Everything has shipped! and Mordle history - first modern test shot pics

100% of Club Mordle orders are out there in the world, so everyone should have them invading their mailboxes pretty soon.

Today, I'd like to show you the very first test shots I received of the brand-new tooling that creates the Mordles. When I obtained the rights, I thought for a while about what I wanted to give to the fans first. I thought about all-new Mordles and including the original "Ripsaw" Mordle as a bonus, but that would miss an important point: the people that love Mordles have never been able to get that many of them.  Most people who even had an interest in getting some might spend years tracking them down. How many people out there even have a set of all ten originals? Took me years to track down all of the RBT and Mordles, with Rockadile being the toughest of the Rocks and Bugs to acquire.

So, I consulted with Matt Doughty of Onell Design, and based on my passion for the originals, we decided to start with a full set of the vintage Mordles. Because none of the original RBT tooling still exists, it meant starting over again from scratch. My precious set of the original Mordles was sent to China for processing.
Now, I didn't want there to be any confusion with the originals, and I think we've succeeded there.
The plastic is completely different than the original release, and the additional paint apps add something I've always wanted on the Mordles. It also gives us the potential to make some really crazy Mordle colors - imagine tiger-striped Mordles! Or Mordles with eyes one color and toenails a different color...it costs more but we can literally do anything we want.
Additionally, I needed to get the original CBS markings off of the figures. This way you have as close to a perfectly clean Mordle as can be.

There's a lot of lead time involved with doing any project that involves tooling, molds, sculpting, factory production, and so on...I'll get into the full process in a future post.
Today, we focus on one aspect of that process. Once the factory has created your tooling, they get to a certain point and they are ready for your approval of what the tooling is supposed to make.
Whatever plastic is laying around in the machines (leftovers from another product made at the factory) is injected into your tooling so you can evaluate what it looks like.  This is called a test shot.
Sometimes you get crazy colors that you would never make the product in. My particular test shots are a kind of metallic red.

Enjoy the very first view I had of the Mordles when I opened the box on that day back in March and saw these guys spill out!

(shown with an Onell Design Crayboth for scale)