I mean, WOW.
Way back in 2012 when the rights to the former Ideal properties were secured by Toyfinity, I had a long conversation with Matt Doughty about what we could do with the characters.
Those discussions were pretty intense and exhaustive. Anyone who knows me personally knows my predilection for checklists.
We looked over a list of the dozens of characters that Toyfinity now had access to and started to create a blueprint of what potential rollouts of these characters might look like.
The Manglord was one of the top contenders for a new toy - look at the original Ken Kelly boxart! A figure that actually captured a fraction of that mythic painted power could be a blockbuster.
Personally, much as I had felt with Robo Force, Manglors were too cool to be left on the scrapheap of history. There was so much potential that Ideal had just not been able to tap into with the designs.
There was also a chance to correct a great injustice with the Manglors - with Glyos, we could actually make Manglors that could be torn apart and reassembled.
Now, here we are after rolling out the new take on the Manglord and I am amazed and humbled by your response.
After years of data on previous Toyfinity figures, we crunched the numbers and put in a robust order for the standard Manglord....which you collectively exhausted the supply of the same night of the release.
This was too rapid and not our intention on the main character from the entire franchise.
Almost immediately, people were reaching out about the Manglord - and your collective feedback confirmed the need for more of him, now instead of later.
Luckily, we had a short window to add Manglord to an existing order to minimize the turnaround time.
We even gave you a taste of the next wave - and the results on everything were so strong that it has us looking at all the options for more Manglor madness.
As always, special thanks must go out to the team over at Onell for all their assistance:
- Marc Beaudette for his work on the Manglors animation and the behind the scenes work on the store, including answering my endless questions about Shopify
- Arcadia Doughty for her Manglors theme song! I have listened to it thousands of times since last week
- and especially Matt Doughty for his advice and support in the entire endeavor and enabling the "re-order" to proceed so quickly. I truly could not do this without him.
An additional special thanks to Erwin Papa for another amazing piece of artwork showing the battle between the Manglord and Protolord! I can[t wait to see them fighting in all our collections later this year.
And finally, all of YOU for making the return of Manglors a reality!
February is the Month of Manglor Madness! Who knows where the Manglors will turn up next?
