very much relevant to today's comic readers.

Now, on to the toys which started it all.

During the 90s, the superhero action figure market was dominated by Toybiz with their Marvel figures. Those figures feature nice sculpts, but were not very comic or cartoon accurate. But of course, there were exceptions, like the Spider-man, Ironman and Fantastic Four Animated series figures by Toybiz, which were very close to the source material.

McFarlane was approached by toy makers to market Spawn, which at that time was the leading independent (non-DC/Marvel) comicbook series. From stories, I heard that, although Todd kept an open mind, he was ultimately frustrated about the quality of the figures produced by these companies, so he decided to produce them himself. And it worked. McFarlane's toy company would rival the "big boys" in toys, the way Image rivalled Marvel and DC in the 90s. And it's due largely to Todd's courage to forge ahead with his own destiny, and his wild imagination.



The first figure made by "Todd's Toys" is the Spawn figure to the left. It features 5 points of articulation, which was pretty standard back then, nicely sculpted, and has one accessory. When you consider that it was made back when the standard size of action figures was 5 inches, this initial offering is pretty amazing. The level of detail on the Spawn figure blew everything they had back then out of the water. From the very beginning, Spawn figures will be known for their high level of detail, and it is still expected by their fans to this day. The first Spawn figure is still very much in demand from collectors of Spawn and toy collectors in general. You cannot be a true superhero toy collector without a Spawn figure in your cabinet.

The first Spawn figure had several variations, among them is this, the unmasked version. I have read that there were the hamburger head, or the worm head variants. i do not know which of the figure I got is which, but it sure looks creepy, which i surmised, is what they were going for. It has the same scuplt as the regular Spawn figure, except for the head, and the color is a little different, the black parts were changed to blue.

Overall, the first Spawn figure was an excellent way to start one of the longest running toyline around. A whopping 33 series later, the Spawn toyline is still awesome.