Toy Fair 2015: Mezco Toyz

Welcome back, Mezco!

Over the past few years, Mezco Toyz has been releasing some perfectly fine figures based on good licenses, but the general consensus was they just weren’t keeping up with the pace of the collector toy market.  Many of their toys featured limited or no articulation and softish sculpts, and it was easy to forget that Mezco started off as a truly revolutionary toymaker, one whose influence is still felt in today’s collector market.

That’s why I’m truly glad to see Mezco getting back to pushing the envelope, which they certainly did at Toy Fair with their One: 12 Collective.  We’ve already seen Batman and Judge Dredd, but I can’t get enough of these figures.  They look great, with an awesome amount of detail, loads of accessories and alternate parts, and meticulously designed fabric costumes that look perfectly natural on the figures.

After having the chance to play around with Dark Knight Returns Batman in hand, I can say without hesitation this figure is just as solid, durable and fun as we’d all hoped.  He’s completely fantastic, with a wide range of motion and an awesome loyalty to Frank Miller’s character design.  Even the slipcase box for the figure– a sleek, mostly black box featuring Miller’s artwork– adds to the overall quality of this great figure.  I can’t wait for the first shipment to make it through the backup at the docks… but he will be well worth the wait.

Judge Dredd looks equally awesome, and features an all new slimmer body with no parts sharing with Batman.  The first edition Dredd will feature his black uniform, with a navy blue variant still looking for a home.  One possibility?  He might be a pack-in with the Lawgiver bike, an in-scale toy version of Dredd’s iconic vehicle.  This thing was massive and stylized and totally badass, a worthy steed for the 2000 AD hero.  Mezco is pretty intent on releasing this bike, but they are still working through the logistics that will make sure the vehicle features the same level of quality as the One: 12 figures, while still keeping the price low enough to stay affordable.

Making his debut at Toy Fair was the Mutant Leader from Dark Knight Returns, and this massive thug looked awesome squaring off against Batman.  While he shares a few parts with the Dark Knight, you’d never know it– the Mutant looks fresh and completely unique, from his studded belt and leather-like pants, to his visor glasses and razor sharp teeth.

Since the Mutant only wore one costume, he likely won’t get any wardrobe variants, but he may feature variant headsculpts.  Mezco is working on three unique heads for the figure– the head with glasses seen here, another head with a mohawk made of spikes, and a beat-up head with no glasses and the broken nose the villain received from Batman.

One:12 was the biggest feature in Mezco’s display, but this amazing new series certainly energized the rest of Mezco’s new releases, as well.  Their Mortal Kombat X collection looks very promising, with both 6″ and 4″ lines featuring remarkably detailed sculpts and tons of articulation– ball necks, ball shoulders, ball hips, ball waist, elbows, knees, wrists and ankles– making them some of the best figures I’ve ever seen based on the classic video game series.  Wave One will include Raiden, Scorpion and Sub Zero, while Wave Two features Kitana, Kotal Khan and Quan Chi.

Mezco actually has the master toy license for Mortal Kombat, so they can theoretically make figures based on any game in the series.  They chose X because of its impending release date, and would like the line to feature characters with the same game aesthetic.  That being said, the classic first-game looks of these characters may surface in the One: 12 collection…

There was a lot more to love at Mezco’s Toy Fair booth, too.  Breaking Bad will continue with two versions of Gus Fring shipping any day now, followed by Saul Goodman in June and three more figures– Season One Walt in his green shirt and tighty whiteys, Jesse Pinkman in street clothes and Mike Ehrmantrout– will be released later this year.  The line keeps getting more and more popular, thanks to the cult status of the TV show, so even though it’s been over for nearly two years, Mezco plans to continue moving forward with their collection.

The Tex Avery inspired 20″ Bugs Bunny rotocast figure looked great, and he’ll be joined by more large scale figures this year, including Gigantor and Tigra from Thundercats, the eagerly anticipated follow up to 2013’s Cheetara.  Tigre is being developed right now, and will be followed by the two Kits, who may be released as pack-in figures as we saw with Snarf.

I could not be happier to have Mezco Toyz back in full force, and their 2015 offerings are without a doubt the most exciting I have seen from them in years.  Take a look at our full gallery of photos from Mezco’s Toy Fair booth below: