Post by Jose G. on Aug 4, 2008 23:06:35 GMT -8
Over the busy San Diego Comic Con weekend, In between dodging big crowds surrounding the Mighty Muggs Showcase, I had the pleasure of interviewing Hasbro’s Chris Hicks, head of the Mighty Muggs line and all around awesome guy. Chris spent most of his time greeting fans and happily signing many of the Mighty Muggs exclusives available at the convention. So without further ado….
Jose: Chris, can you tell us what “100% recycled awesome” actually means?
Chris: Well, it just sort of started out as a cute little slogan thing that we slapped on the side of the package, I know a lot of people have misinterpreted it. The official explanation I’ve been giving people is that Mighty Muggs are made of plastic, plastic comes from oil, and oil comes from dead dinosaurs and dinosaurs are awesome! (laughs) so that’s my answer.
Jose: How has fan reaction affected license choices and wave selections?
Chris: We definitely take that into account, like seeing what characters people are really anxious to see and try to respond to that as much as possible. For example, Stormtrooper from wave one just kind of took off and became the big favorite from the first Star Wars wave, I would have put my money on Darth Vader but the Stormtrooper became the hard to find figure, so we have to keep our finger on the pulse and react to what the fans want and plan out our lines accordingly
Jose: What we can we expect in 2009 and how many waves do you have planned?
Chris: Lots more Muggs that’s for sure! Generally, I think we are going into the year planning a certain amount of waves but Muggs is nimble enough that we can add on waves and if they start selling through too quick. Actually, we did that in 2008 - originally we just had planned four waves of Marvel and four waves of Star Wars, but when Star Wars started moving so briskly we added a fifth wave, and a sixth wave, and a seventh wave to help out fill up the year. So we generally go with a fixed number of waves and as fan reaction demands, we add on more figures to fill out the year and make sure there are always at least a few Muggs on shelves.
Jose: Any animation, movie or alternate universe versions of characters planned?
Chris: as you can see we did adopt a sort of Clone Wars styling for the Clone Wars Muggs so there’s always the possibility for that, we also did a movie style Iron Man so I think Muggs is fluid enough definitely, to take on movie and animation interpretations of characters.
Jose: Are there any other licenses currently being looked at?
Chris: We are always looking at other licenses, we are always talking about “wow, this would be a fun Mugg” or “I’d love to do this character” but the legal rigmaroles is always a little more complicated than that, but as of right now we just have the five, Star Wars, Indy, Marvel and now Transformers and GI Joe. That’s plenty to keep you busy for now (laughs)
Jose: Any possibility of Boxed sets? Within the Marvel Muggs, the Avengers and X-men come to mind.
Chris: Possibility? There’s always possibility. There’s nothing in the immediate future for that but it’s always a possibility
Jose: How will you be tackling odd shaped characters? The one character that always gets mentioned, From the Star Wars line is R2-D2. Any particular strategies you’re using with those types of characters with any of the other lines?
Chris: We are defiantly investigating R2-D2, trying to figure out what we want to do, if we want to break our silhouette. I know there is a big demand for R2-D2, so once again reacting to fan demand is really pushing us to investigate if and how we can do R2-D2 as a Mugg. Another thing about doing odd shaped characters like you mentioned, Transformers for example, are all very boxy and Muggs are all very round so you ask yourself “how do you do boxy characters in a round shape” that’s been an interesting challenge.
Jose: Was getting Mighty Muggs off the ground at Hasbro a hard sell?
Chris: It was a pretty easy sell simply because it was cheap enough; no one had to sign off on lots of money to get it started so it kind of went in guerilla and under a lot of radars, but everyone knew about it. They were like “you can reuse the body, how many times?” GREAT! Go for it! And now that it’s actually making money and doing alright, even better! (Laughs)
Jose: There was a rumored “artist” line where high profile artists would do their interpretations of characters or original designs. Care to elaborate? Is there any truth to that rumor?
Chris: We’ve been considering that, there’s nothing concrete in the near future for anything like that but it’s definitely something that’s in the back of my mind like “I would love to see how this artist interprets Spiderman or how this artist would do Darth Vader” so it’s definitely something on my wish list for the near future and I think it’s something as Muggs continues to grow and expand and we want to see our favorite characters, it’s something that we would want to investigate to bring even more richness to the line.
Jose: Any particular types of artists or genres? Obviously comic book artist would gravitate toward the Marvel line but on the Mighty Muggs Lounge forums for example, we have graffiti artist urban designer artist that are really excited about the blank Muggs.
Chris: I would love to see a real depth of all kinds of artist like the urban vinyl artists, graffiti artist, comic book artists, maybe even artist that don’t necessarily work in the toy and pop culture field, maybe even fashion designers. There’s a whole range of artist that I would love to see, very unique voices interpret very familiar characters
Jose: How involved are the other Hasbro teams in character selection?
Chris: Oh they are very involved, going back to listening to the fans and really listening to that pulse, the guys (Transformers team) will come back from Botcon and say “these Transformers are very popular or this is becoming a very popular character. Also the guys (GI Joe team) will come back from JoeCon and say “everyone’s in love with this character, we have to get this character into a wave” so each team definitely has it’s own philosophy about what characters they like and sometimes it comes down to simple choices like “wow, we have a lot of red guys in this wave, let’s pull a red guy out” especially when you’re looking at them on the shelf and you’re looking at a lot of similar faces it might be hard to tell them apart, like Spiderman and Daredevil for example. So if we can mix it up and add a lot of variety to those faces in any given wave, that helps add to the richness of the line as well.
Jose: Lastly, any particular reason for the square peg hole on the bottom of the Mighty Muggs feet?
Chris: So you can peg them on to stuff! Silver Surfer is actually the first figure that will actually come with something with a peg on it for him to stand on. It’s one of those things when you get on a line you always wish “wow, I really wish I had put a peg there so I could make him stand on stuff” and I didn’t want to have that regret with this line so I told myself I would build it in from day one, I don’t know what I mighty use it for but I know I might use it and that’s why it’s there.
Jose: Chris, I want to thank you on behalf of the Mighty Muggs Lounge for taking the time to talk to us.
Chris: Thank you.
Jose: Chris, can you tell us what “100% recycled awesome” actually means?
Chris: Well, it just sort of started out as a cute little slogan thing that we slapped on the side of the package, I know a lot of people have misinterpreted it. The official explanation I’ve been giving people is that Mighty Muggs are made of plastic, plastic comes from oil, and oil comes from dead dinosaurs and dinosaurs are awesome! (laughs) so that’s my answer.
Jose: How has fan reaction affected license choices and wave selections?
Chris: We definitely take that into account, like seeing what characters people are really anxious to see and try to respond to that as much as possible. For example, Stormtrooper from wave one just kind of took off and became the big favorite from the first Star Wars wave, I would have put my money on Darth Vader but the Stormtrooper became the hard to find figure, so we have to keep our finger on the pulse and react to what the fans want and plan out our lines accordingly
Jose: What we can we expect in 2009 and how many waves do you have planned?
Chris: Lots more Muggs that’s for sure! Generally, I think we are going into the year planning a certain amount of waves but Muggs is nimble enough that we can add on waves and if they start selling through too quick. Actually, we did that in 2008 - originally we just had planned four waves of Marvel and four waves of Star Wars, but when Star Wars started moving so briskly we added a fifth wave, and a sixth wave, and a seventh wave to help out fill up the year. So we generally go with a fixed number of waves and as fan reaction demands, we add on more figures to fill out the year and make sure there are always at least a few Muggs on shelves.
Jose: Any animation, movie or alternate universe versions of characters planned?
Chris: as you can see we did adopt a sort of Clone Wars styling for the Clone Wars Muggs so there’s always the possibility for that, we also did a movie style Iron Man so I think Muggs is fluid enough definitely, to take on movie and animation interpretations of characters.
Jose: Are there any other licenses currently being looked at?
Chris: We are always looking at other licenses, we are always talking about “wow, this would be a fun Mugg” or “I’d love to do this character” but the legal rigmaroles is always a little more complicated than that, but as of right now we just have the five, Star Wars, Indy, Marvel and now Transformers and GI Joe. That’s plenty to keep you busy for now (laughs)
Jose: Any possibility of Boxed sets? Within the Marvel Muggs, the Avengers and X-men come to mind.
Chris: Possibility? There’s always possibility. There’s nothing in the immediate future for that but it’s always a possibility
Jose: How will you be tackling odd shaped characters? The one character that always gets mentioned, From the Star Wars line is R2-D2. Any particular strategies you’re using with those types of characters with any of the other lines?
Chris: We are defiantly investigating R2-D2, trying to figure out what we want to do, if we want to break our silhouette. I know there is a big demand for R2-D2, so once again reacting to fan demand is really pushing us to investigate if and how we can do R2-D2 as a Mugg. Another thing about doing odd shaped characters like you mentioned, Transformers for example, are all very boxy and Muggs are all very round so you ask yourself “how do you do boxy characters in a round shape” that’s been an interesting challenge.
Jose: Was getting Mighty Muggs off the ground at Hasbro a hard sell?
Chris: It was a pretty easy sell simply because it was cheap enough; no one had to sign off on lots of money to get it started so it kind of went in guerilla and under a lot of radars, but everyone knew about it. They were like “you can reuse the body, how many times?” GREAT! Go for it! And now that it’s actually making money and doing alright, even better! (Laughs)
Jose: There was a rumored “artist” line where high profile artists would do their interpretations of characters or original designs. Care to elaborate? Is there any truth to that rumor?
Chris: We’ve been considering that, there’s nothing concrete in the near future for anything like that but it’s definitely something that’s in the back of my mind like “I would love to see how this artist interprets Spiderman or how this artist would do Darth Vader” so it’s definitely something on my wish list for the near future and I think it’s something as Muggs continues to grow and expand and we want to see our favorite characters, it’s something that we would want to investigate to bring even more richness to the line.
Jose: Any particular types of artists or genres? Obviously comic book artist would gravitate toward the Marvel line but on the Mighty Muggs Lounge forums for example, we have graffiti artist urban designer artist that are really excited about the blank Muggs.
Chris: I would love to see a real depth of all kinds of artist like the urban vinyl artists, graffiti artist, comic book artists, maybe even artist that don’t necessarily work in the toy and pop culture field, maybe even fashion designers. There’s a whole range of artist that I would love to see, very unique voices interpret very familiar characters
Jose: How involved are the other Hasbro teams in character selection?
Chris: Oh they are very involved, going back to listening to the fans and really listening to that pulse, the guys (Transformers team) will come back from Botcon and say “these Transformers are very popular or this is becoming a very popular character. Also the guys (GI Joe team) will come back from JoeCon and say “everyone’s in love with this character, we have to get this character into a wave” so each team definitely has it’s own philosophy about what characters they like and sometimes it comes down to simple choices like “wow, we have a lot of red guys in this wave, let’s pull a red guy out” especially when you’re looking at them on the shelf and you’re looking at a lot of similar faces it might be hard to tell them apart, like Spiderman and Daredevil for example. So if we can mix it up and add a lot of variety to those faces in any given wave, that helps add to the richness of the line as well.
Jose: Lastly, any particular reason for the square peg hole on the bottom of the Mighty Muggs feet?
Chris: So you can peg them on to stuff! Silver Surfer is actually the first figure that will actually come with something with a peg on it for him to stand on. It’s one of those things when you get on a line you always wish “wow, I really wish I had put a peg there so I could make him stand on stuff” and I didn’t want to have that regret with this line so I told myself I would build it in from day one, I don’t know what I mighty use it for but I know I might use it and that’s why it’s there.
Jose: Chris, I want to thank you on behalf of the Mighty Muggs Lounge for taking the time to talk to us.
Chris: Thank you.
