Do they come with guns & High School I.D. ?
John Donaldson
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February 15, 2004
What Wears Black and Is a Foot Tall?
By JIM RENDON
DAGGER wears platform boots, scowls from beneath his long black hair
and never eats his vegetables. Casual Storm's pigtails hang down past
the waist of her torn dress. Morbida has the forlorn look of Lillian
Munster on a sunny summer afternoon.
All of these gloomy characters are just 7 to 12 inches tall, even in
platform boots. They are the Bleeding Edge Goths, action figures
dreamed up by Steve Varner, a longtime figure designer, with help from
his 16-year-old son, Stefan, and a few of the Goth-influenced artists
who populate Mr. Varner's studio in Torrance, Calif.
The Goth culture, which emerged in 1980 or so around bands like
Bauhaus, was in part a reaction to the sunny materialism of the Reagan
era. Goths, who borrow some elements from the Gothic literature of the
18th and 19th centuries, are known for their black clothing,
piercings, dyed hair, fishnet stockings and taste for macabre
literature and brooding music with depressing lyrics.
Mr. Varner's 14 Goth characters are different from other figures on
the market because they do not depict comic book or film characters,
like the X-Men, or even anyone in particular. Instead, Mr. Varner
wanted to capture a real subculture, albeit one that can be a bit
cartoonish. Only a few other figures on the market try to represent a
subculture with unknown characters. David Gonzales has done it with
his successful Homies, which he has described as Chicano buddies from
East Los Angeles, figures that have moved from gumball machines to toy
stores and have sold more than 100 million units. The Mullet Heads,
1980's figures with mullet haircuts from Achy Breaky Toys, and the
Mini Moshers, punk rockers from the Stronghold Group, are other such
figures. But since they were introduced last summer, Mr. Varner's
Gothic figures have been among the more successful products, retailers
who carry them say.
Bleeding Edge Goths are sold by Tower Records, Hot Topic and Spencer
Gifts, among other retailers, and are available in Europe and
Australia as well as the United States.
Melodi Ramquist, a buyer for Hot Topic, a chain of more than 400
stores that carry clothing and accessories for teenagers, said Mr.
Varner's figures had sold better than she had expected. Tower reported
selling 85 percent of its first shipment of two types of the figures.
After a first production run of nearly 80,000 figures, Mr. Varner is
now shipping a second group of about the same size, which includes
some new characters, and he says he expects to turn a profit on it. He
is planning to ship a third group in the second half of this year.
Mr. Varner's figures will be on display at the American International
Toy Fair, which begins today at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.
The event, one of two that the Toy Industry Association holds in New
York each year, is the nation's largest toy trade show.
Mr. Varner, who founded his figure design business, Varner Studios, in
1979, designs for companies like Walt Disney, McDonald's and the
Warner Brothers Entertainment unit of Time Warner. But after nearly a
quarter-century of designing for others, he found that he was tired of
the negotiations and bureaucracy that accompanied contracts with major
clients. Although he has continued to work for big companies on
figures including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, G.I. Joe and Tony
Hawk, he also began creating figures of his own - figures that were
not likely to be found in a Happy Meal.
In the fall of 2002, Mr. Varner and Stefan, who often helps in the
studio, went to a meeting about licensing the rights to the likenesses
of Latino rock stars. Afterward, Mr. Varner asked Stefan what he
thought.
Stefan was bored stiff with the rock-star concept, Mr. Varner said.
"He told me, 'If you want to do something, Dad, you should do Goth
figures.' "
Mr. Varner said he loved the idea. "I started looking around and began
seeing how many Goths there were,'' he said. "These people were not
being represented, and they were all potential customers.''
Although Mr. Varner, 52, was already an adult when the Goth trend
began, he has been employing art students influenced by the Goth
subculture in his studio. "It was right in front of my face and I
didn't see it,'' he said.
While the popularity of Goth culture has waxed and waned, Goths have
been a continuing market, Ms. Ramquist said, and the Hot Topic stores
have always carried Goth merchandise, including tall black boots and
long black overcoats. Tower Records also caters to Goth tastes, said
Kevin Winnik, its director of merchandising.
In a Tower store in Manhattan, the Bleeding Edge Goth figures are
stocked next to Living Dead dolls from Mezco Toyz L.L.C. Figures from
the films of the director Tim Burton are on display, and a Misfits
black lunchbox, shaped like a coffin, is propped up on the bottom
shelf. Goth culture is shrink-wrapped and for sale.
Mr. Winnik said he was aware that such commercialization of a
subculture had the potential to alienate the very people whom
retailers were trying to attract. And with the images of platform
boots and Count Dracula garb, Goth may be as easy to mock as it is to
exploit.
Mr. Varner said he rejected any design suggestions that smacked of
ridicule. "I tried to be very respectful of their culture, to show the
beauty of it and not poke fun of them in any way," he said.
Mr. Varner, who has 12 full-time employees and eight freelancers with
whom he works regularly, did this in part by appointing someone
familiar with Goth culture, Beth Colla, to run the project. Ms. Colla,
who frequents Hollywood's Goth clubs and formerly produced a line of
Goth makeup, worked with Varner's artists to develop the designs.
"Goths are really awesome people," she said. "I did not want to take
their culture and wreck it for them. I felt like I was representing a
culture that has not been represented in a toy or comic before."
Mr. Winnik, who says Mr. Varner has succeeded at this goal, chose to
carry the Bleeding Edge Goths partly because they speak to Goths
without putting them off.
But as Mr. Varner knows, starting a successful line of figures is
hardly simple.
According to the NPD Group Inc., a consumer market research firm, the
action figure market is worth $1.2 billion to $1.4 billion a year. It
is driven by large corporations like Hasbro, which created the
Transformers, and Bandai America Inc., a unit of the Bandai Company,
with its Power Rangers.
THE release of an action-figure-intensive film can bolster the entire
market by 10 percent or more, as was the case with "Star Wars Episode
II - Attack of the Clones'' in 2002, said Michael Redmond, a senior
analyst at NPD.
Large corporations, however, generally do not try to offer figures
that are not born with a mass-culture identity. "It is hard for a big
company to get behind the idea of toys that are not based on
characters that are easy to sell in advertising or films," said Zach
Oat, editor of ToyFare magazine, which caters to action-figure
collectors. "The last time they did that was 40 years ago with Barbie
and G.I. Joe."
Mr. Varner had no desire to do battle with the Mattels of the world.
He was looking for a niche in the smaller market of collectible
figures, which appeal to people in their late teens to mid-20's and
make up 15 to 20 percent of the total market, according to NPD.
The success of Mr. Varner's products may lead other small companies to
start lines of subculture figures, Mr. Oat said.
"People are starting to see that action figures don't necessarily have
to be about a character in a movie or a cartoon," he said. "Toys can
be about fashion or lifestyle and that can appeal to a broader
audience."