Superman The Animated Series 2014 by Hasbro
There was a surprise at the Hasbro booth this summer. Apparently since mattel is letting the Timmverse sit at idle by not producing any figures, They've lost the rights to the older part of the license. Due to a clause in the contract, it's reverted back to the original owner from the 90's which was Hasbro. Although stipulations in the contract will not allow Hasbro to make any characters that were only in the JLU series since mattel still owns those rights. Hasbro is free to produce any characters that fall under the Superman Animated Series, Batman Animated Series, The New Batman Adventures, or Batman Beyond Universes. I was able to get a quick word from Sr. design project manager Vickie Strathfern at this time.
VS: " The executives at Hasbro always thought that they ended the Superman line to abruptly in the 90's. So the first of the lines to be brought back to you will be STAS 2014. We all were very excited to obtain this license back & think this is a great addition to our already successful Transformers, Star Wars, & GI Joe boys lines. Series 1 of the Superman line will be released in late 2014 & will include a good mix of some previously released characters with new sculpts along with brand new figures that have never been produced before. We are not going to repeat our previous mistakes or those of other companies by producing a bunch of rainbow colored Superman's. There will be variants of Superman released, but they all will be show accurate. If the Superman animated line does as well as we are expecting, Batman & Beyond will be soon to follow."
We also spoke with head sculptor on the project for Hasbro who goes by the name of Clayface.
CLAYFACE: " Mattel was pretty incompetent & really dropped the ball here. I can't express how happy people are going to be to see what we are going to do with these licenses again. Almost 20 years later there is still so much demand from the fans for these Timmverse style toys. I worked for Hasbro throughout the 90's & was begged to come back specifically so this project could be done right. I must admit that I was pretty excited about it since I have always been a fan of the Timmverse cartoons. When we previously produced the Superman animated figures in the 90's they were great for the time. But they really didn't blend well with the BTAS/TNBA line & they should have since the universes seemed to cross over on occasions on the cartoon. Now at Hasbro we are correcting that error with this 2014 line. I worked on each of the figures from series 1. You will see brand new in Timmverse scale sculpts of characters released before, along with new figures never made. Series 1 will include an assortment of 8 unique characters. They all flawlessly capture their cartoon counterpart likenesses. That's all I can tell you for now "
There you have it, this should make fans of the Timmverse style figures very happy. Clayface was nice enough to give a copies of the proof sheets that he submitted for design approval. He mentioned that these are the prototype versions of the figures & some minor things may be changed for release. But these designs have all been approved by Hasbro & DC executives.
STAS Clark Kent
STAS Superman
STAS Bizarro
STAS Aquaman
STAS Kyle Rayner
STAS Steppenwolf
STAS Volcana
STAS Mr Myxzpltk
|
