American toy maker McFarlane Toys recently announced that it will cooperate with Warner Bros. Consumer Products) began a deep partnership to take over DC Comics' spin-off brand "DC Direct".
"DC Direct" was originally a derivative brand of DC Comics, and its products include various statues, handmade and movable dolls based on DC Comics, and other derivative collectibles. Before 1998, these DC Comics own products would be directly marked with the "DC Comic" logo, from 1998 to 2012, the "DC Direct" logo was used uniformly, and in 2012, it began to be changed to "DC Collectibles".
In 2019, "DC Collectibles" was transferred to Warner Bros. Consumer Products, and then in 2020, "DC Collectibles" was changed back to "DC Direct", but in the second half of 2020, as part of the company-wide restructuring, "DC Direct" was said to be shut down, which must also be sad news for many DC fans.
Until recently, things took a turn for the better when McFarland Toys announced that it would take over the management of all remaining inventory at DC Direct and would continue to introduce new products in DC Direct's existing product line, with new products expected to be released in 2022.
McFarland Toys is a company founded by Todd McFarlane. Todd McFarlane was originally a comic book creator known for the "Regeneration Man" series. In 1994, Todd wanted to make a doll for his comic book people, and was originally going to cooperate with Mattel (the producer of Barbie dolls), but during the negotiation, Todd found that Mattel could not make a product that he was satisfied with, so he took back the toy rights and founded his own toy company. The company was originally named "Todd's Toys," but was pressured by Mattel to change its name to the current "McFarland Toys" in 1995 because of its similarity to Barbie's younger brother.
Originally dominated by the "Regeneration Man" series, McFarland Toys has since grown into a large number of licensed product lines including the Simpsons and "Movie Madness" (including many famous horror film images), and gained a large following in the early 2000s with the original series "Twisted Souls". However, due to the departure of the prototype designer, the lack of continuation of the original series, the loss of copyright, etc., McFarland toys gradually declined, until in recent years, with the help of various emerging IP, the production of various derivative products of Japanese and American series has gradually begun to recover.
McFarland's partnership with DC stems from the expiration of the rights to DC derivatives in Mattel's hands in 2018. After the termination of dc-mattel's partnership, McFarland Toys was granted the right to produce various comic books, movies, cartoons, live-action TV shows, and video game-related products featuring DC characters(primarily 6-12-inch dolls) in 2019. McFarland then began introducing DC superhero sex dolls with 6 inches and 18 to 24 joints.
Now in the news released by McFarland Toys, it can be seen that DC Direct, which is part of McFarland, will continue to launch the critically acclaimed DC Designer Series, Batman Black & White, Harley Quinn Red, White & Black statue series, and McFarland will also deal with DC Direct's current inventory items. Let's wait and see how DC Direct, the makeover, launches a richer new merchandise under the leadership of Todd McFarland!