Some of you may have seen Todd McFarlane’s excellent work in his collectible toys. While Todd has had ventures into many aspects of the entertainment and creative industry, we are just going to be focusing on a few here. McFarlane has had some amazing accomplishments and we hope to focus on the majority of what he has contributed to the sports collectibles world. A complete bio on Todd can be found at SPAWN.com.

Some items of note about McFarlane is that Todd was a former minority owner of the Edmonton Oilers. He is the co-designer of the Edmonton Oilers’ third jersey. He also helped to create award winning music videos for groups such as Korn and Perl Jam. Todd purchased Mark McGwire’s 70th Home run ball from the 1998 season and he says that his most important influences are his wife and Wayne Gretzky.

The main reason why we wanted to highlight Todd is that he is a resident of Arizona. Todd has recently agreed to create the commemorative ticket for the City of Phoenix’s Light Rail. This commemorative ticket will be available to a limited selection of passengers. You can read more about the Commemorative Ticket for the inaugural ride at SPAWN.com.

Todd, his wife and their three children still reside in Arizona where baseball can be found all year round. The year round theme carries over into the product development of his sports figures where he has mentioned in some of his interviews that sports is perpetual. There is always something going on, always a fan favorite and always a hot team to follow. There is no doubt that some of this influences some of the decisions on what players are created. Proof of this can be found in his Hall of Fame baseball collectable and his commemorative series baseball figurines.

To achieve the amazing level of detail that is included in each figure, there is a painstaking process that takes place while creating each individual figure. While some of us may remember the Starting Lineup toys from the ‘90s, there is no replication of body parts with McFarlane’s SportsPicks collection. McFarlane uses a computer and a 3D scanner to retrieve the detail for his figures. A clip of some of this process can be seen here where Todd shows the process when scanning some NHL hockey players’ faces. The same process is duplicated for the bodies of the players. Once the scans are done a wax mold is created and cleaned up before the remainder of the figurine is sent to be molded.

Some of the releases that are planned for the holiday season include multiple Halo releases, NBA, NHL, NHL Legends and Wave 3 of this year’s NFL releases. In addition, MLB, Guitar Hero and Call of Duty figures are also available for the holidays.

The McFarlane toys can be purchased at several outlets throughout the Valley and the Nation. A retail store and showroom can be found in Glendale at the Westgate City Center with administrative operations in Tempe. A special thank you goes out to Suzy Thomas of McFarlane Public Relations for helping us with our feature story.

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