Monster in My Pocket - The LOST Monsters

Now, here's something exciting for MIMP fans.

Back in the beginning, 96 monsters were listed as part of the Monster in My Pocket range. All 96 were designed and appeared on Latin American card and sticker collections, but only 81 were ever made into figures. The remaining fifteen monsters - Achelous, Ankou, Banshee, Catarenha, Djinn Shapeshifter, Genie, Grendel, Hairy Boggart, Headless Man, Hieracosphinx, Hodag, Jabalius (Beast of Gevaudan), Sciapod, Talus and Troll - were never made into toys, although some did make appearances in the MIMP comicbook or on posters. A sixteenth monster, Bash Tchelik, also appeared on the posters revealing "upcoming monsters" for later series, but nowhere else.

Fede Mazz, a big name collector, has spent the last few years working on creating the "missing" sixteen MIMP figures. He has recruited the talents of master artist and sculptor Rich Roland, the man who sculpted the original figures back in the day. Initially, the costs of the project looked to put the toys well out of my price range, but thankfully Fede has now turned to Kickstarter to raise funds to bring this project to fruition. The first four figures - Banshee, Catarenha, Sciapod and the Headless Man - are ready to go into production, and work has begun on the next four.

Backers can pledge different levels and receive anything from a set of four cards and a poster, to the set of the first four figures, to a set of collectable golden casts of the first four in a decorative display box. Fede's also joined with the creators of the most recent OMFG line to offer extra collectable figs for upper band backers. Should he raise enough, the first four monsters will be put into production.

Don't they look gorgeous? You can pledge here.

OMFG 3

With festive timing, the third series of October Toys' OMFG has just arrived to my door. As with previous series, this latest set of Outlandish Mini-Figure Guys has been designed and sculpted by several different artists and funded by fans through KickStarter.

From left to right, we have:

Pugnacious, Bill Mackay and George Gaspar
Dr. Decay, by Jonathan Wojcik and George Gaspar
Fruit Punch, by Scott Tolleson and George Gaspar
Barbarianaut, by Charles Marsh
TenCan, by Richard Brown and Bryan Fulk

Dr. Decay is part of Jonathan 'Bogleech' Wojcik's Mortasheen universe. The Bogleech site is full of weirdery and is worth checking out if you're a toy or cartoon nut. Wojcik talks about the eveolution of Dr. Decay from cartoon monster design to fully fledged toy here. I love the toy version, it's nicely intricate and detailed.

Pugnacious kind of reminds me of the old Monster Wrestler in My Pocket series - he's not unlike the character Bulldog Drumhead, although I think I prefer Pugnacious better. Barbarianaut, a sort of space Viking, is a good, solid figure. He's got a nice, old-fashioned minifig feel to him.

TenCan is just strange. I like it. My favourite of the set is Fruit Punch. A raving juice carton is such a ridiculous idea. He's tiny, by far the smallest figure of all three series, but I get the feeling he cold hold his own against these other monsters.

 This is the standard set of OMFG in flesh colour. S3 is in a darker tone, like S1, rather than the paler S2 version. It's a nice little collection I'm building up here. Looking forward to see what S4 will bring.

OMFG!

 Don't worry, I'm not trying to sound young (I'm childish, yes, but not young). I'm just celebrating the arrival of my set of new OMFG toys - that's Outlandish Mini-Figure Guys, you see.

OMFG are produced by October Toys. It's a crowd-funded project, with character designs chosen from a vast selection sent in by members of October Toys' forum.  Series One came out last year, and Series Two has just arrived - well, I got mine a bit later, what with shipping times from the States and all.

I love the ugly little sods. They're a nostalgia piece, made by and for fans of MUSCLE and Monster in My Pocket. I never collected MUSCLE, but I was an avid MIMP collector. Actually, who am I kidding - I still am an avid MIMP collector. In the absence of resurrecting that series for a third time, OMFG will do nicely.

Each series consists of five characters. S1 has the Crawdad Kid, King Castor, Multiskull, the Phantom Shithouse (!) and Stroll, while S2 features Grimm Gourd, Shirtle, Cuddlehard, Cry-Borg and the delightfully named Puke Knight. Originally I was going to keep them in their boxes, but I decided no, they're made to be displayed properly. Here's all ten, plus a ZOMBIE Ape (also from October Toys) for comparison:

My favourite from the first series was Multiskull, due to the impressive level of detail on the sculpt. Out of S2, I'm a little torn. They're all more imaginative than the S1 monsters. Puke Knight is actually two figs that fit together, which is a nice touch, and I like how Cuddlehard acts like the personification of the OMFG logo. However, I think it's the half-shakr, half-turtle Shirtle that is my overall fave. He's just so adorably stupid-looking.

Small quibble: I've got the standard flesh-coloured sets, which are the basic sets for those contributing to the crowd-fund campaign at a low level. It's a bit annoying that the S1 and S2 flesh colours aren't quite the same. OK, it's a petty, pedantic niggle, but we collectors are petty, pedantic people. I'm tempted to buy a set of the exclusive colours, but there are so many to choose from. This is a sure-fire way to waste money...