Palisades Toys

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They made a lot of boneheaded decisions, OP.

A LOT of boneheaded decisions.

>Make an Adult Swim line of figures.
>Don't do Harvey Birdman or Brak because "they've been done by other companies", despite the fact that the other Birdman figure was the superhero type
>Get confused when your toys of Brak's mom and dad and Phil Ken Sebben and the Bear don't set the world on fire.

>>6306006
Yeah and look where they are now.

>>6306006
Didn't their RE toys do well? I bought plenty from their Resident Evil line, especially since back then, finding a toy that can hold a gun convincingly was pretty rare, especially RE toys.

>>6306546
>look up quinn and debbie
shame the actual toys don't look like the prototypes or the cartoon

>>6306546
wish i had the brain matter to pick up the Mothmonsterman set. he has a neat design and was voiced by McGurk

>>6307085
They died because of their brick and mortar retailers all shutting down at the same time and places like Toys R Us not wanting their products because of their assbackwards toy rules.

>>6306559
>Everything is a attack on NECA even though nothing negative is said about them in the OP

Please go back to your general and stay there.

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>>6306006
Fuck. I had so many of their Muppets figures. Sadly, I sold them all about 6 years ago when I really needed the cash. I made almost 400 for everything I had. I kind of regret it now, but back then I had no room for them and was hurting for money. I feel like these might be the kind of toys that are worth triple that, soon enough...

My favorite part of them, though, was hunting for them with my friend. We had both just gotten our licenses 10 years ago and spent the whole summer driving to every brick and mortar toy store we could find to get them. I'll always have the memories. And Rainbow Connection Kermit.

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Reposting this from a former Palisades employee:

See, back at Palisades, the action figure line we were probably best known for was the stuff we did for Jim Henson's The Muppet Show. That line, which had 9 series of action figures, 5 playsets, some smaller figurines, some large scale figures and other miscellaneous items, was probably one of the things I am most proud of in my career.

Simply put...I loved almost every aspect of working on that stuff. And I can only say that about 3 or 4 product lines that I've worked on.

I was a fan of the show, which never hurts. The characters were diverse and there was a deep history and a rich tradition. The licensor and the people who worked there were passionate about their jobs. They loved the characters and yet they were open-minded enough to allow me to earn their respect and to allow me to go in directions they were not used to going with consumer product.

And then there was the fan base, particularly from websites like Muppet Central. Without whom I never, EVER, would have been able to accomplish anything. I was a fan, but not a SUPER fan, like I was with something like Star Wars. I didn't know The Muppet Show inside and out, upside down and backwards and forwards.

They did.

They kept me honest. They supported me. They gave me ideas. They kicked my ass when I needed it. But they gave their time and effort, never asking for anything in return except to have a voice, and in the end I hope they felt they had it, because I tried to make sure they did as much as I could and as often as I could.

I know sometimes they felt that some things were not the way they should have been, and sometimes they weren't. But even though often I would say 'Anything is possible!', the truth is that much of the time it wasn't. Schedule, budget, fuck-ups overseas at the factory, limitations in plastic interpretations...so many factors can result in not achieving the perfection you hope for, the perfection you strive for.

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>>6307673
The fact is, nobody was a harsher critic of the outcome of the line than yours truly, even though I took many a hit over those few years on many a forum. But man, did I lose many an hour of sleep in those days.

Funny what I lose sleep over now compared to then.

During the years we put the Muppet figure line out, we released 5 playsets. They were The Muppet Labs with Beaker, The Electric Mayhem Stage with Animal, The Swedish Kitchen with The Swedish Chef, Pigs in Space with First Mate Piggy and the Backstage Playset with Rowlf.


Two other Playsets were on the legitimate drawing board, and by that I mean they were actually in R & D stages. The Electric Mayhem Bus, technically a vehicle, and The Muppet Theatre. Both were in some form of conceptual development.

The EM Bus was getting reference gathered, and hell, we were even thinking of buying the bus itself because as luck would have it, it was being sold at the time. As it is, we were playing around with possibly cheating the scale to make it affordable to produce at that size.

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>>6307674
The Theatre was something that was always in the back of our minds, and James Carroll, who contributed a TON to the line in a lot of different ways, had done a concept sketch that integrated that set and some of the other things we had been dreaming about adding in later if the line expanded.


Neither were made, and honestly the Backstage Playset BARELY got made.

The truth is, and this is just me guessing because I have never come right out and asked him, but I'll bet Mike Horn's decision to release that playset was probably based more on his loyalty to the work we'd put into it, his faith in his sales team that they could pull one out of a hat in the 4th quarter and his gratitude for what the fan base had been for the company than anything else.

Because from the onset? As the smaller retailers were dropping like flies and our overall sales numbers were dropping with them? Things did NOT look good for that set which was already hip-deep in massive prototype costs and tooling costs. I don't think anybody internally would have blamed Mike a bit if he had decided to cut bait, eat the costs up to that point and cancel the playset outright.

His decision to roll the dice and try for the hard six? Balls. But that's Horn. One of the reasons I respect him. I've never seen ANYBODY try harder to make something work. He doesn't give up until he has exhausted every last conceivable possibility. Period. End of sentence.

That's passion. I had it for the look and feel of the line as the Product Development Director and then as the VP. The fans had it for the product. The Jim Henson Company had it for their brand. Mike had it for his company.

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>>6307676
Later, as a treat for Carter because of how hard he is trying with his reactions to Bennett's aggression, we took him to TRU to pick something out. I took the opportunity to also look at some stuff that I might want to pick up, see if any of the TRU MiniMates sets were there, which of course they were not. They never are. Did find the Bioshock 2 Big Daddy Exclusive on Clearance and picked up one, feeling bad for Randy at NECA when I did so, knowing that it is gonna be biting him eventually and hoping that they are doing OK in this economy.

As always, I was so alarmed at the prices of the action figures. My God, it wasn't all that long ago that a Star Wars figure was under five bucks, and now they are almost EIGHT. And the DC Universe figures? Forget about it. FIFTEEN DOLLARS?!? Wow. Even the MiniMates have seen a price hike from $4.99 for a 2-pack to $5.99.

I understand all the reasons why, believe me. More than you know. It also makes me appreciate those 'good old days' even more than I already do, because they are NOT coming back. To put a figure like this...


...out today? The retail on it would have to be $20.00, and who would pay that? I can't think of anyone. That retail price is based on all the old numbers, too, of cost and quantity produced and such, plugged into a spreadsheet we used to have.

The Muppets line would be one and done if it were released today in that format, and that's a fact.

Since Palisades there has been some Muppets product that has been made, some Disney stuff I believe. I've even heard rumors of new Muppets product on the horizon possibly. I don't expect it to look anything like the Palisades stuff. Nor SHOULD it.

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>>6307680
It can't.

Well, that's not entirely true. There is ONE way you could continue that formula, even using Sesame Street characters, in that same style with that same level of sophistication and detail, and still make money.

But I'm not gonna write about it here. Isn't there something about giving away the milk or the cow or something like that? Well, in this case it would be a Muppet Cow, Maria (if you're reading this), but you know what I mean.

But I promise, if Jennifer ever wins the lottery I will definitely show you that it CAN happen. ;)

OUT.

OH...and by the way...those Muppet figures were ALL made back in the early part of the 2000's, before the new, more stringent guidelines. If ANY of you have young kids PLEASE...do NOT let them chew on that shit...seriously.

This stuff is age-graded for a reason.

Did they ever get to do Sesame Street line?? I would have bought the Sesame Street line hard. I always did respect that toy line, Muppet Show was clearly a labor of love.

>>6307700
They had the first wave or two prototyped, and managed to get Super Grover out the door as a convention exclusive, but he'd be the only one that made it to market before Palisades went belly-up.

>>6307733
Man, their sculpt for the Sesame Street guys are gorgeous too... the detailing on Elmo alone.

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>>6307733
They were real clever about their sculpts too, even though some figures had limited articulation if you shifted the legs on Fozzie for instance it'd change from a normal standing pose to a walking one.

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>>6306546
To the lost!

Bumping this thread so that some anons might read of the glory days of Palisades.

>>6309127
There are no glory days. Their shit broke easily and they drove themselves to ruin.

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>>6309130
>There are no glory days

DELETE THIS

Man, Palisades, Playmates, Pre-nonsense McFarlane, Mezco... the late 90s to early 2000s were full of fantastic companies making fantastic toys.

>>6309246
>early 2000s
most the 2000s really. It's when you hit like 08 that shit started falling apart, Pallisades was just the early first casuality. The forewarning of what was to come.

>>6309339
I think you mean SOTA.

>>6309381
>I think you mean SOTA.
but don't they focus on statues? aren't they still around? Not sure what you mean, but then again not really familiar with them.

>>6309397
SOTA used to be one of the big up and comers. If they're still around, they're not even a shadow of their former selves.

>>6309465
>SOTA used to be one of the big up and comers
How so? Legitimately curious what made them have that sort of status and then loose it considering how new they are. only established in 2000. Even more so if the intent of the reply to my comment was to imply that SOTA was the real first casuality compared to Pallisades. That's only 5 years to become super awesome and then fall apart.

>>6309485
Did you ever see their stuff at mass retail go on clearance? Speaking from memory, their SF stuff flew off the shelves at game stores.
Only way I was able to obtain Adon at retail was the girls who worked at Hot Topic hadn't stocked the box, and instead it was sitting beside the counter.

>>6309485
SOTA had amazing figures. The Street Fighter line was almost one of the most comprehensive around, with lots of amazing variants. The Now Playing line tackled some great and obscure characters and monsters. Lots of variants and amazing dioramas and likenesses there too. The inch of unburned flesh on their Darkman looks exactly like Liam Neeson.

They even had a great WoW line...but even that was kind of the start of things going wrong.

They seemed ready to tackle anything at first.

>>6309574
>They even had a great WoW line...but even that was kind of the start of things going wrong.
Geez, I wonder if no one should ever touch anything Blizzard related, sure most of the cases the company were immensely stupid in what they decided to make, but it just feels like bad luck now with Neca giving up on it.

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>>6307673
It really shows much love and effort was put into their line, because they did end up making a more classic look Fozzie from the earlier seasons of The Muppet Show.

>>6306546
Yeah desu, I love adult swim and those are all nice figures but most of them should've been a wave two.
Wave One should've been:
ATHF: Master Shake, Frylock, Meatwad three pack(Meatwad is small so it could still fit in the same type of packaging
Brak Show: Brak and Zorak
Harvey Birdman: Harvey and Peanut, with Avenger as accessory
Sealab 2021: Captain Murphy and Sparks

>>6309485

The guy running SOTA shot his business on the foot due to poor financial management. Fucked up really bad with paying the factories and what not. That's part of the reason why SF 'bootlegs' started to show up near the end of the company's action figure career. Factories were getting their money back one way or another.

>>6307771
W H E R E?

>>6324173
Where what? That Grover was the first and last of their Sesame Street line, so it's difficult to find.