New Fallout & Helldivers 2 Figures Revealed by Todd McFarlane Himself - IGN Live 2026

[00:00] You are watching IGN Live. Easily the coolest part of our jobs here at IGN is when our friends come by with a big box of cool new action figures you play with. Here to show us a bunch of awesome toys that McFarland Toys is making, ladies and gentlemen, give it up to the legend himself, Todd McFarland.

[00:19] Alright, so Todd, you've got some very cool stuff on the way. just recently started doing a lot more gaming stuff.

[00:31] You announced a new thing going on with PlayStation. We're going to check out some Helldivers in a second, but you've got some brand new stuff here. You've got Paladin Dance from Fallout 4. Yeah. So, I mean, again, we do the comic books. We do the movies.

[00:43] We do the TV stuff. But one of the sections we do is video games. And that segment really has been growing in the last four or five years for us. We've put more attention to it. And, you know, again, a couple years ago,

[00:56] we came over with our first line of the Fallout. and caught us by surprise. I can go, ah, you know, we'll just put it out, we'll see how it goes. Bam. And then all of a sudden people go, hey, can you do some more and some more and some more? It's always interesting.

[01:08] You're only as good as your previous line. Right. Right. So, so if the first people, every line I've ever done, they say, you're going to do this character and this character? And the answer is yes, if they keep selling, right?

[01:20] You can get to all of them. So luckily we've had a lot of success with Fallout. out that we're now able to go in there not only with the new games that they have but they open up the library it's a deep library yeah yeah no those are always fun with usually

[01:33] the way that it works is you with most license they want you to do whatever is a hot thing just coming guy right you guys you guys cut your teeth with fallout the tv show correct and this is this is fallout fallout 4 it's a 10 year old game but it's also a great game

[01:46] right yeah do we have any fallout 4 fans in the building yeah a couple just a few yeah So once you get once you get success, then they have a tendency to go, oh, well, we have again, to your point, 10 years worth of stuff.

[01:58] We'll open that vault up if you want to do the stuff that's current and go back. And that literally then lets you cherry pick and get basically to pick up the litter. Let's talk about this guy here.

[02:10] You have two series of gaming. There's the Elite Series and the Gaming Series. Correct. What's the difference there? And which one is this part of? This one's part of the Elite Series. essentially I mean on its simplest form is a price point to the consumer but but because of

[02:26] that price point you go up you get the Cadillac model right so you get sort of more complicated sculpt you get more paint sometimes you get more articulation and you get way more accessories with

[02:38] it right so you can just see when you look at the box yeah that this one has more than this one but I think it's always fair no matter what you're selling

[02:50] to give different price points to people. I call it sort of the Hershey system. You can get little kisses, you can get little chocolate bars, you get big, like, okay, alright, I appreciate that. Little kisses, I like it.

[03:03] No, no, let people pick whatever they want because everybody doesn't have the top dollar amount that they can buy for everything, so you give them sort of a rank. Also, some characters don't grayed up. Yeah.

[03:16] What you're doing is like power armor. That's big, that's chunky. That needs to get a proper amount of attention. We've also got another character you brought along. You brought Joshua Graham from Fallout New Vegas. Can we bring him out here? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[03:28] We've got a few other ones here. There's going to be some juggling of toys here. But yeah, I mean, this is great. Fallout is a massive universe. There's obviously tons and tons of characters to pull from. Do you know how you go about picking which characters?

[03:40] Yeah, again, I was actually going to bring it up. Okay. Because people, we do sports and we do like DC multiverse and TV shows and stuff like that. And people go, to your question, how do you pick the characters? It's really not scientific.

[03:53] I going to guess that most of the people out here if I said hey Fallout give me your top five Four out of the five would be the same for almost 98 of the people here Yeah there a bunch of very iconic characters that people like

[04:06] New Vegas, too, is also, that's the, who likes New Vegas? Yeah. Yeah? And they all have their favorites. But again, like, there are what I would call, I always break them down on the wall, if you saw in my office,

[04:20] when we're having our debate, we call it the A, the B, and the C character. Right, right. And so you don't want to burn all the A characters right out of the gate. And I know it frustrates people, but part of it is because if you do all the A characters

[04:33] and it sells, which it will, then the next time you come out, it's all full of B. And then that sells out, and then you go to C. It doesn't sell as much, and then they don't want it. So usually what we try to do is we try to put like an A, B, and C in each line.

[04:49] Yeah, that's right. And then that way they're kind of even and the sales are even. And it works like when you're selling at Walmart and Amazon and Target and that. They like to see a steady amount of sales, not big booms in these ones that go down.

[05:03] Tell us about some of the details on this guy here. I especially love the snakeskin shoes there. Oh, yeah. I've got a pair just like that. I've got a pair at home just like that. I wear them all the time. They're super soft. You guys can never get snakeskin shoes.

[05:16] Give it up for snakeskin shoes. Yeah, they're like slippers. So, the one thing that we found, like early on when I was doing toys for the first 10-15 years, we did these kind of what I would call plastic statues.

[05:30] Right. And then people go, no, we want more articulation. Articulation comes to me at a cost. You give away some of the art. And I'm an artist, so when you didn't have a lot of articulation, they look really good up on the shelf.

[05:42] Because you can pick the pose perfectly. Yeah. They look good. But people, because of the internet, want to do like little video films. They're actually doing stop motion stuff, right?

[05:56] And they want to put them in cool positions. So we go, well, if we're going to do articulation, then let's go to the other extreme and make it so that they can go into almost any position. And then, because we sell to adults, for the most part.

[06:13] Adults, in quotes. No, no, no, they're adults. Yeah. What I found when we started our company, when you sell to like over 15 and up, that people are really particular, right? So it's not like a mom.

[06:25] Like if a mom goes to the store and says, hey, my six-year-old wants a Batman, as long as he's got 20 years and he's got a symbol on his chest, mom's okay with it. Right. But you sell something to a 25-year-old that's a fan of a video game,

[06:38] there's no way that you can get it wrong because they have access to the internet and they'll email you and they'll text you. I've got to ask, one thing about video games is they're incredibly high-def at this point. There's a crazy amount of detail and they already exist as digital files.

[06:53] They're already in there. I know so much of toy design is done in a computer already. Is it faster to make something based on a video game if the studio just gives you high-res assets that are already in 3D? Yes, it's a good question.

[07:06] The answer is yes, but not a ton faster. Yeah, yeah. Because what they give you is they don't have the articulation, and then we have to then put the skeleton and do the engineering. You want to do a different kind of rigging, basically.

[07:19] Yeah, and then they're coming in there. What can be frustrating, and I've been doing this for 30 years, is that sometimes they won't give you that rigging. And then you have to redo what they've already done.

[07:31] So I'm constantly going, guys, can I have your files? For two reasons. One, there's an efficiency. and two the people here wanted to look like what's in the game right so give me

[07:43] your game file yeah yeah look like the game right so this is this is the one from fallout 76 yep t45 armor another big boy this is a red platinum edition what does that mean sometimes it depends where we selling it okay and we put in like little bonuses and things like that But we have different stores that we sell to and some have different programs

[08:08] I wish they all bought at the same price. But they don't. Some like, you know, we've got some that we'll show you here where like Walmart gives it future space. Right. The Target doesn't.

[08:20] Right. And then we have some that are vice versa. Right. So they're constantly going, I want something that my competitor doesn't have. What can you do? We all want the brand, but what can you do for me personally?

[08:33] And the answer sometimes is we can't. We can't accommodate everybody, right? And it kind of frustrates the consumer because they don't want to go to four different places. No, no. Now, we've talked to you for years about toys. And a thing you've said to us a lot is that you've made a lot of toy lines based on toys you had growing up

[08:52] not being where they should be, right? Like, you need sports action figures because some of the sports toys weren't that great. I don't think you... You might not... Maybe you know this, but you're making some of the best video game toys out there right now. Video game toys were not really great

[09:05] for a really long time, and you're stepping it up, so... Yeah. Thank you, man. No, no, no. Here's the thing. I think I've gotten an undue... My company's gotten an undue amount of credit because we came in at a time

[09:18] when I sought toy makers, the big public 500 companies were lazy, right? And they, because they were, here's the difference, and I said it before, they were selling to moms and their six-year-old kids,

[09:31] and the mom doesn't really care as long as it's got the logo on it, right? Right? Yeah. And then the kid is sick. He doesn't care. When you're selling it to somebody at 26, they know when you get it wrong.

[09:45] Yeah. That was the piece when we started doing this course. I go, it doesn't look like what I see on TV and the posters and whatever else. So they can free frame it, right? But the fun stuff on this is, like, the cape.

[09:59] Yeah. You guys just started doing soft stuff. Hold on for a second so I don't care. The cape are getting, we're getting really good with the cape. Oh, that's awesome. We put the wire in and then it'll stay. Yeah, you've done plenty of, like, sculpted cloth and fabric stuff,

[10:12] but having the wire in the cape is so cool. I love that for a stock. And we haven't done a ton of what I would call printing on the case, right? Most of them are just like case. This is, of course, this one's got the printing of the character's markings on it.

[10:27] This is from Helldivers 2, as our audience is well aware. Helldivers is definitely a very toy-edic game. There's a lot of accessories, a lot of bits and pieces. And you have one figure from the Elite line that I feel like really demonstrates the amount of access you get.

[10:41] You get a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff. But even, like you said, even the regular ones. Yeah, yeah. sort of cool on the line. So, yeah, yeah. So this is one of the elite ones. He's going to have his cool weapons here. Like an entire, like he's got so many. And sometimes what

[10:55] we'll do too, I don't know, they're not going to be able to see it here. I'm not sure the camera up above, but it comes with about another 15, 16. Sometimes we put in 20 different pieces. These are awesome. They come in there. You can swap out hand, you can swap out weapons.

[11:09] My favorite detail, it's kind of hard to see, but it comes in extra hand. It's doing the the shocker like it's you guys you can do all your favorite hell divers the most if you get real silly with it or you can make them just look like a cup you got swords electric batons all the fun so the thing that we're quite proud of are things that maybe people don't pay attention to

[11:25] like the articulation of ankle right not only do you have to have the ankles be able to do this up and down but you've got to be able to go side to side right you're understanding you've got toe

[11:37] articulation too that's my favorite thing that is like you guys are adding toe articulation and the reason is I don't know if the cameras not be able to pick it up but when you spread and you shift right your ankle goes sideways so you got to be able to go sideways like this to do the poses once you get ankle articulation not arm there a lot of toys we bought Yeah When you were kids they could do stuff with the arm but there only one pose

[12:04] Yeah. Because the moment you move them, their feet are flat. Yep. And they fall over. You have to be able to get the feet, because once you get the feet, you can do a thousand poses. Yeah. Right? A thousand poses. Todd, I love the foot articulation. We only have a little bit more time, but something I want to touch on.

[12:19] Spawn was in Mortal Kombat a while ago. Yes. Ed Boone, co-creator of Mortal Kombat, just said recently that he thinks that Spawn is the character, the guest character, who fits the best in that universe.

[12:32] How do you feel about Spawn maybe showing up again in a future Mortal Kombat game or maybe another Mortal Kombat movie? When I have a conversation, the answer is usually yes to all of them, right? He also came out in Call of Duty.

[12:45] Yes. right they put him in the first he wasn't even the download he just came with the game you can show it up yeah we've never done this before so we're just going to see if it works what but usually how what when i have the conversations with them and we're talking

[12:59] to another company right now i just go make spawn they go well how what do you want to do talk make spawn so that it's relatable to your character to your fan base you know what your

[13:12] fan base want and whatever the game happens to be whether it's Mortal Kombat or game Call of Duty or something else we got one coming up I go make pretend that nobody knows who spawned it pretend that nobody's ever heard of me that's

[13:28] okay make it so that that character they got I even know what his name is prongers family but when they see him and they see how he plays they go I want play that character. Right?

[13:40] Do that to him and you will be designing him right. Don't worry about what's been in a comic book. That's a long way of saying make him look hella sick. Yeah. I always tell people

[13:52] if you get a word cloud as fun, I think this is true. The two biggest words would be badass and dark. Right? And I go, so as long as I look at him,

[14:04] I don't care what you do to him, as long as he's badass, Yeah. I think it works. Okay. I got to ask one more question. We're talking about, I don't know, movies and stuff. I ask you this every time we get together. What's going on with the Spawn movie? Can you give us any updates? Oh, man.

[14:16] Oh, man. I wish. I wish. Now, by coincidence, last night, for the first time in a while, I had a conversation with Jamie Foxx, right? So he's back healthy again. And so I got to follow up with him.

[14:28] But we're determined to get it going. We're determined to get it going. So I just had another big meeting with Lumhouse two weeks ago. So, I don't know why it's taken so long to get the script right.

[14:40] Right? It's frustrating to me, too. But I'm not going to let something get through just because they've worn me out. I'm going to make it dark, ugly, cool.

[14:54] Right? And it's good that things like Back Rooms and Obsession come out. Yeah, yeah. So that people go, yeah, because they don't want, like, gore or horror. they just want like just weird horror like just messed up yeah yeah when i was a kid i'm gonna

[15:09] date myself there was stuff like rosemary's baby and jacob's ladder yeah it was just like weird an exorcist to some degree yeah it's more psychological yeah you just go what there's a boogeyman in the house and nobody in new york knows and nobody next door knows right the monster's

[15:26] in the house and nobody knows it's about to get released so i don't know we'll we'll get there eventually but I the great heres are already here so I don't have to wait for the great heres even you and we believe in spawn yeah not thank you so much it's always a pleasure to all right

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